Perspective Errors: Over-Writing Action

Several types of perspective place you inside the head of the protagonist: third-person limited perspective and first-person present-tense perspective both embrace the concept that you are being shown the story in the moment that it happens through the lens of the perspective character. Third-person omniscient and first-person past-tense perspective also sometimes relay the narrative in this manner—through the eyes of a character as it is happening.

We’ve discussed before the importance of describing scenes, action, and other characters in a way that is appropriate for the perspective from which you’re writing. For example, an illiterate thug who grew up on the streets probably wouldn’t describe his perceptive friend as “perspicacious,” even in his own head. He might not even use the word “perceptive,” for that matter. So if you’re in the thug’s head, you shouldn’t describe his friend that way. It doesn’t matter if you, the author, would describe someone as perspicacious; you’re trying to place your audience in the mind of the perspective character, and using out-of-place language breaks the illusion.

Now, the way you describe action and the world of your story should also be influenced by any temporary conditions that your perspective character is under. A blindfolded character could not describe her surroundings visually, and so she would have to focus more on sounds, smells, and other senses that she normally would. A character who has taken a blow to the head might be dizzy or have trouble thinking clearly, and the language you use while they are in that state should reflect that.

One such state that frequently arises but often does not affect the prose of new writers is action. A character in a high-adrenaline situation, where they are perhaps fighting for their life, should not usually perceive their surroundings and their actions in the same way that they would in a calmer situation. Here’s a few things to look out for when writing actions scenes from the perspective of your character:

Match your description to your time

     Jenna moved forward slowly, careful to place her feet gently to avoid making any sound. Between each step, she peered through the trees, checking the darkness between the trees for the source of the noises she had heard. She held her rifle ready—the noises couldn’t have been made by anything smaller than a person.

     A black shadow suddenly loomed above the foliage ahead of her. The moment she noticed it, the creature—an enormous, scarred black Jinduan bear—charged with a deafening roar. Behind it, three small cubs growled, watching Jenna curiously.

White oak branches cracked and shattered out of the bear’s path, and Jenna only caught a glimpse of gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines before she was knocked to the ground by a heavy paw with muddy, five-inch claws. She attempted to raise her rifle, but there wasn’t enough room.

Most action happens quickly. In this example, the bear charged so quickly that Jenna was unable to shoot it, even though she explicitly had her rifle ready. And yet, in that time, she was able to discern what type of bear this was, that it was scarred, how many cubs the creature had, what they were doing, and what type of branches the bear was charging through. Doesn’t that seem a little unrealistic? Even if Jenna might have been vaguely, peripherally aware of these details, they probably wouldn’t have been occupying her attention in the moment that the angry bear was charging her!  Limit your description to fit the focus and observational capabilities of your character in the moment that events are happening.

In action, simple words can trump more complicated or specific words

I’ve posted several times about the need to use more specific, evocative words in description. In action, however, this rule doesn’t always apply. When adrenaline is pumping and action is happening quicker than rational thought, your prose can reflect your character’s inability to think quickly enough to keep up with the action.

For example, in our example above—if an enormous bear was charging you and you caught a brief glimpse of its face just before it attempted to ruthlessly, messily kill you, do you think your mind would be going, “Hmm, look at those gleaming yellow irises and massive white canines. Oh, and what heavy paws with muddy claws. Why, I do believe that those claws are approximately five inches long. My, my.” Of course you wouldn’t be thinking that! Unless you are the most hardened, constantly-in-peril protagonist in all of history, you would probably be thinking, “TEETH!! SCARY EYES!! HOLY @#!% THOSE @!&#ING CLAWS ARE HUGE!! I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

Now, you don’t need to reduce your narrative to nigh-incoherent screaming, and I certainly hope that you would avoid such horrible over-use of capital letters. But you should probably try to find a good middle ground. If your normally-well-spoken protagonist suddenly drops all of her eloquence in the middle of an action scene, it could be a useful and effective way to convey unthinking fear or urgency. Even if your character keeps their head, they should probably be too busy fighting for survival to consider the specifics of every detail.

