[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And today we want to talk about using character movement to show. To show things as part of the.
[00:28] Emily: Show in quotations, quotes.
[00:31] Rachel: Yes. So this is one of the tools that we consider as being in the show don't tell tool belt. And we are putting on a very exciting event, a workshop coming up in February, at the end of February called Show don't tell demystified, which we're so excited about. This workshop is going to. We're going to tell you more about it at the end, but I can't not just talk about it right now because I'm so excited. But this workshop is our. Okay, let's take you, let's dive in. Let's learn how to actually understand what show don't tell actually is, how to incorporate it into your writing process, into your writing knowledge, your writing toolkit, and how to use it to immerse readers into your story. Ultimately, show the technique is all about hooking in readers, bringing them into the experience of the story by putting us inside a character's skin. And there are so many different ways to do that. A lot of the advice online is conflicting. A lot of it is incomplete. So we're covering it all. We're going to take you through the three layers of show don't tell. And we dipped our toes into that information in last week's podcast, which is episode 49. So if you haven't listened to that one, go check that out. It's juicy. It's so juicy. And on top of teaching you what actually show don't tell is so that you can master the skill and immerse your readers. We're also going to teach you different tools to use because there's so many different pieces, there's so many different parts of prose. And how do we use show? How do we show in the different parts of prose and in the different parts of writing? So this is one of the tools is character movement. Talking about character movement, using it to show often, this is called, I've seen it called like, stage direction, usually. And basically it's the question of balancing. Like a character moved here and did this and picked up that and walked over this direction and opened a door and pushed in a chair. Like, it's all of the action movement of a character. That first layer of show, that first layer of show. How do we do that without one going overboard or two sounding like really repetitive and unengaging, because we don't necessarily want a complete play by play of everything our characters are doing. But then also as writers, we still want our readers to be able to visualize what's going on. So we find the balance in this through our show technique, through using character movement to show. Yeah.
[03:26] Emily: So if you listen to last week's episode, the first layer of show, right. Is putting a scene in action. And this is where we'll sometimes get pushback of, like, well, not everybody doesn't have to know every single tiny movement that my character does. And that's true. And so how do you decide what to show when you're showing your scene in action? And the answer is actually the second layer of show.
[03:46] Rachel: Yes.
[03:46] Emily: Which is all about meaning and the meaning that something has to your character. And what I mean by meaning is how a character feels about something, what the things around them mean to them, or what their movements show about their emotions and how they're processing what's happening around them. It's all about infusing the scene and what's happening in the scene and how it's being told with your character's emotion. Really?
[04:13] Rachel: Yeah. Because if you're thinking about how a scene plays out, how any type of piece of writing plays out, we still need to know how characters are moving and interacting with their setting, how are they moving around each other, how are they interacting with the objects in the setting. But if you just said, like, Riddy stood up, Riddy walked to the car, Riddy opened the car door, riddy got, like, it becomes so bogged down, we don't need that. But if we can inject that show layer of putting us inside Riddy's body and then showing what things mean to riddy through her movement, it grounds us in the scene, and it also engages us in the scene, that's what we're going to be going over. We want to be able to use character movement to show what a character is thinking and feeling, how they're processing the situation they're in, their relationships with the characters around them. And then sometimes we can use it to foreshadow or, like, hint at plot information. As we're diving into this, I have a lot of things to say, but basically, my writer brain starts with the visualization of what is going on, especially since I usually don't do a ton of planning in my scenes ahead of time. So I'm kind of, like, visualizing it as I write and I'm uncovering what's happening as I'm writing. And it can be tough to inject all this meaning stuff in there if I'm just not even sure what Riddy is doing. Anyway, we talked about this in episode 49, and I'm going to reiterate it here. This is a skill you develop. This is something you incorporate and layer in your writing. The more that you do it and the more passes that you take on a particular passage. So if you're feeling like, oh, I'm so bad at this, number one, it's okay to be bad at it on the first pass. I'm bad at it on the first pass. And number two, it's something you learn you get better at. It's a skill. If you circle back around to, how can I incorporate meaning in this movement? You're going to have much stronger character movement, much stronger action beats throughout a scene. What we're trying to do with this is we're going to take you from.
