Writing Polish: The Bulldozer Sentence

Literature trained a lot of us to drone on a bit. William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! has a single sentence that clocks in at 1,288 words.  Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables offers up an 832 word gem.  Modern writing, especially genre writing, are more about the sharp.

One of my biggest revision tasks revolves around bulldozer sentences. These come from moments when I have so much I want to express that I cram it all into a sentence without stopping. This may be fine for a first draft, when the goal is to get the words out onto the page. They don’t work as well for a polished draft, where they make the reader do a lot of heavy lifting. Trying to make a sentence accomplish too many tasks dilutes the effect of each task it’s trying to accomplish. It makes the sentence, and the writing, weaker.

For example:

Jonathan kept a promise to his wife to raise the boys multilingual, but although she had come from a moderately successful business family who had emigrated from Barcelona, the vocabulary and culture of the Mexican migrant workers and their children had a lot of influence.

This is a bit of backstory/description I threw into a scene in my first draft. I was rushing through it to get to the next action, and it shows.  Here’s how I would break it up if keeping it relatively the same:

Jonathan had kept his promise to his wife to raise the boys multilingual. She had come from a moderately successful business family that had emigrated from Barcelona. Now, the influence of the Mexican migrant workers and their children showed in the boys’ vocabulary and cultural references. 

This version is much more clear and easy to read (although it may need a second rewrite to show instead of tell!).

Action Happens Quickly

Despite the fact that the bulldozer sentence shows my urge to write quickly, the shorter, tighter sentences read more quickly. This is especially important in high tension scenes. Short, terse sentences move the pacing along more quickly and lend an atmosphere of urgency.

“No,” he growled, snatching the gun from the floor to whip it upwards into the chin of his first attacker, then spinning to point it at the second.

This is definitely too much work for the sentence. It’s especially too much to hook onto what is essentially an extended dialogue tag.

“No,” he growled. He snatched the gun from the floor. He whipped it upward and smashed it into the chin of his first attacker. Spinning around, he pointed the gun at the second. 

Breaking it into shorter sentences emphasizes the main event in each beat. Because there is only one event/action in each sentence, the brain can process it more quickly. This makes the scene more vivid and easier (therefore quicker) to read.

How Long is Too Long?

The answer to this really depends on your genre and category. Literary fiction tends to have longer sentences, because the goal is to create a more languid, thoughtful atmosphere. Genre novels have shorter sentences because the goal is to create a fast-paced, easy read with plenty of action. Books for younger readers are also going to have shorter sentences, regardless of genre, for ease of comprehension.

In general though, if your sentence is more than 25 words long, it should at least be flagged for scrutiny. A longer sentence may serve a particular purpose, but it should be used deliberately. If not, consider breaking it up.

Writing Polish: Putting Things in Order

One of the most valuable experiences of having a good critique partner or editor is finding all the mistakes you didn’t know you were making!  In the current draft of a Witch in Wine Country, my critique partner found a couple of bad writing habits that, while not terrible, added up to clarity problems when I used them over and over again. One of these is the problem of ordering.

Your writing is a guide for your reader to experience events by proxy. In reality, we experience events in order. Something happens, then we react to it. In writing, sometimes we jump to the most interesting or dramatic thing (the reaction), putting events out of order. Can we get away with it? Usually. Does verisimilitude and clarity suffer? absolutely.

Order Within a Sentence

Action and reaction beats have a specific order in real life, but we don’t always reflect that in writing. For example:

I burst into laughter when his eyes widened.

I want instinctively to lead with the most interesting/active event (bursting into laughter). But the laughter is a reaction to an event (the widening eyes). By placing the laughter first, the reader has to finish the sentence, then re-arrange things in their mind to get a clear picture of what’s happening. We do that automatically, but not effortlessly. It becomes easier to read and understand if I put events in the order they occur:

His eyes widened. I burst into laughter.

or

His eyes widened and I burst into laughter.