Mordu, did you know that one of your incisors is broken? Oh, sorry, we're busy, aren't we? This probably isn't the best time.

Shorter sentences are preferable to longer sentences

This is an oft-repeated bit of advice for action scenes, but it is oft-repeated because it is good advice. Short sentences serve the same purpose as simple words—they convey that events are happening quickly, that the character doesn’t have time to think, that her mental state has been reduced to a more basic, primal, survival instinct.

Now, your action scenes shouldn’t consist of nothing but sentence fragments—in fact, many of your sentences may still turn out pretty long. But you should avoid more complicated sentences. If you’re busting out semicolons, colons, or too many em dashes, you’re probably decreasing the tension of your action scene. Your character is having to react too quickly for them to think much, and you want your readers to feel that. But if they have to slow down to decipher or consider complicated sentence construction, that won’t happen.

Phrases to Avoid: "Walked Leisurely"

I see the phrase “walked leisurely” with surprising frequency. It falls under more than one category of poor word choice: it uses an unnecessary adverb and uses two words where one would do.  Instead of “walked leisurely,” any of these words would work better:

     Stroll: to walk in a leisurely or idle manner.

     Amble: to walk slowly in a free and relaxed way (generally carries a more aimless and leisurely connotation than stroll).

     Saunter: to walk along in a slow and relaxed manner (implies a cockier attitude than stroll or amble).

     Meander: to walk slowly without a specific goal, purpose, or direction.

     Ramble: to move aimlessly from place to place or to explore idly (usually indicates a more widespread area of movement than meander—for instance, you might meander around a store or maybe a town, but ramble around a country).

This seems to be a common phenomenon with verbs of motion—rather than finding one word that fits a character’s movement best, writers use a common verb with an adverb. Here’s some other examples that I’ve seen:

     “Ran hard”—usually better as sprinted

     “Jumped up and down repeatedly”—bounced or hopped.

     “Quickly moved out of the way”—dodged, evaded, or sidestepped.

Eating During Dialog

Last time, we discussed the need for a character’s actions during dialog to be meaningful—to demonstrate something about their state of mind or to be part of a task that they are trying to carry out, rather than simply being inserted to create the necessary ebb and flow in the conversation.

One task I often see characters performing during dialog is eating. It is usually a good method for achieving the goals we discussed last time: it gives you plenty of distinct actions to fill in the gaps of the conversation; it can be used to reveal a character’s personality or state of mind (for example, a character who eats in the middle of an important conversation could seem flippant or disinterested, while a polite character might be very careful about chewing with their mouth closed and always swallowing before they speak); and it is a realistic task that people often carry out while they eat (especially if the conversation takes place at a meal or if the character is played by Brad Pitt).

He is having a conversation in every one of these scenes. (Image from Cracked.com.)

So if you want to have a character eat during a conversation, go for it! Just be sure to look out for these common pitfalls:

Food that doesn’t affect the conversation

     Brad took another bite of his sandwich. “You should have just killed him when you had the chance.”

So . . . is Brad speaking with his mouth full, or are we supposed to assume that he chewed and swallowed before speaking? If he is speaking with his mouth full, how are the other characters reacting to that? Is it disgusting to see? Are they having trouble understanding his words? Or, if he’s waiting before he speaks, how are the other characters reacting to that awkward pause?

This is a little problem that becomes increasingly incongruous the longer the conversation goes on. We all know that a conversation with someone who is eating doesn’t usually flow quite the same way that speaking with someone normally does; and if you fail to acknowledge that reality in your story, it can make the conversation seem subtly unrealistic to your readers.

Now, fixing this problem can also be a little tricky. You don’t want to have to clarify whether or not the character is speaking with their mouth full or not every time they take a bite—it would clutter up the conversation very quickly.  A better option would be to simply describe the character’s combined eating/speaking habits at the beginning of the conversation and only briefly allude to them once or twice later on. You can also try to rearrange the prose so that it raises fewer questions about how the food is affecting the character’s speech (i.e. having them take bites after they speak instead of before). So, our previous example could be reworked in this manner:

     “You should have just killed him when you had the chance,” Brad said. He took another bite of his sandwich.

