This week, I’m continuing my discussion of “show, don’t tell,” by introducing your show, don’t tell secret weapon: writing in scenes.

There are three ways that writing in scenes can help writers show instead of tell:

1. Scenes lock us into a specific moment in time which primes us to narrate specific actions as they happen instead of summarizing them.
2. When the scene is narrated through a specific character’s perspective, all information (worldbuilding, backstory, etc.) is filtered through their perspective, giving you a simple metric for deciding what gets added on the page and what gets left out because it’s not necessary for readers to know in that particular scene.
3. Scenes happen in a specific time and place which means adding specific details and that immerse readers in the world of your story and keep us  ...