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Make Your Characters Do Something: Showing Action in Your Writing
When watching movies, viewers have the benefit of being able to see what’s happening on screen, simultaneously with listening to dialogue. They see the expressions on the characters’ faces, the setting of the scene, and, more importantly, how the characters interact with the setting and other characters.
Many writers see their stories as pictures in their head as they write, almost like the unfolding of a movie. Writing is almost a visual process for them. But how does the writer make sure that what’s in their head is also what the reader sees when they later read the words?
They need to set the scene, show the characters and how they interact with each other or their environment, and they need to make sure the reader gets the same picture they do.
Some of this involves the actions of the character. Actions can move the story along, provide realism, bringing a reader more fully into a story. Actions can also be key to the personality of a character, their mood, and their feelings, helping us to get to know the character better.
Someone who is nervous, for example, might be fidgety. Someone who is aggressive or bold might be making a lot of eye contact, trying to intimidate someone else or to look brave. All of these actions are important!
But what to show and what not to show? A simple rule of thumb for showing the actions of your character is to show the necessary actions while skipping the mundane.
Necessary Actions
So which actions do you need to show, and which can you skip? It’s important to show what’s necessary and to skip what’s not.
Necessary actions are things a reader needs to see in order for things to make sense. Necessary actions can be moving from one place to another (sometimes), how they interact with others, or even their body language.
Movement of Location: When done incorrectly or poorly, one way this manifests is when a character is present in one place, but then suddenly in another place with seemingly no movement between places. I’m not talking about scene changes, which can be explained by mentioning the passage of time: Mary arrived home from the office an hour later. We don’t need the details about how Mary got home from the office, unless they are important to the story. What I’m talking about are things like being in one room and then suddenly being in another, or even, as in Mary’s example above, being in one place and then in another with no segue.
For example: She finished her workout and changed in the locker room. Crossing the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water and drank in huge gulps.
This might be an over-exaggerated example, but the character has gone from working out in the gym down the street to standing in her kitchen with no action to get her from one place to another.
To avoid this, make sure your character isn’t “teleporting” from place to place (unless that’s actually possible in your story world). Instead, you could have said: She finished her workout, changed in the locker room, and headed home. By the time she got there, she was dying of thirst and stood at the sink drinking a glass of water in huge gulps. (No criticizing the writing…it’s terrible but illustrative!)
In this “after” example, the reader knows she went home from the gym before being in her kitchen. There didn’t need to be a huge amount of detail about that trip home (see the “Mundane Actions” section below), but we had to know she got there somehow.
Body Language: Another time actions are necessary is to illustrate how a character is feeling through body language. We don’t need to know every movement a character makes. And if you think that’s not true, pay attention to every move you make, even sitting down reading this article! In the span of the five minutes it takes you to read it, you might scratch your head, tuck your hair behind your ear, shift in your seat two or three times, sniff, stretch your neck, look across the room at what the cat is doing, etc. Even if a character is doing all that, the reader doesn’t need to know it.
The body language we do need to know about is the body language that tells the reader something about the character and how they are feeling, what they are thinking, etc. A character’s actions can show how they feel about what another character is saying, without ever naming the emotion: Mary glared at Sam and crossed her arms. I don’t need to tell you that Mary is mad at Sam…you know it by her actions. This is a necessary action.
Necessary actions are about making sure the reader sees enough to understand what the character is doing and anything necessary to make it make sense to the reader. You need to decide what’s necessary and what’s not throughout your entire story, and that includes the actions.
It can be hard, I admit, for a writer to step back and read from their readers’ point of view. Since the writer wrote the story in the first place, they already have the pictures in their head. They know how the characters move and interact with their environment (as well as what the setting looks like, what or who else is present, etc.)
So being able to reread your own work and ask yourself if the reader will see that same thing when reading your book is vital. This is often why having an editor is helpful. As a first-time reader of your book, I can tell you whether I see what you saw when you wrote it…or not.