Ordering Within a Scene

This is a little more subtle, but it has a strong effect on how immersive the scene is. For example:

Her heart began to race as she crept into the room. The sound of breaking glass had drawn her downstairs. She checked the windows and doors, but everything was still locked. She tightened her grip on the bat she kept in the hall closet. The faint scent of sulfur suggested her visitor might not have been human.

Step back a moment and imagine walking through the scene itself in real life. What’s the order things would actually happen? It would probably be something like:

  1. Hear breaking glass
  2. Heart races
  3. Get weapon
  4. Go downstairs
  5. Enter room
  6. Smell sulfur
  7. Check windows and doors

A rewrite of the same scene in order:

The sound of breaking glass downstairs sent her heart racing. She moved quietly to the hall closet and retrieved the baseball bat she kept there. When she crept quietly down the stairs and into the room, the faint smell of sulfur suggested her visitor might not be human. She tightened her grip on the bat and began checking the windows and doors. Everything was still locked.  

Notice how there isn’t anything new in the rewrite, but the feel of it is much more immersive. We’re in the character’s head, experiencing things in the order she experiences them. The result feels more “showing” and less “telling,” but also feels more polished. It’s the difference between hearing a joke from a teller who has to backtrack to fill in details (“oh, and there was a bat, I forgot to mention that. So there she is with a bat…”) and a joke from a professional comedian who has practiced it enough to tell it seamlessly.

Again, one or two of these ordering issues won’t ruin a book. But if you do it over and over again, the writing loses clarity. It might not even register consciously for readers, but if you compare a block of writing with a lot of ordering problems to one without, the latter will feel much more polished and professional.

 

 

“Ejaculated Slughorn” – Dialogue Tags and Action Beats

Among the well-meaning advice I thoroughly disagree with, new writers are often told to never use a dialogue tag other than “said” and “asked.” The most quoted example used to support this comes from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series:

Snape!” ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most shaken, pale and sweating.

Technically, yes, ejaculated is a synonym for blurting out or yelling something…but for many, it looks like an unfortunate mash-up of an excessively enthusiastic thesaurus and an insufficiently dirty mind. Going to the other extreme, however, ignores the fact that “said” doesn’t always do enough heavy lifting in the scene.

What’s a Dialogue Tag?

A dialogue tag tells you who’s speaking, and can offer some non-verbal cues as to how they’re saying what they’re saying. 90% of the time, “said” is going to be sufficient, along with “asked” for spoken questions.

“You’ll never get me to talk,” George said.

In this example, the tag is telling us who is speaking, which reduces confusion when there are multiple people in the room. For most readers, the “said” fade into the background while reading, making it an unobtrusive option that focuses on the actual dialogue and action. Occasionally, you can use the dialogue tag to convey strong emotion, or make it more clear that there’s non-verbal emotional cues happening that aren’t conveyed easily with description or the dialogue itself.

“You’ll never get me to talk,” George growled.

The use of “growled” (or shouted, or hissed, or screamed) does a little more work. It’s more obtrusive, which is why it should be used sparingly. It’s a little more atmospheric and evocative, which is why you don’t need to avoid it altogether.  Chances are, if you flip through the nearest bestselling novel, you’ll find at least a few of these.

Punctuation

A dialogue tag before the text has a comma after the tag, and before the first quotation mark. The end of the dialogue itself is punctuated as a normal sentence. The first word of the actual dialogue is capitalized.

George said, “You’ll never get me to talk.”

A dialogue tag after the text has a comma at the end of the dialogue, followed by quotation mark and uncapitalized tag.

“You’ll never get me to talk,” he said.

But sometimes you want to use an exclamation point (sparingly) in the dialogue, or a question mark to ask a question. In this case, you treat the other punctuation as a comma, and keep the lower-case tag.

“You’ll never get me to talk!” he said.

“Do you really think you’ll get me to talk?” he asked.

You can also split up a dialogue with the tag. In this case, punctuation depends on whether the tag interrupts a sentence.

“You’ll never get me to talk,” he said. “They trained me for this.”