[06:55] Emily: Your reader, visualizing your scene into that second layer of show, of getting your reader to feel what's going on in your scene. And so some questions you can consider are, how can you create movement that has meaning, right. That shows something about what your character is feeling and how they're processing what's going on around them. How can you incorporate their emotion into the movement? How can you establish relevant detail with how your characters move through the scene?
[07:25] Rachel: Right.
[07:25] Emily: How can you make them interact with pieces of the scene that are going to come back later or that are important to the story as a whole? And how can you use their movement to communicate importance to the story, to communicate which pieces of their surroundings. Right. Which movements that they're taking are important to what's going on.
[07:49] Rachel: Yeah. So if we're thinking about, like, let's, for example, incorporating emotion into movement, in our previous episode, we talked, know, instead of saying, like, bobby got angry, it was like Bobby lurched to his feet. And that's how we can tie together Bobby's emotion with how he's moving. And that's a great way to level up your action beat of thinking, like, okay, if my character is going to pull out a chair and sit down in emotion, how are they emotionally doing that? What emotion are they bringing to that? Are they, like, collapsing into the chair after a long day? They're exhausted, and all they want is to eat dinner and go to bed? Or are they yanking that chair out of the table? They're sitting down because they need to control their anger. And this is the only thing that they can think of doing is that they don't punch the person across from like, there's a lot of ways to take the setting and the objects within your scene. Use a character's emotions and show us how they're moving without just saying like, bobby sat down.
[09:04] Emily: You want to read your examples? Because I think that those really illustrate what we're talking about.
[09:08] Rachel: Absolutely. So here's an example that kind of tells movement, tells us what is going on. I can't wait for this to be over, Carissa said as she walked across the room, pulled out a chair, and sat down. What's wrong? Priya asked, following her to the table. She sat down beside Carissa with a frown. I just need to graduate and get out of here, Carissa responded. She stood and walked to the fridge, opened it, and then filled up a glass of water. She took a drink. Rafe is driving me crazy. So when I wrote that, you can tell I'm really into chairs, pulling out tables, but when I wrote that, that's decent, right? It gets the picture across, shows the action. It's that first level of yeah, we're.
[09:54] Emily: Seeing what they're saying, we're seeing what they're doing.
[09:56] Rachel: Yeah, we see what they say, we see what they do. But it's definitely, like missing a little bit. And it's missing depth. It's lacking the depths and emotion that would really put us inside Carissa's body. That would help us understand how Carissa is really moving through this scene. Not just like what she's doing, but how is she being in this scene? And I mean that in to be.
[10:22] Emily: Or not to be.
[10:23] Rachel: How is Krissa being right now? We explain the play by play. Like you can visualize that. Sure, but how can we show it so that we also feel it? So let's try something like this instead. I can't wait for this semester to be over. Carissa collapsed into a chair with a groan and hung her shoulders. She was so done with him. His lies, and also the way she just couldn't get him out of her head. What's wrong? Priya asked, her voice laced with concern as she pulled out the chair beside her. I just need to graduate and get out of here. Carissa jumped to her feet as if her body could no longer contain her frustration. She gulped down a glass of water before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Rafe is driving me crazy. So the dialogue in that is exactly the same dialogue. Exactly the same. But we feel how Carissa is moving through the scene. We don't just see how she's moving. We also can feel how she's moving. She's collapsing into the chair. She's so done. She's over it. Her friend is there, but it's almost like her friend doesn't even matter. Like, Carissa doesn't even have the bandwidth to really consider what Priya is trying to to. As soon as Priya sits down, Carissa jumps to her. Like she just can't contain all of her frustration in her body. And we have a little bit different way of saying that she took a drink of water, she gulps it down this time, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and she's just so frustrated. There's a little bit different way of incorporating our emotion into the movement and also establishing some of those characters thoughts and processing, giving us that meaning on the page, giving us that, like, okay, she's frustrated, but why? Well, because Rafe is driving her crazy. You get a sense that maybe she's a little attracted to him, but she also can't stand that. When I wrote this, I pictured them as, like, academic rivals. And she likes him, but he's the new Ali Hazelwood. You heard it here. Yeah. Anyway. But we can use a lot of how our characters are moving to show us how they're processing things. Bring us into those emotions, and it's a much more engaging way to experience a scene. Cool.