Mundane Actions
When I was an early writer, one of my weaknesses was showing too much action. As I became aware of this, I realized I was basically choreographing every movement my character made. I wrote stuff like this:
She reached for her water glass, picking it up and bringing it to her lips. She swallowed huge gulps, breathing in between, trying to quench her thirst after the long workout.
It’s not terrible but imagine doing that for every movement the character makes for an entire book. Readers will be hollering at me that they know how someone drinks a glass of water!
I also tended to make note of where a character placed her hands while talking or where she was looking (and every time she looked somewhere else). All of these can be important and necessary, but likely not always.
If a character is speaking to another character and places their hand on their friend’s hand, that could be an important action. But if the character is touching their own hair, laying their hand in their lap, scratching their cheek, cracking their knuckles, laying their hand back down in their lap…see? Gets boring and unnecessary, unless I’m trying to show that my character is fidgety for some reason. Again, it’s all about deciding what’s necessary and what’s not.
Thankfully, after some experience writing, I realized that I didn’t need to document the character’s every movement. Particularly when it’s a common movement that everyone knows how to do. Instead, I could have written:
She reached for her water glass and drank in huge gulps, trying to quench her thirst after the long workout.
Still not brilliant writing, but it’s a mundane action. It doesn’t need to be poetic prose. It’s not important to the story (in this case), so being as brief as possible, while still showing the reader what the character did, is all that’s necessary.
Another place this “over-choreographing” can happen is in getting a character from one place to another. I mentioned above that it’s important to make sure your character isn’t someplace and then randomly appearing somewhere else. Conversely, you don’t need to show every movement they make either.
“Walking” is an often overused word. Jane walked out of her bedroom and down the hall, walking all the way to the kitchen, and then walking across to the sink. Mundane much?
We all know that, in general, people “walk” to get from one place to another within their home. Obviously, there are exceptions, but regardless of how a character moves through their life, the reader doesn’t need to be told unless it’s necessary. Instead: Jane headed out of her bedroom and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. (Not a “walked” in sight, but you still got it!)
How to Know How Far to Go
When trying to determine how much detail to give about a character’s actions, consider whether you can skip it and the reader will still get it. Give readers the benefit of the doubt…they don’t need everything explained to them.
If I say Joe grabbed a box of cereal from the cupboard and poured a bowl, you get it, right? I didn’t need to mention that Joe opened the cupboard, took out the cereal and set it on the counter, then crossed the room to another cupboard to get the bowl, then opened the fridge to get the milk, then took it all back to the box of cereal, pouring the cereal and then the milk into the bowl, followed by putting the milk back in the fridge and getting out a spoon.
It's not unusual for newer writers to think they need to show everything that’s happening in their head as they write, but it’s really not. Joe grabbing the box of cereal and pouring a bowl is sufficient. It’s a mundane action that any reader would understand, so it doesn’t need to be explained in such detail.
All that said, there will be cases where mundane actions do need to be explained in more detail. If Joe is four years old and he’s ticking off steps that his mommy taught him about how to pour a bowl of cereal for himself, then more detail might work! But if Joe is a forty-year-old who’s poured a million boxes of cereal in his life, it’s no big deal, and we don’t need to hear about it.
Finally, watch for patterns. Do all your characters smile or sigh constantly? I once worked on a book where every character scratched the back of their neck. Make sure you’re mixing it up…between characters and within one character as an individual. If the only action you ever show a character making involves their hands (as was one of my writing issues!), swap some of those out with other actions, such as crossing legs or slumping shoulders. In 1000 Character Reactions from Head to Toe, Valerie Howard offers a huge list of options for actions that can be mixed and matched to create well-rounded and interesting visuals for readers!
To sum it all up, write make sure your characters are doing something, but make that something necessary and revealing to what the character is thinking, their personalities and identity, as well as the circumstances. Making actions meaningful will provide interest and realism to your characters and stories!
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