In this case, the first part of the dialogue is a complete sentence, and so the tag ends the sentence with a period. The next (tagless) piece of dialogue is on the same line, and so the reader understands that the same speaker is continuing. As the beginning of a new sentence, the first word of the second piece is capitalized.

“Do you really think,” he asked with a slow grin, “that you’re going to get me to talk?”

This should be used sparingly, as the tag breaks the line of dialogue and becomes more obtrusive and distracting. It can also serve as a dramatic pause, though, and comes down to a stylistic choice. The important thing is that because the first piece of dialogue is not a complete sentence, the tag ends with a comma, and the sentence continues in the next set of quotation marks.

Action Beats

An action beat is an action or thought that can give clarity to a dialogue tag, but cannot be substituted for one.

George growled, “You’ll never get me to talk.”

This is a dialogue tag. It means that George is saying the line of dialogue in a deep, growly voice.

George growled. “You’ll never get me to talk.”

This is an action beat. It means that George makes a growly noise, then says the line. It’s an action he takes before the dialogue, not as part of it. However, since it is on the same line, it effectively tells us who’s speaking, without an additional “he said” at the end.

Action beats give invaluable context surrounding a piece of dialogue, and allows us to avoid using too many flowery and distracting dialogue tags. They also help break up the dialogue so that it looks less like a script and more like a scene playing out in our heads. Almost nobody just has a verbal conversation. There’s always movement, non-verbal cues, small sounds, tone of voice, etc. that puts what’s being said in context. Action beats let us show this.

Laugh Your Words?

Words like laughed, smiled, and sobbed are often appropriated as dialogue tags, but whether it is a correct use is hotly debated.

“Tickle me all you want! You’ll never get me to talk,” he laughed.

On the side against the use of these “said-bookisms” is the argument that you don’t laugh your words (or smile them or sob them). These are things going on around the words, and are more appropriate to an action beat.

“Tickle me all you want! You’ll never get me to talk,” he said, laughing.

George laughed. “Tickle me all you want! You’ll never get me to talk.”

The argument adds that as a dialogue tag, words like “laughed” and “smiled” are telling, while as action beats, they are showing. The latter gives us a more immersive look into the scene and the character’s head.

On the side for their use, they’re a good way to convey the non-verbals in a compact way, and some argue for them as a purely stylistic choice.

In Summary

The TL:DR version? Dialogue tags tell you who is speaking and how. Action beats tell you what’s going on around the actual speech, adding atmosphere and context for the words!

No, People Won’t Like Your Book

I was browsing Twitter yesterday, and came across a post from someone I really admire.  They were complaining about romance arcs in mystery novels, and vice-versa. I looked at my fresh new fragile baby of a first novel, which has both mystery and romance arcs, and winced.  The rest of the conversation was a series of complaints that tore at every trope and element of my writing, and of books I enjoy reading. It was pretty devastating, since I haven’t quite developed the thick skin of authorship yet.

But then my partner gave me some words that completely shifted how I look at writing. “Even if you make the New York Times Bestseller list and sell millions of copies, more people will always dislike your book than will like it.”

Just to be clear, this wasn’t him downing my book in particular, which he thinks is the bee’s knees.  It was a general statistical statement.  People have very specific likes and dislikes.  Not everybody reads. Some people only read one genre, or are very particular about which books they like. Some people will dislike your main character.  Some people will think your ending stinks. Some people will hate your book because their pastor or co-worker find something offensive in it. Some people will hate on your books for the sole fact that it is popular. It is impossible that everyone will like it.

This isn’t meant to be depressing. It’s meant to be liberating. It’s a careful balancing act to decide whether to include something in your book that people find objectionable. If you’re looking to please everyone, you will inevitably fail. This is not meant to excuse racism, misogynism, or other bigotry that turns away readers en masse. But the bottom line is that you can’t actually write the mythical perfect book your anxiety tells you you need to write.  You only need to write the book you want to read.

Character Development: Asking, “Why?”

When I read a novel, I can sometimes tell when the author really struggled to get into their antagonist’s head. The antagonist is either a vague puppet moving to the convenience of the author, or a flat caricature of a human being. One of the most common questions I ask while reading these books is, “Why?” WHY does the villain want to kill/ruin/rule/cheat/thwart?

