Unpopular opinion: "Show don't tell" isn't always the best strategy
This is way too often offered to you as this magical pill to solve all fiction writing problems. But as a reader, I don't think this is always the right strategy. It's best applied only in one situation which is work of Realistic Fiction where you're absolutely sure the background story very much relates to the contemporary world your audience live in.
But one can never really be sure of that, right? Consider the possibility that your works of fiction might be read hundreds or even thousands of years from now when the reader would be living in a very different world with a different setting? In that case, actual telling of the background story or the world and artifacts around your characters will help a lot.
Now I'm not saying it's always wise to describe the mahogany furniture or the fickle weather in great detail like earlier authors used to do, but the other extreme of just showing without telling anything about the background of that story is just as much problematic.
I've seen this sort of comment in a few places recently, and I think the meaning behind "show, don't tell" seems to have got a bit lost.
A writer has to tell you what's going on. It is, after all, called telling a story. You need to describe the characters' actions, you need to describe the mahogany furniture, you need to describe the world you've built. There are some things that the reader cannot magically infer, and for that we have narration, description, and exposition.
The point of "show, don't tell" is not to remove this sort of stuff completely. The point is to take the aspects of your story that really matter, and demonstrate that they're true in the world that you've built. You need to make the reader believe what's going on, not just because they trust you as the narrator, but because the things that are happening feel real and believable.
The classic example here is something like "Bob was sad". As an author, there is nothing necessarily wrong with writing about how sad Bob was. But if Bob is truly sad, that's going to affect how he behaves: he might lash out, or retreat from the world, or have a breakdown, or make rash decisions, or not want to finish his dinner, etc. It's not necessarily bad to tell the reader that Bob is sad, but Bob's sadness has to be believable, and the reader needs to see it for themselves. And if the reader can see it for themselves, then do they really need the extra narration to tell them something obvious?
I've been reading Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age recently, and the premise of that book is that everyone lives in different self-defined communities that act like a caste system. The first two chapters of the book describe a few days in the life of a Neo-Victorian, and a few days in the life of someone from the caste-less underbelly of the region. Later on in the book, the caste system is described more explicitly to the reader, but in those opening scenes we immediately see the great wealth and power of one group of people, and the poverty and impotence of another. This immediately shows us something about the world, even if we don't fully understand it yet. When the author later uses exposition to fill in the details, it's easier to believe them and understand what they're talking about because they're just describing something we've already seen.
Even your example with the mahogany furniture can be an example of "show, don't tell". It's not about the amount of description, but how that description gets used. Different pieces of furniture will have different owners, and so you can use the furniture to show some aspect of the owner without having to, in that moment, describe it explicitly. An author might spend pages describing the luxurious details of a room full of mahogany to show how wealthy the owner is. They might describe one shoddy mahogany table in a room of otherwise cheap furniture to describe a character's fall from grace. In both cases, the furniture alone won't be enough detail to fully describe a person, but it's important that it gives us some insight into their life, and is true to the character that we get told about elsewhere.
In all three cases, we're still telling the reader things (what Bob did when he was sad, how the different castes behave, what the furniture looks like). But in all three cases, that description - that "telling" - is used to show something more important. That Bob reacts to being sad isn't particularly important by itself, but how he reacts and what it means tells us something about his character, so we show it and give the reader a deeper insight into that character. Similarly for the other examples, our goal in the description is not just to tell the reader what's going on, or what the furniture looks like, but to paint a picture of the characters and world that has an emotional resonance with the reader.
You do a great job explaining this position but I'd like to offer an expanded view of writing and reading today that isn't entirely in alignment with what you wrote.
I find that there are certain assumptions in your position, which is the position of the vast majority of readers and writer-adjacent people, including the vast majority of writers. The thing is, we have all been trained now with our school's English (or native language) classes and Creative Writing 101 that the best writing is clear and to the point and parsimonious in its use of many of the elements that early writers (pre-20th century) used so much. So we have been trained that verbosity and vague impressionism and Olympian perspectives, among other things, break some hidden rules and lower the quality of the writing itself.
As an experimentalist, I have always found these unspoken rules quite confining. I began as a poet in my teens, and I found the challenges in poetry to take place in this shadow realm of sense impression and ineffable emotion, which often left the reader as mystified as anything else. But that's another assumption that is often made today: that writing must efficiently deliver its end goal like any other commodity or product. But what if it doesn't? Does that make the writing less worthy?
