Moving Around Part Two: Technical considerations

The general consensus seemed to be that people wanted my stream-of-consciousness scene-developing example, so you’ll get that next week. In the meantime, here’s the technical post on moving characters around, that got interrupted because I can’t remember my own schedule for Open Mic days…

1. Suggestion box: Could we have a post on moving characters around in a scene?…I struggle with how much detail to include on movement and on background.

“Moving characters around in a scene” is more complicated than it sounds. This is because what characters do at any given moment in time is fundamentally an aspect of characterization. What people do depends on what they are like, where they are, where they stand in relation to the other characters in the scene, what is going on, and who else is present. On top of all that, you have the question of what the viewpoint character would notice and whether they would correctly interpret whatever they see.

Two characters who are meeting each other in a charming café for a cup of tea will not do the same things as the same two characters meeting in a sleazy warehouse to transfer the Top Secret papers. If one of them is planning to assassinate the other, that character won’t behave quite the same way in either circumstance as they would if they were sincere about the nice cup of tea or passing on the secret papers. Neither of them will behave quite the same way if they are in a group, rather than just meeting each other, and their behavior will not be the same if the group includes three murder suspects and a wannabe Evil Overlord, rather than their ex-spouses and current love interests.

Often, the deciding factor in determining what to show and when is the viewpoint character—what he/she sees and registers is “what happens.” And humans automatically filter out lots of information if they think it doesn’t matter, especially when there’s a lot going on.  So George may be so busy listening to Stefan explain about the stolen painting that he doesn’t notice Maria sliding behind him…and once she’s out of sight, he’ll have no idea what she’s doing until she conks him on the head.

This means that, in a given scene, the writer doesn’t have to put in everything. In fact, describing all the details is likely to slow the story down to a crawl. The bare minimum of description includes critical details, meaning those that are 1) immediately plot-relevant, 2) setup for later development, 3) important backstory, or 4) vital character development. However, putting in only the bare minimum means that most of the characters won’t get fully developed; the background and setting won’t, either; the story pacing may be adversely affected; and the reader will quickly figure out where the plot is going (because everything is plot-relevant). So usually, one also wants some non-critical details that develop secondary characters, subplots, and/or backstory/setting.

The first step, in theory, is deciding what each character would do in the specific situation—what their tics and tells are, how they’ll react (and what they do when they are bored or fascinated or appalled or whatever that reaction is). Once you know what everyone does, you can decide whether your POV notices it or not. If one does this up front, it is a bit overwhelming and can end up feeling like a straitjacket, leaving no room for spontaneous developments. On the other hand, it gets annoying to stop after every line of dialog, every revelation, every discovery, to think about how each character could/would react and how aware the POV is of what they’re doing.

Many of the writers I know start with a general idea of what will happen/what the characters will do in a scene, and the few key things their viewpoint has to notice and tell the reader about. Then they stop to think every so often to see if they’ve missed an opportunity to show a character’s reaction. Most of the time, there isn’t a large crowd of characters and only one or two are likely to have a significant reaction to whatever is being discussed. One of the ways of flagging something as important, especially something that on the surface looks as if it should be minor, is for one or two characters to react more strongly than seems called for (which tells the reader that the character(s) know that this is more important than it looks). If it’s an especially big discovery/revelation (“The aliens are arriving to destroy the Earth…tomorrow.”) then it is not unreasonable to give the reader a reaction check on all of the main characters who are present.

For writers who have particular difficulty in figuring out what kinds of movement to describe, I generally recommend picking a movie or TV show that they haven’t seen, and watching it with the sound turned off. When all you have to pay attention to is the actors’ actual movements—looking away or down, hunching or squaring shoulders, raising eyebrows, slamming a coffee mug down, taking notes (or not)—it’s easier to recognize the kinds of movements that tell the POV character or reader something important. The camera angles and what they choose to focus on also give cues about when to move characters around—when the camera cuts away from the guy who is speaking to show someone in the back of the audience getting up and leaving, for instance.

An alternative, more analytical approach is to consider possibilities top-down—that is, start with what characters could do with their head, hair, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, shoulders, and on down to feet, or macro-to-micro—start with large body movements (pacing, jumping, entering/leaving, slamming a door, throwing a vase, arm-waving, kicking or punching, etc.) and moving on to smaller and less-noticeable things like an eyebrow-twitch, tensing shoulders, tightening lips. Again, watching actors with the sound off can provide a list of possibilities.

Finally, it’s often really useful to pay attention to any reactions the characters are trying to hide, and the tells that give them away to the viewpoint.