Simultaneous biting and speaking

     “You should have just killed him when you had the chance,” Brad said, taking another bite of his sandwich.

Remember what we discussed about “ing” verbs in this post? The above construction implies that Brad is speaking at the same time that he takes a bite of his sandwich. Go try to take a bite of something while you speak. It doesn’t work, does it? Your mouth can’t handle both tasks at once—even Brad Pitt has to eat before or after he speaks a line. People can chew and talk at the same time, but they can’t take a bite and talk at the same time.

Too much attention to the minutiae of eating

     Brad took another bite of his sandwich. “You should have just killed him when you had the chance,” he said around the mouthful.

     I don’t even want to kill him now,” Jose replied.

     Brad swallowed and brushed crumbs from his chin. “Seriously? He sure seems to want to kill us.” He took another bite of his food.

     “That doesn’t mean we can’t find a peaceful resolution to all this.”

     Brad swallowed again and took another bite. “Death is peaceful.”

     “Dying isn’t.” Jose shook his head. “There’s got to be another way.”

      “So we kill him in his sleep.” Brad shrugged, swallowed, and finished off his sandwich. “Peacefully.”

This happens quite a lot in the manuscripts I edit. Your audience doesn’t need a blow-by-blow account of every single bite, chew, swallow, and face-wipe. We understand how eating works. Focus instead on the less usual parts of eating—if you need a beat in the conversation, have the character drop a fork, or get something stuck in their teeth and try to get it out, or bite their tongue. They could spill mustard on their shirt or choke and cough up a disgusting spray of crumbs and spittle. Any of that would be more interesting than bite, chew, swallow, repeat. And if you don’t want the meal to take any of those particular turns, that’s fine—just space out the biting, chewing, and swallowing enough that they don’t grow tiresome and intersperse them other actions and information.

To close, here’s an example of all of this done well from Charlie Holmberg’s The Paper Magician.

     [Mg. Thane] stabbed his fork into two pieces of pasta and raised them to his lips. He tasted them, chewing, and his eyes brightened just a bit more. “I’d say, Ceony,” he said after swallowing, “had I not been present for the lessons, I’d think you’d found a way to enchant pasta.”

     Ceony smiled. “You like it?”

     He nodded, scooping up another bite. “It tastes just as good as it smells. That’s a sign of a well-rounded person. I should congratulate you.”

     “On my person or my pasta?”

     Light danced in his eyes. He didn’t answer.

     Ceony tasted her chicken, relieved it wasn’t too dry. Three bites into her own dinner, Mg. Thane said, “Oldest of four.”

     “Two sisters, one brother,” Ceony replied. “Do you have a large family? You seem like someone who suffered through a great deal of sisters.”

     “I’ve suffered through a great many people, but none of them sisters. I’m an only child.”

     That explains a few things, Ceony thought.

     A few seconds of silence passed between chewing bites. Not wanting the time to grow long, Ceony asked, “When do you get groceries?”

     He glanced at her. “When I run out, I suppose. Groceries are my most dreaded chore.”

     “Why?”

     He lowered his fork and leaned his chin onto his hand, elbow on the table edge.

     “They require going to the city,” he stated. “And it’s hot out, besides.”

     Ceony paused as she cut into the next morel of chicken. “Do you freckle?”

     He laughed. “Now there’s a conversation turn—”

    “I mean,” Ceony began, “I could understand not going outside if you freckle.” She glanced to her hands, spotted with freckles of her own. They had a tendency to cover any bit of skin exposed to the sun between March and October.

     “I don’t freckle,” he said. She must have been frowning at her hands, for he added, “And there’s nothing wrong with freckles, Ceony. Heaven forbid you look like everyone else in this place.”

     Ceony smiled and shoved some pasta in her mouth to keep the grin contained.

     “And since you have so much extra time,” Mg. Thane said, “your first quiz will be tomorrow morning.”

