Show, don't tell

Show, don't tell is the mantra every writer encounters at some stage of their career.  We're exhorted to write out key scenes, showing our characters' emotions and reactions to the events as they happen.  

Showing the action is important, but just as important is deciding what to show and what to tell. 

In Panthera : Death Spiral I start the book by showing Ren examining three dead kingcat cubs.  I wanted to describe the fragility of the three month old cubs. I showed the golden light on the savannah streaming through the open door as a bright contrast to their deaths.  I also showed what she finds on the scans in some detail, because it's key to understanding why they died.

What I don't do is show them being killed.  This is the other aspect of showing, deciding not only what to show, but how much.  Personally, I don't want to put descriptions of serious violence out into the world. There is a lot of it going on in real life, I won't add to it in fiction.

So showing and telling involves not only deciding which scenes to show, but which things shouldn't be shown as a matter of personal moral choice.