Selling scripts in Hollywood, every producer and development exec and even agent has taken the same classes the rest of us have and "show don't tell" is their mantra. It is an unexamined mantra though, as pervasive as the obsessive need for character backstories for every person who speaks onscreen and a demand to resolve their character arc. But see how formulaic this becomes? How confining? Can we really only share stories that are best suited to showing instead of telling? What about all the stories that can't be told that way? Does that mean they are worthless as cinema?
We all think we're experts about writing. We all like to think we've written our whole lives and read widely and have strong opinions on what makes for good narrative fiction and non-fiction. And it's this meta-relationship that writers now have with readers which is so constricting. Many readers are less willing to accept any of these rules being broken because they "know better" and have been trained to accept Hemingway short story prose as the gold standard, even if it's 90 years old.
Thomas Pynchon spent his whole career examining these rules and defying them in his novels. Other great experimentalists continue to do the same. And I accept that our audience is a small fraction of that which follows all the rules. But these rules have grown into an absolutism about writing itself that attempts to cover all writing, and I have a problem with that. By accepting these rules as a creator, you immediately begin to think how you can best use them--what are the optimal stories that can be told using the modern rulebook? We've seen amazing classics fashioned from these strictures and ultimately this is a "solved" problem in the tradition of mathematics. But the breadth and variety of stories that can be told that show but do not tell is less wide than you think.
There are entire traditions of storytelling that are waiting for this reductionist, commodified idea of writing to fade before they can once again speak strongly to people. I run an ancient history YouTube channel these days and I often adapt writing that's thousands of years old to a modern audience. There is a power in repetition, since so many of these stories had their beginnings as oral lays where repetition was a musical as well as mnemonic device. There can be an inefficient focus on certain elements of the story, such as the protagonist's relationship with their gods, which can often take up half the tale in pious renditions. And it's not a deepening examination of that relationship. It's often hymnal or a chant.
I'm not saying we will turn our backs on "show don't tell" writing anytime in the near future. But I'm also a science fiction writer and I'd be willing to make a bet that in another generation or two this narrow idea of writing will seem as quaint and outmoded as the postwar fascination with Freudian themes.
I would point out, as someone who's heard "formula bad" and "break the mold" a lot from many newbie writers, there's a difference between ignoring rules, and understanding what they teach.
There's a scene in The Sopranos where Adriana is championing this local nobody little rock band. She gets her made guy to pay for studio time, and in the studio, after several days of apparently getting nothing useful recorded, the lead singer says the following (paraphrasing):
The guy saying it is a nobody. Worse, a failed nobody. A nobody who's done nothing, written no songs that have captured broad audiences, that those vast audiences clamor to hear. He's a frustrated newbie who thinks just because he's him and everyone else before him wasn't means he's got something to offer.
The way you offer something, whatever that something is, starts with doing it. The fact that you wrote it doesn't mean anyone else will like it, which is a hard truth a ton of newbie creatives struggle with. And that many of them never really get over or accept or understand any lesson from. A lot of these failed creatives just sink back into an "ordinary" uncreative life, sometimes sulking a bit here and there along the way that no one understood their unique genius.
Formulas, tropes, core stories, universal truths, they exist for a reason. One of them is audiences like them. It's comforting. Reassuring. Familiar. Interesting. Semi-predictable in certain ways that appeal. You might decide "I want something with action" and sit down to watch/read an action story. If you come to find that action story breaks a lot of the expected rules and patterns of an "action story", you might like it, but you might not.
The difference is what we call creative genius. Creatives who figure out how to break the mold are usually labeled some form of "genius." Mostly because the rest of us don't really quite know how they pulled it off, and accordingly that must mean they're a damned genius.
Mostly because, I think, the rest of us have a hard time accepting that someone else might have just gotten lucky, or done it randomly and was as surprised as the rest of us it worked out well. Easier to herald that guy as special so we don't feel that our ordinary nothingness is the same as theirs, which would (of course, in most minds) make us lame and inept since we didn't achieve while they did.
Taste and appeal are fickle and fleeting. You never know what's going to grab an audience, whether that audience is one specific person you're creating for, or a hoped-for broad array of millions. This is why Hollywood, for example, is continually surprised by breakout hits, even and especially in this era of formula where they try to reduce everything to an assembly line (only to find some little nothing of a film that had real creatives in charge strikes solid gold while the assembly lines trudge along or falter).