[12:51] Emily: So some tips to execute this and do this in your own writing. I'll let you take the first one.
[12:58] Rachel: I'll do the first one because this is my game. Okay, I'm going to say this. Your ultimate goal, your end goal, is not for a reader to visualize everything step by step. But that is how I have to write. So I have to write it as if I'm visualizing step by step. That means that the first time I write, it feels really clunky. That's my first pass. It's clunky. I'm, like, putting down. She walks to the fridge, she opens the door, she gets a drink. So if that's where you're at, just write it that way. Then you can go back and you can be like, okay, how is my character feeling? If my character is interacting with this fridge, why? What are they doing? But take away the perfectionism and just put it on the page as best as you can first. Then you can go back into the scene and add in all those. Those show layers that we talked about in episode 49.
[14:01] Emily: And as part of that process, we can always cut out things that a reader can fill in the blanks about. Like, I think in your example, the first version that was just play by play said that Pria followed her to the table, then sat down next to Carissa. And you can just say, like in the second version, it's. Priya asked as she pulled out the chair beside her.
[14:23] Rachel: Right.
[14:23] Emily: We don't need to know. She followed her to the table. That's implied. And so when you're going back through and revising, you can trim the pieces that are implied and that will add for a smoother read for your readers.
[14:35] Rachel: Yes, I actually did some of this last night on some of my pages where I had a character. I said, she lifted up her palms and cupped my cheeks, but you don't need to lift up your palms to cup your cheeks. You can just cup your cheeks. So there's stuff like that where, as you're describing it, it might feel like the visual is she's lifting her arms and she's doing something. But in reality, if you just said she did something, of course she would have to lift her hands in order to do that. So that, for me, was something I caught in my editing when I was going back through of like, oh, well, it's pretty much implied that she was doing this. I can just go straight to the action, and it's also tighter and more engaging to do that, too. Absolutely.
[15:29] Emily: So something else that you can do. These are two things that I will often do, especially with action scenes, like really busy scenes. I will go look for a similar scene and look at how other authors have done it. So one of my favorite action scenes is from the second way of kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's when Adeline fights, like, five people in an arena, and so there's a lot going on, but it's just so brilliantly visually and emotionally because he gets betrayed and it's like there's all this stuff happening while he's fighting, and it's just a brilliant balance of what's going on internally for him and how it's visually playing out without being bogged down. So if I was going to go write, like, a sword fighting scene between multiple people, I could go reread that and look at where do you just fill in the blanks as a reader in Sanderson's writing? And where do you need that direction in order to visualize what's happening? So I'm a huge proponent of studying published works. We do that with our tenacious writing members all of the time because that is a massive way to level up your show skills, especially.
[16:38] Rachel: I also really recommend this, too, for spicy scenes. If you are writing a spicy scene or anything that has. If you're writing spicy, it's very helpful. And it was for me to read other published works that I really liked because in spicy, it can feel like you have to show all of this movement. And there's lots of explicit movement. Right. In a spicy scene, but you don't. There's a balance, and you can imply a lot, and a reader doesn't need to visualize everything going on. There's a balance between the emotion and the movement. And that's so true in spicy sense. While it feels like it's about the movement, it's not. It's about the emotion. So anyway, I found that really helpful to.
