One of the things that may have happened to you as you did the previous exercises is that you felt a bit guilty. Oh no! a voice in your head may have said, I’m TELLING! If that happened, let me reassure you.
In the past few decades, writing teachers have become obsessed with the idea of showing. Show, don’t tell has become a mantra, repeated endlessly in classes and books about writing. While the ability to “show on the page” is certainly an important writing skill, so is the ability to tell. That’s because of the power of “what happens next?”
Humans, as I have said, love stories. And the engine of a story is its happenings. More than any other element of a good story, what keeps readers reading is, I think, that they want to know the answer to the question, “What happens next?”
And to provide them with that answer, over and over again, we must be able to tell as well as show. Read More
The Mastery Path for Writers: a new way to learn the skills you need
Story Lesson 14: The Power of What Happens Next? 2
Story Lesson 13: The World of “What Happens?”
And after all, it is not the expectation of a happy ending that carries us on. Rather it is the unraveling of the story itself; it is the traveling and not the destination.
—Jane Yolen, introduction to Folk Tales of the World
What makes a story? There are lots of answers to that question. Some people think that story demands a main character driven by desire. Others think that stories require lots of action, or conflict. My view is different. I believe that, at its most basic, a story is a series of happenings. To make a story, in its most elemental form, is to say: This happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.
Whenever I have spent time with small children, I have heard this fundamental narrative drive. Phoebe, then five, once told me this story: Read More