This advice has basically been in vogue since the Ernest Hemingway days. Although we have nay-sayers like Francine Prose who teaches writing and writes brilliant novels.
I believe this is from her book READING LIKE A WRITER.
"....there is a form of bad advice often given young writers—namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out ... when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language."
ME:
I sometimes think that the most beautiful writing comes with the narrative passages, not ones of dialog. I get weary of too much dialog, too much of an attempt to completely root a story in hip, pitched dialects. Conversations can easily be as dull as narration. What do you think? Stasis isn't the outcome of narration (or telling) necessarily, but of too little story, too little description, too little character.
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