Ugh! The poorest story-telling of all...

What is the poorest story-telling of all? The worst form, the failure beyond all others?

When the audience misses what you said so much that you have to go back and EXPLAIN IT ALL TO THEM IN A VOICEOVER.

Seriously. There is nothing worse than this. And I don't mean your work has to strive to be inaccessible, or that you shouldn't worry whether or not your readers are getting it. But the solution is not to bottle-feed them.

Case in point; For Better Or For Worse.

This comic strip never used to explain itself. It didn't have to. It spoke a universal language gracefully.

However, recently the readers began complaining in large numbers that she was abandoning them, that her work was really, um, betraying the characters, and that she was forcing the worst kind of deus ex machina into the story.

So in the last week Elizabeth went to see her old friend Candace and DIRECTLY ADDRESSED what the readers were saying.

Is there anything wrong with addressing what the readers say? No, not at all. In fact, some of what she said did ease the accusations a little bit. She helped us see the pressure that Anthony's ex-wife was under from her family. She helped us see why Anthony would fall for him.

But the direct nature of the voiceover, the very unsubtle way she went about it... well, it was a lot like being slapped in the face. She stepped outside the story to do this. She didn't SHOW us; she TOLD us.

Show; don't tell. That's the essence of good story-telling.