Episode 60: Michael Dean

4 snips

Jul 21, 2025

Michael Dean, an experienced editor specializing in long-form essays and memoirs, joins the discussion to share insights from his extensive collaboration with writers. They delve into the tension between 'showing' and 'telling,' emphasizing the importance of balance in storytelling. Michael introduces a new writing principle: the writer at the desk must maintain curiosity without emotional judgment on their past selves. They also explore the challenges of memoir writing, highlighting the delicate navigation of vulnerability and emotional honesty while refining narrative perspectives.

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INSIGHT

Balancing Show vs Tell

Charlie likes to fully immerse in the story and show rather than tell.
Michael focuses on the essay's architecture, balancing showing with telling for reader clarity.

ADVICE

Use Telling to Clarify

Use telling to clarify meaning after showing detailed examples.
End sections with showing to let readers feel the emotion rather than stating it outright.

ANECDOTE

Kate Geese's Subtle Memoir Technique

Kate Geese's memoir mixes past feelings with present facts to create powerful storytelling.
She lets readers infer difficult events without explicitly labeling them, maintaining subtle tension.

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A conversation with my editor, Michael Dean.

Our biggest tension, in the eighteen months we’ve worked together on my book, is Show vs. Tell. I want to show all the time with action, dialogue, examples, and stories but Michael says you can’t only show. You have to tell sometimes so the reader can make sense of what you’ve shown them. We discussed multiple examples of showing and telling, and what makes a good tell vs. a bad tell.

We also worked towards a new principle. There are two yous in the book—the you in the story and the writer at the desk. The new principle is this: the writer at the desk should be curious. The writer at the desk can wonder and think and have tangential thoughts, but she cannot show emotion or pass judgment. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing about a story that happened twenty years ago or one that happened yesterday. There has to be some detachment from the writer-you and the person-in-the-story-you. So I can say a direct quote from the me in the story that was emotional: “Get out of the pool! You’re not listening!” but my commentary on that cannot pass judgment with something like, “I shouldn’t have said that,” or “They were stressing me out,” or “I wish I could just be more patient with my kids.”

Michael, who has a knack for coming up with principles, added, “It's not that no present self is allowed, it's that the present self shouldn't do too much emotional manipulation. They can wonder, digress, show you things like a time traveler, but it's not their role to label or interpret.”
This led to our thoughts on vulnerability and what it means to be vulnerable. I said vulnerability should feel scary when you hit publish, like jumping off the high dive. If you write something shameful or embarrassing like, “I yelled in my kid’s face,” you can’t then say some version of, “I know that was wrong, I know that was terrible, I know I’m the worst.” Michael added, “To be vulnerable means to surrender control of the narrative of yourself.”