Cameron Montague Taylor

Fantasy Author & Fiction Editor

writing exercises

Why Your Opener Isn’t Working

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One of the chief mistakes I see in the opening paragraphs of my clients’ work (and let’s be fair, my work, too!) is a missing story element. While there’s no true recipe for writing a banger of a story opener, when it comes to genre fiction, the large majority of great openers* rest on three solid pillars:

  • They ground the reader in place and time by establishing setting
  • They connect the reader to a character
  • They establish a purpose for that character

You might think, damn, that’s a whole lot to do in a paragraph or two, and you’re not wrong! But part of what separates a good writer from a great one is the ability to pick, with laser-like precision, the exact right opener that lets them get all three on the page immediately.

Most effective openers are either written in-scene, or, if they start out of scene (up in the protagonist’s head, in memory, in recollection, etc.) they quickly zoom into real-time writing. When we talk about in medias res writing, that’s really what we mean—starting in-scene. It’s hard for the reader to find their footing when the character’s head is in the clouds!

Likewise, it’s also hard for them to find their footing when the story opens so directly in the middle of the action that time, place, and purpose become unclear. Chase scenes, for example, can be difficult for this reason. If the character is running for their life, it can be challenging to give the reader a good look at where they are, who they are, and why they’re being chased. The hook isn’t in bombastic explosions; it’s in the immediacy of the reader’s connection to character and world.

Let’s take a look at how to develop this connection by using examples. This might be a fun one for anyone who has read my backlist, because I’m starting with the opening lines of Wicked Waters. I wrote this version of the opener around 2016 and haven’t touched it since then.

Foul air clung to the town like a pestilent blanket. The breeze had died days earlier, leaving the inland provinces to suffer in sweltering, stagnant heat. A thick silence reigned. Even the animals had fled. Nothing moved but for a few wisps of smoke rising from smoldering ruins.

What’s off about this? Nothing tremendous, but it’s missing both character and purpose. In other words, the opener is imbalanced, and through that imbalance, misses an opportunity to connect to the reader.

To fully rewrite this, I’d need two paragraphs—but feel free to judge the strength of the rewrite on the first paragraph alone.

Foul air clung to the town like a pestilent blanket. The breeze had died days earlier, leaving the inland provinces and all the unfortunate souls within them to suffer in sweltering, stagnant heat. Valory bar Adrianth counted himself among those unfortunate souls, but duty was duty, and if he didn’t haul his men to the arse end of nowhere in the name of keeping the border secure, who would?

Not that there was much left of Lannoch to secure. The town lay silent and still when they arrived, for even the animals had fled. All that remained were wisps of smoke rising from still-smoldering ruins—a lonely blight upon the province’s arid grasslands.

This version of the opener starts with the same distant overview of setting, but quickly zooms in to mention people in the general sense, then name the POV character directly. Not only does this introduction establish character, but it connects character to setting by showing the reader what he thinks about it.

We also learn quite a bit about Val throughout these lines: that he’s duty-bound to keep the border secure, that he’s a leader in charge of others, and that he takes a somewhat sanguine tone when confronted with tragedy. In other words, we don’t just get character, but we get purpose and voice, too.

The next major change happens in the following paragraph when the town itself gets connected to a broader setting. In the original, the town isn’t positioned within the story’s broader world—it isn’t even named! In the new version, the reader gets a clear picture of a lone town in the middle of arid grasslands.

It’s still not perfect (I rewrote it about ten minutes ago, to be fair), but it’s much stronger hook, no?

So, what actionable advice can we take about world, character, and purpose? For my part, I’d say that writing a good opening scene is about giving the reader:

  • A vivid visual of the setting
  • A keen and quick sense of who the character is
  • A hint at how character and setting are connected to one another, ie: why is this character here and/or what is this character trying to do here?

*Caveat: there are plenty of ways to write an opener, and I’m sure you can come up with examples of books you’ve loved that haven’t hit all three of these bullet points. That’s fine! Art is gooey and subjective, and there’s no true formula for hooking readers in. But in the full version of this post (which you can find at the AuthorShip+ tiers on my Patreon), I’ve fleshed out my theory with more examples from some of this generation’s best Fantasy writers: Jemisin, Chakraborty, Lee.

