01-16-2012, 10:18 AM
Showing and telling are maybe part of it, but not entirely. "Telling" might well be a tool used by people who are also employing irony or some other subtlety.
For example, you can write an entire poem that seems very obvious in its literal meaning, all the while having a subtext going on that is acting in a completely different way. These are the "deceptively simple" things that we keep talking about, that get written off by people who assume that "obvious" means "only". The subtext may only work on people whose experience or knowledge set allows them into it, but it's a mistake to assume that there's nothing else happening just because we can't immediately see it. Of course, in some things there is nothing else happening
For example, you can write an entire poem that seems very obvious in its literal meaning, all the while having a subtext going on that is acting in a completely different way. These are the "deceptively simple" things that we keep talking about, that get written off by people who assume that "obvious" means "only". The subtext may only work on people whose experience or knowledge set allows them into it, but it's a mistake to assume that there's nothing else happening just because we can't immediately see it. Of course, in some things there is nothing else happening
It could be worse