[17:25] Emily: Yeah, that's brilliant.
[17:26] Rachel: Learn. How do I navigate, like, a sex scene or an intense kiss scene? Any type of spicy scene, it doesn't have to be just, like, explicit sex. It can be anything.
[17:37] Emily: Yeah. Going and looking at some of the most, your favorite intimate scenes that you felt emotion from, like, going and rereading those and looking at how the author did it is a really great way to establish that as well. I do that too. So something else that you can do is put blinders on while you're writing the scene in the sense that give yourself your character's tunnel vision. Because when I'm going through my life, I am not like, okay, I'm standing up from my bed, and now I'm walking to my door, and now I'm opening. I just leave my bedroom.
[18:09] Rachel: Right.
[18:11] Emily: Your character is not thinking about every little movement that they're doing. And so as an author, you can kind of trim it down by just really focusing on what your character is going to notice.
[18:19] Rachel: Right.
[18:19] Emily: I notice that I left my bedroom. I noticed that there's someone in my living room, but I don't notice the rest of the living room around them. Right. You can show a lot of movement by just focusing on what is important to your character in that moment and kind of just get all the extra static out of there.
[18:44] Rachel: I love that. I think that kind of ties into my next tip, which is our last tip right here, of using character emotion to inform movement. So we talked about this from the side of like, okay, let's put emotions through their movement. Let's put emotions on the page. But I think a lot of people ask this or try to write this almost out of order where they know the movement and then they have an emotion. But I would say know the emotion and then let that determine how a character moves. So like the one we were talking about earlier. Let's use this example right now. If you're going to leave your bedroom, are you yanking the door open and walking out, or are you creeping out of your bedroom, looking around, making sure that maybe David's not around because you guys, and you're going down the stairs.
[19:40] Emily: Don'T want to make noise so the baby doesn't wake.
[19:42] Rachel: Exactly. Start first with the emotion and then let that inform. How are you going to write their movement? That was really helpful for me when I went back of, oh, okay, like, Leona's super angry right now. So what would she be doing? How would she be moving? Yeah. Interacting with the things around.
[20:05] Emily: Love it. So good. So reminder, this is one of what is currently nine tools that we're going to give you in your toolbox for how to show. And those tools include, like, descriptions, dialogue, backstory details, all kinds of stuff. I don't even remember all nine because they're amazing. And so we're going to break down real published works excerpts to show you how all of these work in our workshop, which, again, is going to start on February 25. It is a three day workshop over two weekends, and we are going to just really break open this tool for you so that you can just harness all of its magic. Because this is the magic of immersive stories and stories that your readers can see and feel and experience in the way that you want them to. Go ahead.
[20:59] Rachel: No, I was just going to say if you're in, even if you're like, oh, I want to hear more. All of the details about this workshop are in the show notes. So swipe up and click the link. You can see exactly what days we're meeting and for how long. And if you can't, we so encourage you to come live. It will be most impactful if you're able to be there live for such a class discussion and asking us questions. Because workshopping are there. Yeah, we're workshopping so you can come and ask us real questions. We are human beings that are going to be there to talk to you. But if you are, one day maybe you have to miss. No worries. There's going to be recordings. There's going to be all sorts of material available. We've got your back and we want you to learn as much as you can. So swipe up, click that link and come check us out and enroll. It's going to be an awesome workshop.
[21:52] Emily: And quick reminder, you get professional feedback on a 300 word excerpt from your own story. Rachel or I, we're going to split them up, but we are going to give you actual feedback on your work. So it's a pretty sweet opportunity.
[22:06] Rachel: Yes. So come, learn, practice, write, submit, give feedback, grow skills. Easy.
[22:13] Emily: Harness the magic.
[22:14] Rachel: Harness the magic. Get the secret sauce. All right.
[22:19] Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[22:25] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the magic of character arts. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[22:34] Emily: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye bye bye. Close.