Another thing newbie creatives are wont to do is take everything that's a "rule" in their creative field as an absolute. As in, gravity is an absolute. Breathing is an absolute. So these absolutists look at rules and assume they're 100% always fully applied, in total, period, done and done. But then some of those absolutists love to look for some exception they can puzzle out, and then take to the Interwebs to proclaim "Rule X is stupid because (proudly inserts their exception)."
No rule is absolute. Only Sith deal in absolutes. The real world works in shades of grey.
That doesn't mean creative "rules" are shit, false, or stupid. It mostly just means the newbies don't understand what the 'rules' teach yet.
What does "Show don't tell" try to teach? A number of things. One of them is to not surprise your audience, by making up unsupported elements in the story. Another is to lay groundwork and reasons for the audience to agree, (or better, conclude) something is thus. Storytelling that shows does this, leads audiences to conclusions the story will use to further the storytelling.
"Jerry was an absolute badass. He killed his first human at age ten, when he stopped a mugging using only his sneakers and his badassed mile wide streak of courage. Joined Special Forces at sixteen, went on his first mission at seventeen, awarded the Medal of Honor at nineteen when he single handledly saved the President from..."
Boring huh? Sounds really stupid?
What if, instead of telling the audience how super awesome Jerry is, he just does things? And the audience can draw their own conclusions? We don't give Jerry's resume, or have other characters (or, as is often the case in newbie writing, have Jerry himself) proclaim his own traits out loud, we just write Jerry however we've determined Jerry is.
Which is the better way. Not only does it feel more organic, not only does it usually flow off the page (or screen) better, but it also avoids another common newbie trap. Namely, stating some things, but then proceeding to completely contradict them with what actual actions take place. If we tell how awesome Jerry is, and then show Jerry having constant struggles and problems, that's a contradiction.
Worf from Star Trek knows about this. Poor Worf is constantly talked up as an absolute badass. Right up until the episode needs the shorthand of demonstrating how much more of a badass the Problem of the Week is. So they crush Worf in two seconds, which is curiously both good and bad writing all at once.
Bad, because we're telling (not showing) how great Worf is before we reveal we were lying and Worf might not be all that. But good, because we showed how dangerous this Week's Problem is.
Wanting to break rules and shatter molds and all that is fine, but the basics are the basics for a reason. Any writer who wants to write her own path, walk her own way, is fine and that's great. But it still comes down to writing things an audience will accept. Sometimes, often times, that means the formulas and tropes are an essential part of that.
After all, story goes back literally (not the literally kids use these days when they're just really excited, literally literally) to the dawn of human civilization. To the dawn of the written word. Humans have been telling stories since way back around, probably before, fire. Those stories have patterns and shapes and flows that exist for a reason; they're beloved and entertaining. Audiences like a certain amount of familiarity and recognizable shape in the stories they sit and listen (or watch, whatever) to.
That's not bad. That's good. It means budding creatives aren't starting from square one.
Writing is hard. Writing well is very hard. It's a skill, same as any other skill. It takes time to learn. Painstaking effort, the same as if you decided to learn mountain climbing or automotive mechanics or double entry bookkeeping. But many people don't believe this, even after they try and fail to quickly become a creative genius with their awesome ideas.
That's usually about the point where some of them start bashing "the rules." They don't understand them, so they do what humans typically default to regarding things they don't understand.
They seek to destroy. Which is way easier than creating.
Show has a place. Tell has a place. Neither is an absolute no-no, or an absolute yes-yes. They're tools in the creative box, and knowing how to employ them is one of the million things that goes into what an experienced storyteller will use when they create another satisfying story audiences enjoy.
Sit, crawl, walk, run. Bypassing the steps usually results in tripping over your own feet, and that can be both painful and embarrassing. Very few people will win a race until they understand how to run. Sure the occasional truly special person pulls it off by skipping steps, but they're exceptional. Most of us aren't. That means we put in the work, sweat, think, consider, learn.
And one day, if you work honestly and with persistence, you're crossing the finish line. Anyone can write. But few people bother to learn how to do it well.
I will start by saying I have much less experience than you do. But I still think I have a useful perspective as an audience member for many works of writing.
You mention the rules of art which you find "confining". I think instead of looking at those rules as limitations, you should try to understand why they exist and what it means when you break them. If you look through the history of painted art, very few painters became famous by following all the rules that were standard at the time. The good painters knew when to break the established rules.