With all that said, here are some questions for you:

What do the opening scenes you love have in common? What elements of setting do your favorite writers tend to focus on in order to get the most powerful, impactful image onto the page? How do they use the vividity of those settings to hint at character purpose?

And how do they connect the reader to character? Through description? Through narrowing psychic distance and using deep interiority?

The only practice better than picking apart the works we love is taking the time to work and rework our own writing. Pick an old opener of yours, pull it apart, and try to figure out why it didn’t land right. What’s it missing? How might you tweak it to create a sharper hook?

I hope you find the exercise as helpful as I just did!

Do Your Characters Have Stage Fright?

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Note: this is a preview of a post that’s fully available on Cee’s Patreon.

Do your characters ever suffer from a case of “stage fright?” Y’know, that initial awkwardness which bleeds its way into their words and actions as you try to figure out what they’d do/say? The shy hesitation, as if they’re waiting for their cue to fully step into the spotlight of your novel?

You’re not alone. As authors, we often find ourselves playing the role of directors, coaxing our characters out of their shells and guiding them toward a captivating performance.

Crafting a character’s personality bears some similarity to coaching a fledgling actor. It takes time, dedication, and the creative energy to work out exactly what’s going on in their head whenever they’re on the stage. And that says nothing of the patience it takes as we slog through those first few chapters with stiff, difficult characters who haven’t yet blossomed into the rich, multidimensional personalities we had in mind.

Characters get stage fright not because they’re actual actors feeling nervous about tackling our novel’s first few scenes, but because we’re nervous as we write—with how little we really know about them now that they’ve left the nebulous wisp of our daydreams and been locked into words on a page. In other words: we might think we know them when we picture the handful of scenes we’re excited to write. But a novel is more than a handful of scenes, and eventually, we’ll hit scenarios for which our daydreams didn’t prepare us—scenarios in which our characters no longer confidently lead us across the stage.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “what the heck would they do or say in this situation?” this post is for you. I’ve put together five thought experiments / writing exercises to guide and enrich the character development process. Grab your metaphorical director’s chair, and let’s dive in!

#1 Tick, tick, boom

The ‘ticking clock’ is a metaphor used by Lisa Cron in Story Genius to refer to the countdown of events that happens before the clock ‘strikes midnight’ at the story’s inciting incident. She uses this metaphor as a way to help writers figure out where their opening scene should sit.

Although one of the first things we figure out about our story is where it starts, we don’t often think about what’s happened immediately before the beginning of our story—the days, weeks, and months leading up to the opener—in more than vague terms.

When we say stories start in medias res, we mean that our stories begin on a day in the middle of the protagonist’s life. One of the best ways to get to know them is to do a ‘tick, tick, boom’ writing exercise for the four or five ticks prior to the first scene. Use the immediate run-up to the opening scene as a tool to understand how the character’s decisions and behaviors set them on track to end up center-stage at the beginning of act one.

Consider: The Fellowship of the Ring opens on Bilbo’s 111th birthday party, and the events that follow predispose Frodo to saying ‘yes’ to bringing the ring to Rivendell. But what happened in the days leading up to this birthday party? The weeks leading up to it? The months leading up to it? If I were Tolkien, I could get a better handle on Frodo’s character by picking a timescale that best suited him and his story, then writing a scene for each ‘tick’ leading up to page one.

Write the four or five scenes that precede the opener of your story, paying particular attention to your protagonist’s voice and GMC (goals, motivations, conflicts). These scenes can take place once a day prior to the story start, or once a week/month/year—the choice of timescale is yours.

Walking backwards can help you get a better handle on your characters by forcing you to think about who they are and what they want outside the driving motion of the external plot.

The rest of this post is available at the AuthorShip+ tiers on Cee’s Patreon. Click the image above to go straight to the post, or take a look at the tiers and what they have to offer right here.

Braiding Prose

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If developmental or structural editing focuses on what your story is about, line editing focuses on how your story is told. The what and the how are inseparable elements; line level skills like effective dialogue, rhythmic writing, psychic distance and manipulation of POV, quick transitions, snappy action, etc. can have impacts far beyond the line level.

