I am currently one of the young writers with the words "show, don't tell" being etched into my brain. Luckly, I'm also probably the single most stubborn person in my high school English class, so I am perfectly capable of ignoring my teacher when I disagree with her... although it sounds bad saying it like that. To be more explicite, I am a firm believer of writing for yourself. When you write to please other people, you tend to leave out things that, to you, are important. So, when I write, I occasionally include characters or allusions that have no further explanation than "I know why this is here, and there's a perfectly good reason for it, but since it doesn't apply to the main storyline, you don't need to know it." Occasionally a writer needs to include some vague people, places, or things... we as the reader simply don't need to know why, as curious as we may be, we just need to accept the writer's choices. After all, the story is the writer's creation, and if he is the one making it, than the writing follows his rules alone.
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