Here is an example from the movie industry: You never want your action to be in the direct center of the screen. This often goes by some variation of the "rule of thirds", but the gist is to never have the focus be in the center. This makes the frame more engaging with the audience. In Mad Max (I haven't seen the movies, and heard this story third hand, so forgive me if some details are wrong), the director wanted to use fast action cuts. If these were framed with the rule of thirds, the audience would need to spend cognitive load on reevaluating after every cut to focus on the correct sections of the frame. The director instead staged all action directly in the middle so the fast cuts were not as jarring.
As a member of the audience, I have yet to see an example of "show don't tell" being broken in a way that improved the end product. Especially in movies, if I examine the films that I feel fail at storytelling or character development, one common thread is a lack of showing and too much telling.
In worldbuilding, the goal isn't to show the audience everything about your fictional world. Its to make it feel real. To make it feel lived in. Things should happen when the main character isn't around. The mechanics and systems of the world should be internally consistent. But they shouldn't necessarily be explained. In my personal life, I have many examples of worldbuilding becoming worse as the author tried to explain more of it. There should be reasons things happen, but those reasons shouldn't always be explained.
In the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring (film), Galadriel info dumps the entire history of the rings on us. Film is obviously a medium that includes visuals, but even though we see Dwarves holding up their rings at the same that that Galadriel mentions them, I would still consider this "breaking the rule" because it violates the essence of it.
But, like many commenters have pointed out, I don't think this is detrimental to the storytelling whatsoever, because sometimes explicit exposition IS necessary, and can still be executed well. I fucking love that opening sequence, but it doesn't change the fact that really we're just being told everything we need to know before we meet the characters. I consider this an example of how rules can be "broken."
At the end of the day, I believe rules of thumb are meant to guide beginners, not represent laws chiseled into stone.
I think there is a misunderstanding of these rules for creatives. They are not laws set in stone. They are lessons. As a creative you have to learn and understand the lessons and know how to apply them. @DavesWorld did a much better job saying what I was trying to say.
The scene you are referring to is an interesting example. It is primarily exposition, which is not necessarily a bad thing to tell. Your audience may need some background to partake in your story. Events aren't necessarily something you can show. What you show is characterization. I rewatched that opening scene part way through typing a reply and ended up deleting what I wrote and starting from scratch.
Here is the prologue
There are a ton of examples of showing and telling just within this prologue. I think this one example will serve the best. Galadriel says near the the end of the prologue that "the hearts of men are weak". Is that statement good storytelling? After that statement, do you really understand what it means for men to have weak hearts? How will it affect the story? Do all men have weak hearts or just some? From that statement, we get almost no information. In the context of the narrative, it serves as a thesis statement. This will end up being one of the primary themes throughout the movies. Now lets look at the instances of narrative that show the same thing. Boromir tries to take the ring from Frodo. Not only does that create a scene with a lot of spectacle, it shows that Boromir is influenced by the promise of power. Pretty much every member of the fellowship is tempted by the ring at some point in the narrative. We even see instances not associated with the one ring. Theodin is influenced by Wormtongue into effectively ceding control over his kingdom. Denethor is influenced by years of spite to not request aid from Rohan. All of these examples show that "the hearts of men are weak" much better than Galadriel telling us.
None of these are chiseled in stone, and anybody saying they are is wrong. But if writers find that they are telling something instead of showing it, they need to examine if it is absolutely necessary. The drawbacks of telling are significant. That is the lesson from "show don't tell".
I think we are agreeing?
I think you should read my comment again: I specifically tried to avoid that assumption, and I gave the mahogany example because I wanted to show that you can have long, detailed, expository description while still adhering to the "show, don't tell" principle.
Like I said, the author still has to tell the story. Removing exposition and description completely is impossible. But a good storyteller provides evidence for the information they are telling you. If you want me to believe John is sad, he needs to act sad. And a good storyteller knows when to tell you something, when to show you something, and when to do both.
I think what you're trying to disagree with is a very narrow interpretation of the "show, don't tell" rule, and I'm sure that interpretation has its proponents, but it's not one that I wanted to advocate here.
It is a rule of thumb. Any writing advice given as gospel is so given in error.