The problem with “why” is that it’s a question that’s almost never really answered. Humans are phenomenally good at making up stories in our heads about why we do things. These stories don’t always fit reality, because they’re based on incomplete information and unconscious motives. The most dramatic example of this comes from Neuropsychologist Michael Gazzaniga’s experiments with people whose brains had been divided in half. We normally process things we see and do on the left side of the body with the right side of the brain, and vice-versa. The brain then communicates across a bridge between the two sides (the corpus callosum). When the bridge is cut, the two sides stop communicating. If a person in a split-brain experiment sees the words “stand up” on their left side, it is only seen by the right hemisphere of the brain. They may stand up, but if asked why they stood up, they won’t know. That’s where a part of the left hemisphere steps in. It’s job is to serve as an “interpreter,” by coming up with explanations from insufficient information. The person may tell you they stood because they were cold, or because their legs ached. They’re not consciously lying; their brains are just filling in details.

We do this all the time. If you are asked why you like a particular book, you will probably be able to come up with an immediate answer, like, “I really liked the main character.”  But is that the whole truth, or just the interpreter talking? If you follow up with, “Why?” then you may get a little deeper.

“I liked that she was really tough.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems like women don’t always get to be tough in literature and I like that this book subverts that.”

“Why?”

“Because I like the idea of being tough and wish I was more like her, so it’s validating.”

…And so on…

Yes, it’s like having a conversation with a curious two-year-old in your head. But notice how the answer gets more specific and more personal as you dig? If there’s anything I like in my fictional character development, it’s specific and personal motives. So we can turn this idea on both your protagonists and antagonists. When you do, remember a few things:

  1.  Everyone thinks they’re the protagonist. They believe that what they’re doing is justified (regrettably or not). They think someone they hurt deserves it. They think they’re in the right. The more wrong the act, the harder they’ll work to justify it to themselves and maintain their self-image.
  2. Everyone cares about something or someone. Even if that someone is themselves and the something is their ego.  If a person really didn’t care, they’d curl up in a corner and not bathe or eat for weeks at a time. That’s how a lot of severe depression manifests. They wouldn’t go out of their way to sabotage their ex’s relationship or build a super-robot to destroy New York. That takes effort, and to put out effort, a person must first care about the results.
  3. Bad guys can have good motivations. Your villain might actually believe that, in the long run, his giant city-destroying robot will make the world a better place. Good guys can have bad motivations. It’s okay if, in addition to saving the city, your heroine is also driven just a little bit by petty revenge because the robot stepped on her car and she had just splurged on a custom sound system.

So why is your antagonist working to destroy their ex’s new relationship?

“Because she deserves it.”

“Why?”

“Because she hurt me, so I want to hurt her back.”

“Why?”

“Because being hurt makes me feel out of control and vulnerable.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t the one leaving, so I was helpless to stop it. Being able to hurt her back gives me back my feelings of control and makes me feel strong/able to defend myself.”

At the core of most of these questions you’ll find emotions. Sure your bank robbers are after money, but does that money represent safety? Freedom? Validation? A lot of the reasons we come up for why we do things seem to be intended mostly for covering up the emotions we’re feeling, so keep going until you reach something really visceral and basic. That’s your character’s goal. They want to feel strong and in control. They want to feel safe.

Then ask yourself, “Do my character’s actions make sense as a way to achieve these goals?” Keep in mind that it can be a completely dysfunctional attempt to achieve those goals. But they do have to make sense according to the internal frame the character is operating under, however broken it might be. A person can be irrational, immature, self-destructive, and petty. But with a very few exceptions, they need to be internally consistent.

 

5 Things That Make Me Stop Reading

Let me start out by saying that this is an entirely subjective post. If anyone looks up their favorite book on Amazon or Goodreads, they’ll probably find a few one and two-star reviews, because everyone’s taste is different. So as a reader, I don’t claim that my opinions are at all universal.

