Breathe life into your characters using action
Action makes your characters come alive in your fiction. Think how boring it is to read boring descriptions and dry narratives without the character actually doing anything. When I find this in my own writing and have to go back and and put my characters into action.
This boils down to that old saying ‘show, don’t tell’ (I wrote about this earlier Stephen King offers a ‘show, don’t tell’ lesson in new novel). There are effective ways to do this, and when done right, your characters will jump off the page and be more realistic.
This post has been inspired by another post I read from The Techtiggers’ Soapbox called The Human Touch: Using Body Language in Writing. The post offers a great example of how using action really does liven up your characters:
For example, you can say ‘she whispered seductively in his ear’ and you’ll get the point across. The problem is that your brain thinks only about how the voice sounds, the rest of body is left out. Now, try this: her lips brushed his ear as she whispered, “yes.” Yeowza, fireworks! Your body reacts in a more visceral way to the physical interaction.
A perfect contrast between showing vs. telling. There is technically nothing wrong with the first way of writing the scene (she whispered…), but you are merely telling. But when action is added “her lips brushed his ear” you get a more vivid picture of the characters and scene.
Thinking and Doing
Another trick I’ve learned in my own writing is to use action when characters are doing mundane things like thinking. Since I like to get inside my characters’ head and reveal their thoughts, I need a way to do this without putting the reader to sleep. Here’s an example:
Without Action
This is a really boring lecture, John thought.
Boring, right? Yeah, it gets the point across but it’s not very effective.
With Action
John shifted in his seat and yawned from the endless lecture.
Much better. Instead of just telling what John thought, we are showing it by his actions. It’s much easier to imagine John yawning and getting restless than just imagining him sitting in his seat think ”this is boring.”
Action drives your story forward. Don’t let your character sit around as talking heads, breathe life into them using action. Your readers will thank you for it.
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