It seems to me that, if a story aims to make the case to its readers that it is about a world very different from their own, then it is likely far more important to communicate to them the experience of being in that world than its minute details.
this is the most perfectly worded sentence
"Show. don't tell", like a lot of other advice on how to write well, is simply poorly written. I think a better way to put it would be something like "to keep your prose interesting and varied, compose it of both real-time action and sequences with a more visible author, such as comments or paraphrasing"
I like how it is explained in How to Write a Novel: A Practical Guide to the Art of Fiction
and also:
An example of how "telling" can improve a story is this chapter ending from Murder in the Dark. While it mostly show the characters personality through their dialogue, there is also the dry comment "she was a student of history" and the final line where it shift to paraphasing a longer period of time:
I also like this bit from Perdido Street Station. We don't know who the Remade are, but their social status, and the general attitude towards Khrepri are show pretty clearly:
This a clever hack in fantasy—show enough of something so that the reader become curious, so when the exposition of the Remade finally comes, it feels like a reward.
A lot of emotions gets better across if you simply tell how people are feeling. You want emotional things to be raw and honest, and a way to go about this is making yourself visible as an author and just say things directly. Like in this bit from Lonely Werewolf Girl:
I don't have time to pull up the direct quote, but Stephen King, in his unabridged release of the Stand, said something in the intro akin to:
"I've been frequently criticized for having diarrhea of the pen," and countered it by telling Hansel and Gretel in approximately 3 sentences. He points out that without all of the little details, the story is immensely boring. It's the little details and tangents that flesh out a story and make it fun to absorb.
Saying all of this to be in support of the idea of "show." Being overly brief defeats the purpose and deprives the story of depth.
Of the examples you shared, I think this is the best one because it’s a sentence-for-sentence swap. Let’s look at what could have been.
Tell: she sighed. It was difficult being a member of the khepri; they were looked down upon by society.
Nothing about that is egregiously terrible. I wouldn’t think twice if I read it, especially if the genre wasn’t particularly literary. But how much better is this?
Show: She knew that some of the drivers (usually the Remade) were liberal or desperate enough to take khepri custom.
In every sense, this is a huge improvement. We are learning about two castes now, instead of one. (About the attitudes of the Remade.) Rather than just being told that in this world, khepri = bad, we now also know that liberally-minded people are more accepting of the khepri, suggesting that this is not a monoculture - some people know it’s wrong. At the same time, we get a sense of just how reviled the khepri must be, if you need to be desperate to take one as a fare. And we’re still getting a glimpse into the mind of the character (that she knows all this), so we don’t even lose that look into her psyche.
It’s just such a better sentence in nearly every way.
Is "custom" a term for money/fares? I honestly have no idea what it was referring to until you wrote that. Not that it changes which sentence is better in this context, but it does change which one I could understand better!
In British English "custom" is a fairly archaic term meaning the habitual patrons of a business. (Brief aside: I've got to assume it's the same root as "customer"). So in this case it's not being used quite to the exact definition, but it's one of those instances in which an author can take a small, comprehensible liberty to give their writing character. And China Miéville is a renowned British writer.
Why would you seriously consider that your works might be read hundreds or thousands of years from now? The point of writing is to reach an audience. Is your audience people hundreds or thousands of years from now, modern readers, or yourself?
I agree it's offered way too much. All pieces of writing wisdom are subjective, and their application and utility is dependent on the situation.
Personally I view "show don't tell" as meaning to avoid exposition dumps when you can. Full-fledged scenes are typically much more engaging than a multi-paragraph explanation of how some bit of bureaucracy works. On a more intimate level, why have a character internally monologue about how sad and upset they are, when you can show it through their actions?
I also disagree that it's best applied only to realistic fiction. I've seen it incorporated well in stories for world-building, where they show concepts that are familiar to the characters first and then slowly reveal more details to readers as the story continues.
The main example to come to mind is Unwind by Neal Schusterman. There's a scene where the protagonist needed to slip away while in a crowd and began clapping, which made everyone panic about "clappers" and run away. Eventually it was revealed through conversations amongst other characters and internal reflections that there was a terrorist group whose bodies were modified to be explosive, and would ignite explosions by clapping.
That method of explaining the concept to the readers felt much more organic to me than simple exposition. There are some other examples from that same novel where it uses the scenes to explain a fundamental part of the world and its system without directly telling the reader how it works. Looking back, this is just one of many reasons that novel has stuck with me for over a decade now.
I think the limit of "tell, don't show" is the technical manual. We rely on everything the writer says to be true, we take it at face value, and things are explained as unambiguously as possible. But few people read them for fun; they read them for information.