That said, I’m a voracious reader, and a fairly forgiving one, I think. If your book has strong characters and moves along at a nice pace, I’ll probably ignore all kinds of things that might turn off other readers. But I do have some lines in the sand.

1. “I’m leaving you for your own good.”

This is a twisty way for the writer to say, “I don’t know how to create story tension after these characters to get together, but I don’t want one of them to look like a jerk.” But the thing is, there are really only two interpretations for this unfortunately common trope. The first interpretation is that one of the partners is taking agency away from the other and infantalizing them by saying they can’t be trusted to make good decisions for their own well-being (in which case, they’re a jerk). The second interpretation is that one of the partners is afraid and wants out of the relationship, and justifies it by lying to both themselves and their partner to appear more noble than they are (in which case, they’re a jerk). There is no real way to pull this trope off without someone being a jerk, and at that point, I stop rooting for the relationship altogether.

2. Token in Trouble

This is a fairly difficult one for some writers to navigate, because we don’t really receive any kind of education on social power dynamics if we don’t seek it out or experience it personally. But the basic premise is that you have a single minority character in your story (racial minority, LGBTQ, person with disability, etc., a.k.a. the “token”), and that character’s role seems is to die, be traumatized, or be placed in danger in order to motivate the non-minority main character. (This includes the main character defending the minority character from bigots as a shortcut to show they’re a “good guy”). It reduces the minority character to a prop, and is a form of objectification.

In comics, this became known as the “girl in the refrigerator” trope, where a girlfriend’s tragic death or trauma serves as the backstory for a male superhero. For LGBTQ characters in film, this trope is known as “bury your gays,” because LGBTQ characters in film and fiction are so often killed to forward the plot or motivate the cisgender, straight character.

The reason this is problematic is that there is so little representation of some groups in fiction, that even a single negative depiction has an outsized impact on how we think about those groups, and how readers in those groups think about themselves. Writers, please let your minority characters live, have a life and motivations outside of their identity (or the main character’s life). Maybe they can even have a happy ending or heroic moment. And if your only minority character turns out to be the bad guy, you need to seriously re-think your book and the message it sends to the world.

3. Mary Sue and Gary Stu

Generally, a main character is a main character because something interesting is happening to them. Otherwise, there’s no story, right?  In that respect, they’re special. But make me believe your character is a real person, and not just an embodiment of specialness. A real person isn’t perfect or good at everything they try to do. A real person doesn’t have every single person they interact with fall in love or lust with them. If your character’s only flaw is that they’re a little physically clumsy, they’re not relatable as a real person. Give them some real flaws, with room to grow as the story develops. Give them some platonic, or even indifferent relationships. Allow other characters to dislike them for reasons other than jealousy or romantic rejection.

On the flip side, let your bad guy have some positive traits other than killer abs and a pretty face, or attraction to the main character. Let them be people, too. Your story will be better for it.

4. Deus ex Machina

The general rule is that “convenient” things that hurt the character increase tension, and those that help the character decrease it. If the gods in your high fantasy novel swoop down and intervene in every life-or-death conflict in your book, we’re going to stop being concerned that your character is actually going to die. If the evidence just falls into your detective’s lap, we’ll think the case was too easy to solve, and not worth telling about.

This can go too far the other way, of course. If your character is nearly killed twice a book over ten books, it gets a little exhausting and we start to wonder about whether they really care if they live or not. Let them learn from their adventures, and one of the things they should be learning is caution and use of resources.

5. Cheap Stereotypes

The first bad review I ever left for a book involved a mumu-wearing fat character who was lazy, stupid, clumsy, and obsessed with food. Her love interest was played up for laughs, because the idea of a fat person having actual feelings was hilarious.

The second bad review had a single person of color in the entire book. It was an Asian woman who played the loyal family servant, was sneaky and untrustworthy, and turned out to be the villain.

These were books written in the last ten years, but the stereotypes belong very far in the past. The problem is that these kind of stereotypes are harmful to readers. Minority representation in fiction is already sparse, so stereotypical, negative portrayals that reinforce prejudice have an outsized impact. They affect how people think about these groups, and how these groups think about themselves.

