Just how far should we take that enduring rule for writers, "Show, don't tell"? As Barbara Robinette Moss demonstrates in her fine memoir Change Me into Zeus's Daughter, we probably can't take it far enough. Moss has the challenging task of conveying shocking, painful scenes that raise strong emotional reactions in her readers. Here's how she does it.

Starting a story is easy, isn’t it? Our fingers itch to get that magical idea onto paper. We’ve written and rewritten those opening sentences a hundred times in our heads, and they stream across our computer screens with the polish of a final draft. We’ve already envisioned the final scene, too, and maybe drafted it in triumphant, memorable words. We’ve figured out which actors are going to play our main characters in the movie version and we know what the music is going to sound like in the soaring last scene . . . oh right, the story needs a middle.