Effective (or ineffective!) prose will have a dramatic impact on characterization, the development of story arcs, pacing, foreshadowing, reader attachment, worldbuilding, and the connectivity between scenes—to name a few!

What makes prose effective? Hooboy, I could write posts and posts on prose and merely scratch the surface. But if I were to name one of the biggest make-or-break skills I see new writers struggling with, it’d be narrative balance.

As an editor, one of the easiest ways to tell whether a writer is a beginner, intermediate, or advanced is through how well they vary and balance different narrative techniques in their prose. In modern fiction, there are four skills or ‘styles’ to conquer on the quest to write more compelling and immersive narratives: action, description, dialogue, and interiority.

In this post, we’ll do a deep dive into these four different styles, get a tip for a writing exercise geared towards improving narrative variation, and, at the end, we’ll do a case study that applies this writing exercise to four different SFF novels: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows, Frostbitten by Dietrich Stogner, and Bioluminescence by Toni Duarte.

In fiction, there are four major narrative building blocks:

  1. Action (sometimes called stage direction, ie: she picked up the cup)
  2. Description (ie: it was a beautiful summer’s day)
  3. Dialogue (self-explanatory, I hope)
  4. Interiority (verbatim or summarized thought)

Strong writers have a facility with blending all four of these elements to create a balanced, compelling story. Well-braided prose reads easily and provides both enough external motion to be interesting and enough interiority to deliver context and give the story meaning.

“But Cee, there are dialogue-only stories that work beautifully!”

There sure are! But you can rest assured that writers with the chops to create a phenomenal, dialogue-only story first learned how to balance and braid prose, then took on the challenge of warping that braid. Or, to use a favorite metaphor of mine: even Jackson Pollock took figure drawing. Writers of experimental prose still have the ability to braid their narrative elements, but they’re choosing not to for stylistic reasons.

I’ve used the term ‘braid’ a few times, now, which is how I think of prose: a bit like a braided cord, or a tapestry, or perhaps a spider web. Eliminate a strand (or use too little of it, or pick it apart) and you won’t have a functioning braid!

Brand new writers tend to either forget one of these elements or choose a balance that’s so skewed, one of the elements might as well not be there. They’ll write so much action the story feels like stage direction / alt text on a video, or so much interiority that the protagonist live in their head and the story never advances. There will be so much dialogue that the whole story feels like back-and-forth, or so little that the reader gets told important conversations happen, but never gets to see them.

So little description that the characters might as well be in a white room, or so much that the prose becomes overwrought (ie: purple).

As writers level up, they’ll get better at keeping a hold on all four cords, and tend to balance them more and more evenly throughout the manuscript. However, that initial balance often happens in chunks: a paragraph of action, then a paragraph of description, then a half-page of dialogue, then a paragraph of interiority . . . rinse, repeat. Although chunking can certainly work where appropriate and stylistically necessary, if the prose doesn’t get braided at the sentence or paragraph level, it will eventually begin to feel disjoined and difficult to read.

Practiced writers will move seamlessly between these four narrative elements within a paragraph—sometimes even clause-to-clause in a single sentence! This braiding technique will pull the reader into the story, immerse them in the prose, and make reading feel effortless.

(And for those of us writing genre fiction, effortless is the name of the game!)

In order to determine whether or not you’re effectively braiding your prose, check out one of my favorite exercises:

The Highlighter Exercise

Either on the computer or in a printed copy, pick a scene and four highlighters. The individual colors don’t matter, but for the purposes of this exercise, I’ve chosen:

  • Yellow for action
  • Blue for description
  • Pink/purple for dialogue
  • Green for interiority

Highlight your scenes using these colors. Some writers like highlighting at the sentence level, but I typically go clause-by-clause to get as specific as possible. If I’m on the fence about a phrase, I try to look at what function it serves within the passage and go with my gut.

One you’re finished, you’ll have a clear visual of whether, where, and how you’ve braided narrative styles. Zoom out and look at the colors on the screen (or page):

Are the colors braided? Do you have any blocks of one particular narration style? Are any missing? What kind of narration do you tend to lean on? What impact do you think it’s having on the scene you’re working with? Remember, it’s normal for action to dominate an action scene, or for dialogue to disappear from a scene where the POV character is alone. But if a particular trend persists for pages upon pages, it could be a sign that something isn’t quite right.