While not everyone can afford a sensitivity reader, the Internet is a rich and easily accessible resource on stereotypes. Many marginalized people have put in time and effort into articles, blogs, and discussion forums on stereotypes, harmful language, and how they would like to be depicted. A quick google search for “how to write about XX characters” will give you at least enough to avoid putting your foot in your mouth. If you are writing a marginalized character whose identity you don’t share, however, put in the extra time to really get it right.

Why Should You Care?

In a phenomenal book, I might cringe at some of these and keep reading for a little while, with considerably reduced enjoyment. In a less than phenomenal book, I’ll just put it down. If it’s egregious enough, I’ll cross the unspoken line of mutual support for writers and leave a bad review. Is this fair? Maybe not. But every minute I take for reading is a minute I take from writing or other things I enjoy. So I choose to not waste that time.  And trust me, so do many other readers.

What’s your line in the sand? What makes you put a book down?

The Many Right Ways to Fall in Love

As a writer, I love me some slow-burn, will they/won’t they, long sighs and significant glances romance. But as a reader, I don’t understand the pushback against what many call “instalove.” Love at first sight. Soulmates. The characters lay eyes on each other and just know. People deride it as unbelievable, and even lazy writing. One reviewer said she threw a book across the room in disgust when “I love you” happened on the third date.

And that’s confusing to me, because I’ve lived it.

When I laid eyes on my now-husband, I knew. It had nothing to do with a riot of hormones (although they were involved). It was like I had a best friend my whole life that I hadn’t met until just that moment. We moved in together after three months, and we’re still married ten years later (not that the validity of a relationship can be measured by its duration.)

But  I still see the rants against “instalove” sprinkled through book reviews with almost hipster levels of derision. For this Valentine’s Day, I want to break down some of the possible interpretations of what a reviewer means when they say that a character’s love at first sight is “unbelievable.”

1. “The author didn’t sell me on it.”

This is perhaps the most charitable interpretation of the complaints about “instalove.” If this is what the reviewer is saying, I’m right there with them. Sometimes, love at first sight is lazy writing. As a reader, if a character falls desperately and immediately in love with someone who treats them like dirt, or has few positive personal features other than killer abs, I’m usually going to be unhappy with the book. Chemistry is chemistry, but a willfully shallow and self-destructive MC isn’t going to be sympathetic for me, and the author will need to find a way to sell it masterfully for me to believe it.

2. “That’s not real love…”

Usually this discussion involves moving goalposts, with phrases like, “that’s lust, not love,” and “how can you say you love someone you don’t even know that well?”

It’s fine to have a specific definition of love that you apply to your own relationships. It’s not fine to assume that those definitions are universal, or yours to enforce on others. Because strong attraction and emotional connection are not only based on intangibles, but they are also absolutely a valid form of love. It may have a different “flavor” than your ideal or current relationship, but then, every relationship does. There are no human universals when it comes to feelings or behavior, and the person experiencing the emotion is the only one in a real position to judge its validity.

3. “I’ve never experienced it, so it can’t be true.”

The least charitable reading of the pushback against love at first sight, and one that is almost never stated so directly. As subtext, the argument suggests extremely poor personal boundaries as a best-case scenario.

Any time you suggest that your own experience is universal, the burden of proof is squarely on your head. How could love, a thing that is so strongly influenced by cultural norms, personal identity, psychological makeup, personality, and emotional state, possibly be monolithic? How could it possibly be completely understood by a single individual? Heck, researchers and philosophers can’t even agree on what love is, much less whether it is a verb or an adjective.

4. “It’ll never last.”

This falls directly into the trap of our cultural assumption that a relationship can be judged by its end. Under this assumption, the only valid relationships end in the death of both partners. That’s it. All or nothing. Anything less is a “failed” relationship, no matter how much happiness or personal growth it provided the people in it.