One thing about "show, don't tell" is that it matches up with our experience in daily life. When I talk to somebody, I don't have access to their internal state, so I'm always guessing, comparing my observation to my previous experience of them and of others. This ambiguity is one of the things that makes interaction with others complicated. But it also means there is space for me as an individual – my existence, who I am in that moment, matters because my own ideas, feelings, and experiences play a role in shaping the interaction. I think work that leaves space for interaction, for people of different experiences, is probably richer and more durable, even if the meaning changes over time, as people bring new experiences to it.
I have my doubts that we can have any expectation about how people hundreds or thousands of years from now will experience anything we write if for no other reason than that we have no idea what their lives will be like, and their idea of what our lives are like will be filtered through an incomplete historical record as well as the lens of their own experience. So I'm not sure that is a reasonable goal for any writer.
A good example of this is the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. It was written in the 1950s. As a parent, I read about these young children walking to school and wandering the neighborhoods unsupervised. I experience it through the lens of awe that such a thing was possible, jealousy that my kids don't have that experience, and dread about what might happen to these kids out on their own. But that's all me. I doubt the author was doing more than presenting things as she experienced and observed them. She could have had no idea how different our social structure would be.
All that said, I think there is a place for more explicit, "tell don't show" kind of writing. If I want something easy and undemanding, it can be a nice break. But too much of it, and I personally stop enjoying it.
They can, but you have to be willing to deal with some hassles if somebody raises a stink. This summer I've given a < 8 kid permission to walk 1/2 mile to their friends house with no supervision anytime they want, just with a heads up. There's no major roads to cross, so I don't feel the risk is any higher than them playing unsupervised in the front yard, which they also do.
Yeah, working toward that with my daughter (9). Part of it is that because she doesn't go to school in the neighborhood, she only knows a few of the kids, so she doesn't really have anywhere to go yet. At least in my state, there is no explicit minimum age for kids to be left unsupervised. Which is good because it leaves it up to parents' judgements, but, as you say, could be problematic if someone disagrees and makes trouble.
You can state facts about the world you just have to make it interesting. Events are inherently more interesting than facts. That'll be harder. But it can done.
I feel that most interesting fiction do more than one thing at once. They tell the facts in ways to engage the reader. There's a rhythm, a style, an evocative vocabulary that suggests other meanings, sensations, and emotions. "Show, don't tell" should be understood as a suggestion to enrich your narrative by showing something while you tell something and vice-versa. Seize every expressive opportunity to sustain the reader's interest. These two modes are not exclusive to each other. Most well known adages have a grain of truth, but you shouldn't interpret them literally.
In any case, there are situations in which merely stating facts about the world is both convenient and necessary. Some writers take the lesson to the letter and end up describing an absurd amount of useless minutiae. You should be dry sometimes.
This has been sort of a pet peeve of science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson for quite a while. I have seen him going on about at a couple of conventions. He has written a bit about it here
The way I see literature (and art in general) is that all of the Rules are just ways to define creative tools. Most new writers don't start by knowing every technique available and fall into cycles unintuitive prose. So we look for common features in successful writing that can be easily applied to other work.
Some tools are foundational to good storytelling. Some authors will specialize in around a few techniques and refine their work around them. Sometimes you'd want to purposely break the rules to communicate unique ideas or perspectives.
"Show, don't tell" is a very interesting writing style because, like you say, it trusts the reader to be able to comprehend what is shown. It doesn't really work for lore dumps or world building simply because the perspective is from the outside looking in. But when telling a story, it's often from the perspective of someone already on the inside, telling you what's happening as they see it. It's simple with a more grounded setting because we sort of share the same reality as the story.
But I'd argue it also works well in more fanciful stories because the reader is instantly thrown into a new world. They get to speculate and then discover the rules and it adds to the experience.
And as a writer, you need to guide the reader into the space and organically introduce ideas. So this method needs to be done in conjunction with other techniques. For example: Fish out of water, master and apprentice and children/childhood flashbacks are all plot devices that can be used to show people being told a story. There's plenty of stories and series that ramp up the complexity and by the end, you could probably inhabit that fantasy world with that cumulative knowledge.
But like you've probably noticed, there are stories that have not aged well or assume too much of the reader. However, I think it's fair to expect authors to write for their current audience. It's a bit presumptuous to assume a work of speculative fiction will be relevant even a few decades into the future. And the stories that do survive the ages tend to be inherently timeless but also undergo a lot of modernization. I doubt my copy of Homer's works are one to one retellings. But many of the core narratives, themes and ideas can still be understood all this time later.