Brian Bouldrey: Tell, Don’t Show! (January 2000)

Young writers often hear the advice “show, don’t tell,” as though, Brian Bouldrey notes, “it were an article of faith.” But is showing necessarily better than telling? In this lecture, Bouldrey challenges that truism, reminding us that fiction is storytelling, and exploring how “telling” is vital to style, voice, and point of view in Chekhov’s “The Darling,” William Trevor’s “After Rain,” and Graham Greene’s “The End of the Affair.”