On Subtlety and Showing, Not Telling [YCQMOT]

Aspiring writers, artists, really anyone involved in media take note. Your audience may seem dumb, but they’re really not.

In what universe does artlessly spelling everything out qualify as an improvement over inference and subtext? It’d be like remaking Citizen Kane, but changing the protagonist’s last words to “Rosebud… which incidentally was the name of my childhood sled and represents a lost childhood Eden of innocence and purity that throws the materialist emptiness of my adulthood into even sharper relief. Alas, I’ve said too much and now I must die, mysteriously. Or not.

-Nathan Rabin. “My Year Of Flops Case File #103 Psycho (1998)


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