Making Movement Meaningful

Pure dialog can get confusing and even boring; it can also fail to convey the many subtleties that people communicate through means like expression and body language. This is the reason that writers often insert small actions into passages of dialog. The actions could be changes in a character’s expression, small movements or gestures, or specific tasks that the character is performing while they talk. For example:

     “I don’t think we should go after her,” Sofia whispered. She shifted in her seat and closed her eyes with a sigh.

     Matilde glanced at Sofia and then looked away. “Why not?”

    “She decided to leave all on her own. No one made her.” Sofia shook her head and bit her lip. “She obviously doesn’t want to be here.”

     “Maybe . . .” Matilde replied, looking down at her feet while she shuffled them back and forth. “But what happens when she decides she wants to be here after all and it’s too late for her to come back? Chiara tends to be pretty impulsive.”

     Sofia stuck out her tongue. “We still can’t force her to do what she doesn’t want to,” she said, waving her hands.

     Matilde looked up with a frown and then turned away again, wringing her hands. “We could. And maybe we should.”

Now, that passage was packed a little too full of actions—every single line of dialog was accompanied by at least one action. That’s partly because I wanted to fit as many examples as I could into one passage, but many people do write their conversation scenes this way.  But why is that too many actions? Am I saying that you should never have an action to accompany every line of dialog? No. The problem isn’t the number of actions so much as it is the lack of purpose behind so many of the actions.

Let’s list the actions from the passage again:

     shifted in her seat

     closed her eyes

     with a sigh

     glanced at Sofia

     and then looked away

     shook her head

     and bit her lip

     looking down at her feet

     shuffled [her feet] back and forth

     stuck out her tongue

     waving her hands

     looked up with a frown

     and then turned away again

     wringing her hands

What are each of these actions supposed to convey? Why is the character performing that particular action at that point in the conversation?  With some of these actions, the purpose is pretty clear. When someone closes their eyes and sighs, for instance, it’s usually a pretty good indication of weariness or irritation. Hand wringing and lip biting are decent ways to indicate nervousness or internal confliction. And frowns are pretty clear indications of unhappiness or severe confusion.

But even those examples could each have more than one meaning. As for the others, they don’t convey anything meaningful. What is the audience supposed to learn from the fact that Sofia “shifted in her seat”? Is the seat uncomfortable? Is she emotionally uncomfortable and the movement is a physical indication of that fact? Was she trying to relax or get a better view of something? There are so many reasons to shift in one’s seat that simply describing the action carries next to no meaning.

Why is it significant that Matilde looked at Sofia and then looked away? What does that mean? What does it mean that she’s looking down at her feet while shuffling them? Is her turning away after looking up with a frown supposed to tell us something about her thoughts? Because it isn’t. It might be vaguely sort-of hinting at some sort of emotional state, but it sure isn’t informing the audience of anything.

Even Sofia sticking out her tongue is confusing. There are so many ways and reasons that people stick out their tongues:

Each of these images conveys a different emotion, and yet they could all be described as someone “sticking out his or her tongue.” From the context, we could probably narrow down Sofia’s gesture to two or three of these, but it still wouldn’t be clear. Is she disgusted? Petulant? Nauseated? We just don’t know.  Remember—most expressions and movements can indicate more than one emotion, thought, or state of mind. Just because you know which meaning you were trying to convey doesn’t mean that your readers will get it.

“Looks” are probably the worst category of offenders on this front. Throughout the conversations I read, characters are “looking” all over the place. They look at one another, they look at their feet, at the wall, at the table, into the distance, into the sky, at their hands, at their clothes. And most of it doesn’t have any meaning whatsoever. Beware the meaningless look!

This usually happens when a writer can tell that the conversation needs a beat or a brief lull to break up the dialog, but they don’t have anything for the characters to do to provide that break. If you need a beat but you can’t think of a meaningful movement or expression for your character, then give them something to do! In our example above, Sofia could have been trying to finish some (plot-related) paperwork while they conversed or Matilde could have already begun packing to go after Chiara. The possibilities are endless.

Give your manuscript to a friend and ask them to highlight any point where the purpose of movements or expressions was unclear or confusing. If you can’t come up with a meaningful movement to replace the vague one, then don’t be afraid to cut it out entirely.

