Many great writers tell and don't show, if that is what the situation calls for. Read a couple of pages of Tolstoy and you will notice. What is the reason this

Many great writers tell and don't show, if that is what the situation calls for. Read a couple of pages of Tolstoy and you will notice. What is the reason this mantra became so engrained, most notably in creative writing courses? I think the reason is that it is very hard if not impossible to teach people how to write beautifully, but it is relatively easy to teach them how to write acceptably. The main trick is to teach them to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes. Among this is the basic stuff like: don't switch perspective or time midsentence, be wary of adverbs and adjectives, etc. It also includes the tricky stuff that can easily go sideways. A fledgling writer had better stay away from sex scenes, to mention an obvious one. "Show, don't tell" fits this category as well. The idea is that "telling" done badly is a sure way to bore the reader out of her skull. And it often is. It invites lazy characterization. "Amy was nervous," does not sound very exciting. The problem however is that "showing" can get quite boring as well. There is, for instance, this whole hackish vocabulary of observations that signal emotional states, which has become a drop-in replacement for telling. Instead of nervous, Amy is now fidgetting, her heart is pounding and her palms are sweating. These are the worst examples of course. Better writers go out of their way to avoid cliches like this, but they are still beholden to the idea that Amy shall not be described as nervous. That can become problematic if working around it ruins the pacing of a text or diverts the attention from what the writer is getting at. Tolstoy often feels so wonderfully to the point because he dispenses with the obvious stuff by just telling it. Showing and telling are tools. Like in many other endeavours, you should use the best tool for the job.