My favorite thing about the highlighter exercise is how it takes the guesswork out of assessing my writing. Instead of working off of ‘feel’ or ‘vibes,’ I have a clear picture of my narration style, and can determine whether the balance I’ve chosen suits the story I’m trying to tell.

Of course, not every author’s ‘braid’—nor even every scene written by the same author—will look the same. For the second half of this post, we’ll be doing a deeper dive on the four different narrative styles and taking a look at examples of highlighted, braided passages from four different SFF authors.

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The Digital Novel Planner is Here!

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The new, coloring book skin for the digital novel planner is here!

The WIP Novel Planner is a digital (and printable) planning guide for novelists. I’ve been working on different permutations of the planner since last last year, and am very happy with the outcome! So far, folks have really seemed to enjoy using it for the novel-planning process. I’m looking forward to creating new skins in the future, but for now, I intend to turn my focus to craft of writing booklets, so stay tuned for an announcement about that in the near future!

If you’re looking for the planner, you can learn more about it here in my shop. Otherwise, the planner is up for purchase on Etsy and Ko-fi:

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Killing Darlings

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This week, I’m trying something new on the blog: a segment called Dear Cee, in which I answer I question I received via email, DM, comment, or otherwise. The first Dear Cee is from a colleague who’s wrestling with a Contemporary Romance manuscript and trying to work out whether/how a scene ought to be cut.

If you’ve ever wondered why a developmental editor might suggest a scene-level cut—or how an editor might go about performing one—read on!

Dear Cee,

I have a question about “killing darlings.”

Let’s say an author’s manuscript has a long chapter in which the FMC (female main character) and her two friends go out to party on a boat. The only thing that happens during the trip is a conversation about the FMC’s ex-boyfriend and her hot new (MMC) neighbor. The chapter shows the closeness of their relationships, but doesn’t progress the plot or add any tension.

Should a chapter like this be cut? My gut says ‘yes,’ but I’m not sure how to approach this with the author!

You’re almost certainly right, so the questions are:

  • How much of that information is necessary to character development / to understand the rest of the story?
  • Could the author cut the entire chapter and not lose anything meaningful? (in that case, chop chop)
  • Do we need character and relationship progression there, but the scene fails to add anything to the story because it’s a ‘diner’ conversation (ie: had while eating/drinking/hanging out with little external motion)?

I suspect the issue is a combination of the above three factors. Granted, I haven’t read the source text myself, so I’m making guesses, but I’ll go out on a limb and pinpoint the following issues:

  • The reader probably doesn’t need to know all of the information that gets presented in the friends’ dialogue
  • Most of the dialogue is snappy back-and-forth, ie: literal reportage of what the author heard in their head while they were writing
  • This snappy back-and-forth feels like talking heads by the end of the scene, which drowns out important or interesting character-building information.

These tend to be ‘darling’ scenes. They’re fun, the author enjoyed writing them, they show the characters interacting and having a good time. We’re loath to cut these moments in our writing because they give us the warm-fuzzies, and it’s easy to conflate I love this scene with I need this scene. Self-editing is hard!

But your author would be happy to know that, while I’m leaning towards ‘cut it,’ there could be enough important contained to justify keeping (and rewriting) it. If you suspect that’s the case, I have another set of questions:

  • What aspect of the Big Three elements of story (plot, character, worldbuilding) are advanced in this scene?
  • Can those elements be worked into surrounding scenes in order to chop this one?
  • If not, is there a more conflict-driven, high-stakes way to approach the reveal of this vital information?

On the surface, this scene sounds like a candidate for either a wholesale cut or a drastic reduction: it moves slowly, it only advances one element of the Big Three, it lacks conflict/stakes. But—if this is the only in-scene relationship development between the FMC and her friends, cutting it might leave their friendship on shaky legs.

What if the author was right to include a character-building scene, but the execution is flawed? What would need to change in order to turn this ‘darling’ scene into one that drives the narrative forward?

Kill your darlings, then bring them back to life

Like zombies. But better.

When giving ‘darlings’ a new lease on life, we must identify what information the author conveys. Mark and set aside important dialogue exchanges, moments of action, and snippets of interiority that need to make it through to the next draft.