Minding Your "ings," Part Three

We’ve previously discussed proper use of present participles (a form of verb that ends in “ing”) in this post and this post. It may be helpful to have read those two articles before you read this one.

In those posts, we went over the need for an “ing” verb to have a subject in the sentence that performs it—usually, present participles are used to indicate that one subject is performing two or more actions simultaneously. For example:

     Humming to herself, Jalila began to paint.

In this sentence, Jalila is performing both actions—humming and painting. Most sentences that use this type of “ing” verb are formatted along these lines, with a single subject. However, it is possible to have multiple subjects in a single sentence performing simultaneous actions:

     Her back was still as straight as a rod, her fingernails digging into the steering wheel and leaving imprints in the faux leather.

This sentence follows the rules from our previous posts—every verb has an appropriate subject performing it (“Her back” for “was” and “her fingernails” for “digging” and “leaving”) and the actions are simultaneous. It’s not a bad sentence by any means, but it could still be a little bit better.

A sentence with this sort of format—subject #1 performs an action while subject #2 performs a simultaneous action with an “ing” verb—carries with it a certain implication. That implication is that subject #2 (and subjects #3, #4, and so on, if there are any more) are somehow part of subject #1. Think of it as a wiki page with several subpages—the subpages are part of the topic introduced by the primary page, adding pertinent information to it. That’s why they’re attached to it. Similarly, subjects #2 and #3 are part of the same sentence as subject #1 because they add more detailed information to the topic introduced by the primary subject. Otherwise, they should just have their own sentence.

In our example sentence, “her back” is subject #1. Subject #2 is “her fingernails.” Although these are both part of the same whole, the whole itself is never mentioned in the sentence. “Her fingernails” are not a part of “her back”—not if she’s human, at least!  Subject #2 isn’t adding detail to the action of subject #1, it is adding separate information. The sentence could be fixed in two different ways:

     Tia sat with her back as straight as a rod, her fingernails digging into the steering wheel and leaving imprints in the faux leather.

Or . . .

     Her back was still as straight as a rod. Her fingernails dug into the steering wheel, leaving imprints in the faux leather.

In the first fixed example, we make the character the primary subject of the sentence instead of her back. Since “her fingernails” are a part of the character, the sentence flows properly. In the second fixed example, we simply take all the information about “her fingernails” and make it a sentence on its own, removing the implication that it is somehow an added detail to the first portion.

Here’s another common use of this format:

     They hurried to prepare the apartment, Jalila shoving discarded clothing and junk out of sight and Naima vacuuming the matted carpet. 

In this case, the primary subject is “They.” Since Jalila and Naima are both part of “They,” the sentence flows correctly. Now, that’s not to say that this is the best format to use in this case—but if you do use it, make sure that it follows the proper logic. “A whole performs an action, with individual parts of the whole performing specific actions x and y.”

Minding Your "ings" Part Two

Last time we discussed the need for present participles (a form of verb that ends in “ing”) to be paired with a subject that performs the action. For instance:

     As Brad was running to the bus stop, rain began to fall.

    

In this example, both actions (running and began to fall) have a subject attached (Brad and rain, respectively), so the sentence is constructed correctly. We’re good so far. Now take a look at this example:

     Running to the bus stop, Brad climbed onto the bus.

Once again, the participle is not dangling—Brad is performing both actions (running and climbed). So what was wrong with this sentence?

You may remember that in the last post, I mentioned that the phrase “Running to the bus stop,” was a type of adverbial phrase—a phrase that acts like an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs, adding more detailed information as to how the action was performed. Words like quickly or suspiciously are adverbs, as is the phrase “like a ___.” (He landed like a cat.)

“Running to the bus stop,” is an adverbial phrase that tells us when the primary action of the sentence (climbed) was performed—it was performed while Brad was running to the bus stop. And that’s the problem with our example sentence: Brad couldn’t have climbed onto the bus while he was running to the bus stop. He would have run to the bus stop and then climbed onto the bus.

