Poll: The Story of Dan--Show, or Tell? (Patreon)

There's a small poll at the end of all this - I'm curious what people thing.

I've returned to chapter six this week, and making some steady progress. Here's a short clip from the current scene:

***

            Julia frowns. “Doesn’t anything matter to you?”

            “This matters,” I say and wave my fork at her, strands of spaghetti swaying with the movement.  I point at her. “You matter. This moment in time matters.”  I pluck at the neckline of my dress.  “And this matters, because this is something I’ve got some small control over. Being a good girl: surviving and hoping for better.

"And if I’m lucky, maybe getting some good food and drink in along the way.” I raise my glass of wine in mock cheer. “And even better company.”

            Julia eyes me for a moment, and she sits back in her chair and a little smile breaks through. “And sex?”
            “Hell yeah,” I say. Then I pat my frustratingly smooth groin, and grimace. “Well, not so much these days.”

            She shakes her head. “Fine.” She pushes her food around her plate for a moment, biting her lip. “Here and now. Fine.” Then she frowns, and looks up at me. “So how’s work, then, Cindy?”

            I shrug. “Fine. I mean, I’m just a secretary, right? Ever since I got in with the girls, it’s been—”

            “Yeah,” she interrupts. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. I thought you hated those girls. Bitches, you called them.”

            “They are bitches,” I say, and smile. “But then, I guess so am I, now.”
            She rolls her eyes. “Fine. But how’d you get in with them, as you put it?"

            I grin. “Well now,” I say, “let me tell you the story of—”

            Julia groans.

***

At this point, chapter 6 sits at just under 39k words. This includes some previous material that's been pushed around, like the "day after Julia left" contemplation leading to Cindy's first day back at work. And there's two ways I can do this:

1) Show, as they say, don't tell: write it out as a full scene in itself, which'll probably be about 5-10k in length, a week or two of writing. Cindy's return to work, getting in with Emma, Willow and Mel. Some office dynamics stuff, and so on. But as Julia's impatience signals, it could be that the reader's patience for these "stories" might be running a little thin. It's alread a long chapter, and there's still a fair bit of ground to cover.

2) Tell, don't show: probably a few day's writing, 2-3k words in length. More of a summary, David telling Julia in short what happened. Much pacier, trims out a lot of that earlier stuff and focuses on just the core details of what happened, to set up that night out with the girls. Gets to the next scene a lot faster--the second half of Julia's story and why she and David fell out for a month. But then, it also skips out on the potential fan-service of the "secretary" and "office" and "workplace situation" tags--though those could all be picked up in chapter 7 and dealth with more organically.

So, what's your preference?