Next, take a step back. Look at those important bits, and ask the author “how else can you string together these pieces?”

I’m operating under the assumption, based on the nature of the question, that this is a ‘bonding’ scene. These types of scenes often cause problems, not because character bonding is irrelevant to plot, but because of how the bonding happens. The easiest way for characters to share information is through dialogue, which is why we end up with so many sit-down conversations in our rough drafts. But sit-down conversations tend to drag, and moreover, they aren’t the fastest way to show the bond those characters have.

People bond through hardship, which is another way of saying conflict—ie: the driving engine of narrative traction. When adding conflict into a dialogue heavy scene, many authors reach first for a natural next step: make the characters have an argument.

This is a possible solution, but it’s often a trap. If the scene is already too dialogue-heavy, adding more dialogue (even if it’s high-conflict dialogue) won’t necessarily fix it.

So, how else can we add conflict into a dialogue-heavy scene?

  • A ticking clock
  • An obstacle

In other words: incorporate an action element to replace, contextualize, and balance the scene’s dialogue.

The resurrection

When I edit, I ensure the author understands 1) why I believe the structure of a scene isn’t serving their story, and 2) offer multiple solutions for how the author can address the issue. I try to recommend a way to ‘save’ a scene unless I believe, from the bottom of my soul, that it has to hit the chopping block. In this case, I’d give an example of a way to add a ticking clock or obstacle in order to provide the tension necessary to carry a relationship-building scene.

In this case, let’s say:

  • The FMC has promised to dog-sit for the MMC that evening (ticking clock), and
  • The boat’s engine breaks down (obstacle).

Though in some genres, these obstacles will be life-threatening, they absolutely don’t have to be! All we need is a little shock or scare that gives the characters a reason to rally together, bond (or bond further), and reveal information in an organic way that doesn’t read like a conversation included for the reader’s benefit.

For the purpose of the example, let’s say the boat’s engine breaks down. This would give the characters a reason to talk about the FMC’s hot new neighbor (MMC), because if they can’t get back to shore in time, she’s going to ruin his night by failing to show up to dogsit for him. Even better—what if they don’t have cell reception, so she can’t even let him know what’s happening?

Was the FMC’s ex good with engines? Does she momentarily bemoan their breakup only for her friends to leap on the offensive and remind her what a no-good cheater he was?

Sure, this could be a scary moment: they’re adrift and panicking as the sun starts to set and the waves get bigger. Or, it could be a lighthearted, zany adventure as they find a handheld VHF, charge it, and make a radio call to the coast guard. What if, when the tow boat comes, the captain is young and attractive, and one of the friends flirts outrageously with him—and teases the FMC when she won’t join in on the fun, saying her ‘heart is spoken for’ by her hot neighbor?

There’s a reason why friend groups often get involved in antics in books/movies/tv: antics are fun, they provide an in-scene way to show relationship dynamics to the reader, and they almost always result in a conflict the group needs to overcome in order to reach their scene-level goal.

Tie it all in

To recap: the best thing for the story might be to cut the scene entirely. But if that’s not the case, the author must find a way to tie the events of that scene into either an external plot or subplot, creating moments of action that have a ripple effect on scenes. The easiest ways to add tension are through a ticking clock or an obstacle—preferably both!

This author’s order of operations becomes:

  1. Identify a goal for the FMC that will carry her through the boat scene and into the rest of the story. Does this goal—or a sub-goal beneath it—carry a ticking clock? Even better.
  2. Put an obstacle into the boat scene that will force failure on the ticking clock goal.
  3. Hijinks ensue as the friends rally around FMC to help her meet her goal.
  4. Use this as an opportunity to work the important conversation, action, and interiority that was flagged as ‘must save’ from the original draft.
  5. Allow the FMC to have a partial win (she doesn’t get stranded at sea, hooray!) with a defeat immediately chasing its heels (she is egregiously late to dog sit, so the MMC missed his evening obligation).
  6. Does the MMC get upset about this? Probably! This ties into the romantic plot’s ‘push’ factors (the MMC thinks she’s a flake; the FMC thinks he’s an uptight, unforgiving jerk).
  7. This partial defeat can also tie into the next step of the external pot (how does the FMC make it up to the MMC? This gives them an opportunity to connect further!).