But get a little distance from the heteronormative, monogamy-centric areas of our culture, and you’ll see that there’s a lot more to the story than HEA. If you’re open to expanding your worldview, read blogs and books by queer and/or polyamorous authors.  You’ll find a rich and dizzying array of relationship arrangements and perspectives that are more galaxy than spectrum. You’ll find lifetime partners with no interest in getting married, short-term partners that move easily into fast friendships deeper than many marriages, asexual relationships that defy hormonal assumptions about attraction, and the concept that souls can have as many mates as fit a person’s journey through the world.

But the diversity of love is not a dilution. At the root of the arguments against HEA, I think, is the idea that love at first sight somehow invalidates the investment of time and emotional energy into sustaining a long-term relationship. Saying that there is only one way to be in love is like insisting that there is only one kind of flower. The existence of roses in no way diminishes the validity of lilies.

Your love is valid, even if it doesn’t look like a fairy tale. It’s also valid if it does.

And when elves and dragons are filling the bookshelves, love at first sight is hardly the dealbreaker when we talk about realistic writing.

All the World’s a Stage…And your Characters Should Act Like it!

Technically a lot of things make up a really good book.  But as a reader, I will forgive an author many plot and style problems.  The one thing I can’t get past is the characters.  Good characters can make an atrociously bad premise readable.  Bad characters can render the most meticulous world-building pointless.

The thing is, as writer, you are the director.  You move all of the pieces of the script, scenery and players around to make sure everyone’s in the right place at the right time for the right effect.  But to really get into your characters’ heads and bring them alive on the page, you can’t think like a director.  You have to think like an actor.  Specifically, an improvisational theater actor.

Any actor, but especially an improv actor, has to have a highly refined sense of timing, place, position, and body language.  They understand the effect of every movement and word they speak.  They know that the position of the shoulders can change a character’s entire message.  That’s something you, as a writer, need to know.

Luckily for those of us with intense stage fright, there’s no need to run out and join an improv acting class.  Instructional books and videos abound.  But my favorite of all time is a classic on which many other books and classes are built.  Impro, by Keith Johnstone, and the sequel, Impro for Storytellers, may be edging on forty years old (as reflected in the sometimes problematic language), but they could give an extraordinary boost to your character craft.

EXAMPLES

There’s more packed into the books than can possibly be summarized, but here are three examples I use to inform my own characterizations:

Status

Impro focuses a lot on status, because a lot of our understanding of interactions comes from the status games we’re observing.  There are two relevant features in any interaction between people in your writing.  The first is the person’s actual social status.  Are they a king? An outcast?  A woman in a patriarchal society?  The second is the status the person is playing.  We often consider characters or dialogue more interesting when these two don’t match.  A king who acts as a servant and a servant who acts like a king are more interesting than the inverse.

Blocking

Impro for Storytellers devotes a lot of time to things people do that slow or stop the progression of the story.  One of those things is called “blocking.”  It can be dialogue, action, or even body language that rejects or kills a start made by another character.  For example, a character invites their friend swimming, and the friend says they don’t feel like it.  You may have used the moment to create tension (i.e. to show they’re angry in refusing the invitation) but the action, the progress of the story has stopped, and the second character has attempted to gain control of the conversation.  This can be used constructively, but only if done deliberately, with awareness of the underlying dynamics of control.

Originality

In both books, Johnstone is quick to condemn attempts at “originality.”  A person who is trying to be original and clever will end up responding slowly and unnaturally.  In reality the first thought that comes to mind, even if it seems boring, is probably the correct response.  An example from Impro is of an actor being asked, “What’s for supper?”

“…a bad improviser will desperately try to think up something original. Whatever he says he’ll be too slow.  He’ll finally drag up some idea like ‘fried mermaid’. If he’d just said ‘fish’ the audience would have been delighted. No two people are exactly alike, and the more obvious an improviser is, the more himself he appears.”

Your characters are the same way, and will show themselves better and more naturally in unforced interactions than in any attempt to be clever and original.

(Note that I am not adding an ordering link to the books, because they are only available in limited print. It’s worth a bit of hunting to find a cheap used copy of both, rather than pay the collector prices for new copies on Amazon).