I think Manton called it "writing on the nose?"

"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers."

Nothing is more boring to read than a list. If an entire book were nothing but "Then I woke up. I had a dream. It was scary. I was scared," you wouldn't be very engaged, would you? Good writing is not about telling people about the events, it's about showing them without saying very much at all. For example, telling people how you felt word for word after waking up from your nightmare may not be as interesting as describing the tone of the nightmare. That way the reader feels uneasy as well, and there's no point telling them what they're feeling.

In other words, the reader doesn't care all that much about how you felt at a certain moment in time. They want to feel it too, or else they're liable to get bored and will care even less about your experience, no matter how thrilling or terrifying that experience was to you. If your heart was pounding, make their hearts pound. If your head was reeling, make their heads reel. It's not in the components of the story, but in the way you tell the reader about those events, and, believe it or not, the way you say it is most effective when it's subtle and not completely in-your-face.


Don't write on the nose!!


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