Naturally, this tweak with the engine breakdown and the dog sitting might not work for the author, and that’s totally okay. In editorial work, our suggestions aren’t The Only Way to ‘fix’ a story. Instead, they’re fleshed-out examples that show the author how altering an element of the story will strengthen it, hopefully paving the way for them to plug-and-play their own solution.

The details of the change itself aren’t important. We can change them to anything: one of the FMC’s friends falls overboard and the MMC is a member of the Coast Guard, for example, or the FMC breaks something on the boat and has a blow-out fight with the friend who owns the boat, which reveals a lot about the FMC’s backstory in the process.

Whatever the author chooses, the result is the only thing that matters, and that’s a scene which reveals both the FMC’s backstory and the bond she shares with her friends, while generating conflict/stakes and connecting back to the external plot.

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The Inside/Outside Trick

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Do you struggle with talking heads or an overreliance on body language cues like smirking or eyes widening or brows furrowing when you’re writing dialogue passages? You’re not alone. It’s so tempting to reach for those easy, common body language cues, especially in early drafts.

As a developmental editor, I’ve recently realized that my advice to clients when strengthening or replacing body language descriptions always goes one of two ways. I encourage the writer to either:

  1. Zoom all the way into that character’s head, or
  2. Zoom all the way out to show the reader how they’re interacting with the setting.

I call this the inside/outside tip, and it’s all about adding richer context to dialogue by avoiding an overreliance on middle-distance description.

But why is an overreliance on body language a bad thing?

A GIF of Ursula from The Little Mermaid saying "and don't underestimate the power of body language!"
Don’t underestimate the importance of body language!

We overuse body language in fiction

Lemme start by clarifying my point: there’s nothing wrong with describing body language, and many descriptions of body language are useful, if not necessary, to our writing. But when crafting dialogue passages, we tend to lean on body language even when it isn’t the strongest possible way to convey a character’s emotion.

In particular, we often focus on facial choreography, describing the way a character’s eyes, mouth, or brows are moving. When used too often, these action beats being to feel meaningless—almost as if we plug them into dialogue passages in order to attribute the dialogue rather than enhancing it.

How important is it, really, that his brows raised?

That her eyes narrowed?

That he flashed a grin?

Though all of these cues tell us something about the character, they’re shorthand descriptions of emotion. At times, the shorthand is perfectly suitable; if the reader already understands the context, a small reminder is ideal.

At other times, however, body language cues can feel vague, repetitive, or even disruptive to the story flow.

This is particularly true when the point of view character uses body language to convey their own emotional state to the reader. Although most people are aware of how their faces move in conversation, we tend not to think too much about our micro-expressions in casual conversation. Why would our characters be any different?

Thus, when a POV narrator relies on descriptions of their own face to give the reader a window into what they’re thinking or feeling, it reads like they’re observing themselves from the outside, either

  • increasing psychic distance, or
  • creating a POV error.

How does that character know their own eyes have darkened? This implies the character can observe themselves from outside their own body, which could jolt the reader out of the story.

But… what about ‘talking heads?’

Many writers learn to incorporate abundant body language cues into their writing in order to avoid an issue called ‘talking heads.’

When we receive criticism that our characters feel like ‘talking heads’ during dialogue exchanges, it means that, while the bare facts of a conflict are conveyed through speech, the reader has no idea

  • Who these characters are
  • Where these characters are
  • What their body language is conveying.

New writers often lean on body language in order to avoid giving the reader the impression that dialogue lines are spoken by disembodied heads. Though it’s a good start, it won’t provide quite enough context; even the best-crafted body language can’t hit points #1 and #2.

Think of it this way: body language is one part of a much greater descriptive whole. It’s the connective middle between a character’s thoughts (interior) and a character’s actions (exterior).

And without the inside (thoughts) and outside (actions), the connective middle begins to lose its meaning.

So, if not through abundant body language and facial cues, how else can we enrich our dialogue and avoid talking heads?

A GIF from a music video by the Talking Heads.
The only acceptable Talking Heads

Go ‘outside’

One element of talking heads is called white room syndrome, in which the setting description is so minimal—and the characters interact so little with it—that they might as well be having a conversation in a blank, white room.