Now, just like last time, you don’t have to remember that whole explanation about adverbs and adverbial phrases. (Though it won’t hurt your writing if you do!) What you need to remember is this: phrases with “ing” verbs are used to imply simultaneous action. If the two actions don’t take place at the same time, you cannot use the “ing” form of the verb. (Most of the time. I’ll show you an exception in a moment.)

So, here’s a corrected version of our previous sentence:

     Brad ran to the bus stop and climbed onto the bus.

Bam! First one action, then another—it doesn’t get any simpler than that.  However, here is another fix:

     After running to the bus stop, Brad climbed onto the bus.

    

This is the exception that I mentioned earlier. If you add an adverb that changes the timing of the adverbial phrase, such as after or before, so that the actions are no longer simultaneous, then you can still use the “ing” verb.

P.S.

The same principles apply to phrases that begin with while and as—these words imply simultaneous action, so they cannot be used with actions that couldn’t take place simultaneously.

But wait, this isn't all! For more on minding your "ings," check out this post.

Cause and Effect in Prose

Based on the title of this post, you can probably figure out which of the following two lines is better and why.

     Diego raised his hands in the air when he turned and found a soldier pointing an AK-47 at him.

     Diego turned and found a soldier pointing an AK-47 at him. He raised his hands in the air.

In the first line, we are told that Diego is raising his hands in the air before we find out the reason for it. The effect is given to us before the cause. While the line does make sense, it doesn’t flow as smoothly as the second line does, where cause and effect are given in their natural order.

Our minds are well-trained to identify cause and effect. As we discussed in this post, readers generally don’t need authors to explicitly identify what stimuli caused what effect; they can put two and two together. However, this is always easier to do when the cause is shown before the effect. Generally, you’re best off constructing your sentences and paragraphs so that cause and effect are shown in their natural order. The result will be clearer, more window-like prose (as discussed here), which will be easier for your readers to read and internalize.

You may be tempted to shrug and dismiss this advice as obvious—it seems natural and instinctive, after all. I mean, really; what writer would put effect before cause? All of them.

Writers tend to jot down sentences as they come to mind, and they don’t always come to mind in the most logical or lucid format. If you’re dwelling on the effect, you may put it down first without thinking, no matter how well-practiced an author you are. I still do it, and I’ve been editing for years.

So take a look at your latest draft. Read it out loud, and pay particular attention to cause and effect. Odds are good that you’ll find a few out-of-order sentences or paragraphs, and now you’ll know what is wrong with them. Good luck!

Phrases to Avoid: "Causing Them To"

We've discussed the need to avoid redundant or excessive words a few times before. Over the next little while, we'll identify specific phrases and sentence constructions that add unneeded bulk to writing. The first is the phrase causing them to and all its possible variations. (Causing him to, her to, me to, etc.)

Here's a sample sentence based off of many that I've seen over the years:

     Bullets zipped around them, causing them to veer off the path.

The problem with the phrase causing them to is that it insults the audience—it assumes that they cannot understand something as simple as cause and effect without having it explicitly explained to them. Give your audience some credit. If you first tell them that someone is shooting at the characters, and you then tell them that the characters veered out of the way, they will understand that the one caused the other.

     Bullets zipped around them. They veered off the path.

See? Simple, perfectly understandable cause and effect. Removing causing them to turned a weak, awkward sentence into two strong sentences. In an actual story, of course, it wouldn't hurt to be a little more descriptive:

     Bullets zipped around the car. Dave swerved onto a side street without thinking.

     Bullets zipped around them. Shouting, Raisa dove off of the path into the bushes. The others immediately followed her.

    Bullets zipped around them. In near unison, the posse veered their horses off of the path into the river.

There is almost no situation in a story that would justify using causing them to. You might use it in the text of a police report or the dialog of a witness in a trial as they describe what they saw—situations where the objective is to simply explain a past event in a plain and even boring manner. But in your prose, in the moment when bullets are zipping around your characters—when their lives are in danger—the last thing you want is to be weak and boring. 

Go, right now, to your current work-in-progress. Pull up the find window, and search for every place that you've used the word causing. If it's an instance of causing them to or one of its variations, then get rid of it. I promise you your work will improve.