We talked in the last video
about using parallel structure as an organizing principle. What you're going to read about now
is another organizing principle, one that pushes against a common piece
of writing advice you might have heard. That advice is "show, don't tell." The problem with "show, don't tell" is
that if you follow it too closely, you might produce a shapeless mass
of details, no structure, no order, no sense of what's important,
and what's not. "Show, don't tell" can be, at its worst,
the writing equivalent of a data dump. So I encourage you to modify
the slogan slightly; not, "show, don't tell," but "show AND tell." The reading will explain
the difference more fully. It will also introduce two terms that I
hope will help you figure out not just the component parts of a piece of
writing you're working on, but also how those parts should be arranged. Those two terms are Summary and Scene.