This is where ‘outside’ comes into play: give your readers a window into who your characters are and what your characters are feeling by showing their interaction with the setting.

Bear in mind, I don’t mean your character should repeatedly sip from a teacup during a sit-down meal; interactions with props can be just as meaningless as repetitive body language cues.

But could a character in the midst of an argument make tea aggressively in a Regency romance by setting cups down with a clank, stirring in sugar so hard the tea sloshes over the rim, dropping spoons with a clatter? Sure!

How your character interacts with the setting will lend context to the conversation they’re having. What other interesting interactions with setting can your character have in order to give a window into their internal world?

Can your characters argue while reorganizing a bookshelf and start slamming books into their places? Would an anxious character in a restaurant scene start organizing condiments by size and shape? While planning a heist, would the easily distracted character click a pen over and over until the hair-trigger-temper character leaps across the table to rip it out of their hands?

Going ‘outside’ of body language to show interaction with setting is a great choice for all characters, but when it comes to POV characters, we have a second option that’s just as powerful:

Go ‘inside’

By going ‘inside,’ I’m referring to a POV character’s interiority: their thoughts, judgments, and how they unpack, contextualize, and make sense of the conversation they’re having. Interiority not only deepens the connection between the reader and the character, but it can also ascribe additional meaning to a non-POV character’s words or body language.

Interiority strikes back at talking heads by showing the reader who these characters are, preventing a back-and-forth dialogue exchange from losing meaning. It can take several different forms, including

  • Descriptive narration

“What do you want?” the shop-keep asked as he spun to face her. He had a blunt face with a scar cutting into one cheek. “Well? Spit it out. Don’t got all day, y’know.”

  • Verbatim thought

“What do you want?” the shop-keep asked as he spun to face her.
Damn, he’s ugly. “Uh, I—”
“Well? Spit it out. Don’t got all day, y’know.”
Impatient, too.

  • Narrative thought

“What do you want?” the shop-keep asked. He had an ugly mug and an attitude to match, and interrupted her attempt at a reply. “Well? Spit it out. Don’t got all day, y’know.”

All three of these examples show different flavors of interiority, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use a combination of them, moving between description and thought as necessary to show the reader both what the POV character is observing and what judgments they’re forming about it.

It’s also possible (and encouraged!) to combine inside/outside in a single line where appropriate.

For example:

The shop-keep slammed a cabinet shut and spun to face her. He had a blunt face with a scar cutting into one cheek, and an attitude to match his appearance.

“What do you want?”

Sara clutched the package to her chest. “I uh—”

“Well? Spit it out. Don’t got all day, y’know.”

Impatient, isn’t he? She’d have to sweeten him up or she’d never get her refund.

Tools, not rules

As always, remember that these are tools for your writer’s toolbox—not rules that ought to be obeyed to the letter. I’ll never tell authors to wholesale delete darkening eyes or cocky smirks or arched brows, but I will issue a challenge:

If you find yourself using a lot of the above descriptions, pick up a highlighter while working on your line edits and use it to pick out body language cues in your dialogue passages. For each one, ask yourself: is this the best possible way to show the reader what’s going on?

If I substituted one of these cues for interiority or environmental interaction, would it add meaning, balance, or clarity to the scene?

I suspect you’ll find that the answer is often ‘yes!’

Body language can’t carry a conversation on its own; as with all elements of craft, it’s a middle-distance tool we can reach for when neither inside nor outside feel quite right. In other words, I’m not asking writers to thinking critically about our use of body language in dialogue passages in service of eliminating body language, but rather, as a way to encourage balance: the secret ingredient for clear and compelling prose.

Do you overuse body language in your own writing? I sure do! I find it all the time when I’m self-editing. Here’s your boilerplate reminder that it’s impossible to get it all ‘right’ in the first draft, so don’t get discouraged! Words on the page can always be tweaked, and getting that story down in draft form is a victory in and of itself.

Let’s chat

Let me know what body language cues you overuse in the comments, or fire away with any questions you have about the inside/outside trick.

Or share a short excerpt of a place where you’ve used the inside/outside trick to enrich your dialogue passage!

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