The telling and showing balance

I've been editing some of my previously published stories for a collection I'm hoping to put together. It's a really fun project - some of the stories are pretty darn completely perfect and don't need any editing at all, others needed a bit of updating (a couple were written before mobile phones became common, one needed Facebook mentioned). And one needs a whole rewrite.

And that's the one I'd like to talk about, obviously.

Yesterday, I made a start on it, and realised I tell everything and show nothing. This is bad. All the advice points to showing not telling, and it makes sense - it keeps the prose varied, it draws people into the story, it even breaks up the page because speech and action naturally have more gaps.

So, I got out my red pen and started slashing. It was a massacre!

And then... I read The Beacon by Susan Hill (not all of it yet, so this isn't a review... but I have read the ending because I do that!)

There's an awful lot of telling in this short book, but it works - for most of the story so far, a woman is alone in her farmhouse after her mother dies and she's recalling growing up.

In my story, a homeless girl is telling us what her day consists of. She's so busy surviving that conversations with people don't have much meaning to her... so writing conversations would jar against the story. Wouldn't it?

What are your thoughts about showing v telling?

Have you ever written a story/novel that is mostly telling?

Do you have any tips for me?

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Once again, I'm reviewing - loosely - a book that's been around for a while. Since 1983, in this case. I'm currently writing a ghostly short story, so I think I was drawn to this book because of that. The actual ghostly occurrences in The Woman in Black are few and far between (I think there are probably more in my short story - perhaps I've overdone it), but it's a great example of building atmosphere and tension. I read it in one sitting, because I couldn't bear to put it down.

Although it was published in 1983, the setting is much earlier, and the style even earlier than that. It works because the roundabout style sucks you in, so you're slap bang in the middle before you even realise it, much like - I assume - if you were actually being haunted. The comparison I want to use is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember (I've just scanned my book shelves, and it still won't come).

Anyway, moving on...

My own story is also quite a traditional ghost story, albeit told by the point of view of the ghost. I don't know how that happened, sometimes the voice is fully formed before I work out how to convey it. Now that I've read The Woman in Black I'm re-reading what I've already done, just to make sure I'm pacing the action correctly rather than holding back too much, or dropping everything onto the page at once.

Sometimes, I really feel as though I've left trying to get my work published far too late. Sometimes I have the idea that I'm just a little, tiny, weeny bit .... ssshhh .... old-fashioned...