Writing: Telling vs. body language · 4:01am Jan 9th, 2014
Did you know that besides posting random brain farts, I also do question-and-answer? Neither did I! But apparently I do, as I just received a question, from Idylia:
Hey there, Bad Horse.
I'm a follower of yours and often an admirer of your blog posts on writing conventions, but I've recently come across something that's been bothering me a lot that I'm not sure how to remedy. Your name sprang to mind as someone I might be able to go to for advice/direction to advice, so here I am.
When I began writing I found I was able to churn out many thousands of words a day. Quickly, though, I became enraptured with ridding my writing of cliches like telling, unnecessary dialogue tags, etc as these things became apparent to me. The downside of this, though is that I've been learning a lot of what not to do with little guidance towards what to replace it with, and so I feel my writing as of late has become a bit too sterile.
The subject of my specific ire is body language. Body language was a very easy replacement for me to make in place of traditional 'telly' phrases and such, but I find now that it's become such a go-to for me that it's nearly all I ever sprinkle in the midst of my scenes, besides your average exposition.
I wanted to ask if this is something you've ever felt about writing, whether it be in your own writing or in pieces that you read. What other kind of goodstuff can I use to keep a scene interesting? Internal dialogue/thoughts are fine, but in scenes where lots of speaking is happening or I'm trying to do something tonal or stylistic with removing direct dialogue to the reader it's not something I can rely on. Many times when I'm very excited to be writing something, I use so much metaphorical language that editors or proofreaders will call my writing overdramatic or too purple.
Maybe this is something that I just need to generally use my creative brain to work through as I notice it, but I'd much appreciate hearing your thoughts on it, if you have any.
Good question. I struggle with the same problem myself, often at the behest of Equestria Daily prereaders, some of whom may look for phrases like "Amazing,' she gushed" or "He looked anxiously down the street" and ask me to replace the "telling" verb or adverb with body language. But if I do this too much, my characters jerk like spastic robots, and my narrator sounds like an alien anthropologist (I think that's GhostOfHeraclitus' phrase) taking notes.
The annotations of the climax of The Last Unicorn indicate that most human body language involves the arms and hands. If you're befuddled about body language, it would be easier to practice it in non-pony stories. Pony body language is hard! They don't have hands, we don't know for sure what they would do to indicate different emotions, and I doubt we have as precise a vocabulary for describing them. And sometimes, we know that horses do the opposite of what humans do to express some particular emotion--I forget the particulars, but I've had a couple of these pointed out to me--and then what do you do?
By body language, I mean descriptions of where body parts are or what they are doing: "He raised one eyebrow", "He shuddered." This is a bit of an etymological enterprise. I'm counting "shuddered" because the word "shudder" applies to describe the motion of inanimate objects, and when applied to animate objects, we imagine them making that same movement. "Her face reddened" is body language because it can be applied to any object ("the sky reddened").
Adverbs don't usually count, since "body language" is often what we are asked to replace adverbs with. But I'm tempted to count adverbs that could apply to inanimate objects as body language: "She threw the ball awkwardly" isn't body language; "She threw the ball jerkily" might be.
I'm less sure about "She shrugged her shoulders", because "shrugged" is a verb describing a stereotypical motion of an animate body, and nothing else. "She blushed" is similarly a verb that takes only animate agents. If we count "she blushed", should we also count "she ran", "she hit the wall", and "she snuck past" as body language?
The criterion of the people who tell us to use body language seems to be specificity. Anything that can be visualized in different ways is not body language. "Her face reddened" is body language; it means strictly that her face became more red. "She looked embarrassed" isn't, because we can imagine different ways of looking embarrassed.
I don't count blocking (stage directions) as body language ("She stood by the door.") There are borderline cases where the blocking implies more ("She stood with her back to the wall" suggests being threatened, pressed, and tense).
The next part of the question is what to use instead of body language. The best thing to do is to look at some great stories, and see what they do. Hence the previous (and forthcoming) story passages with adverbs, body language, and other descriptive devices annotated.
The excerpt I posted a few days ago from Chapter 8 of The Last Unicorn is very visual and descriptive. Let's go through it and look for the body language:
He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were as pale as scars.
That's straight description. Adjectives and similes.
For one moment the unicorn faced him, frozen as a wave about to break. Then the light of her horn went out, and she turned and fled. The Red Bull bellowed again, and leaped down after her.
Some action. Verbs, and another simile.
The unicorn had never been afraid of anything. She was immortal, but she could be killed: by a harpy, by a dragon or a chimera, by a stray arrow loosed at a squirrel. But dragons could only kill her - they could never make her forget what she was, or themselves forget that even dead she would still be more beautiful than they. The Red Bull did not know her, and yet she could feel that it was herself he sought, and no white mare. Fear blew her dark then, and she ran away, while the Bull's raging ignorance filled the sky and spilled over into the valley.
Now we deviate from literal description into a description of what she might be thinking and feeling. "Fear blew her dark" isn't the least bit literal, and neither is "the Bull's raging ignorance filled the sky". They're metaphors that describe her feeling and the source of his anger in physical terms.
Still no body language, though.
The trees lunged at her, and she veered wildly among them;
There it is! She's veering wildy... oh, wait, that's just a verb and an adverb.
she who slipped so softly through eternity without bumping into anything.
There — she's slipping softly... oops, that's just an adverb again. (You can't apply "slipped softly" to inanimate objects.)
... a great branch clubbed her on the shoulder so hard that she staggered and fell.
That's... no, still no body language; just precise verbs.
She was up immediately, but now roots humped under her feet as she ran, and others burrowed as busily as moles to cut across the path.
See, "burrowed as busily as moles"... wait, no, that's a verb followed by an adverbial phrase that makes a simile.
Vines struck at her like strangling snakes, creepers wove webs between the trees,
Two more similes.
This passage is full of similes and adverbs, but has no body language at all, despite having a good deal of action in it.
I'll try to post a few more annotated excerpts this month, looking at body language and other descriptive devices. Next up, "Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions" by Skywriter. If, OTOH, people are getting worn out by too darn many Bad Horse posts, I'll try to rein myself in for a bit.
Great post. I've been trying to figure it out to put it into words. Thanks, you just made me a better editor.
No, keep going, this is exactly what I need to read.
I'm never worn out on too many Bad Horse posts, but... I might be alone here, but I don't find examples that useful or interesting, unless they're illustrating one specific point. I find them hard to apply to my own writing or to think about abstractly. It might be a beautiful passage/book/fic, but my mind sees it as a whole, unable to be stripped down to determine the parts that create the sum. I'm much better at looking at abstract ideas, and figuring out how and where they apply in different kinds of writing as a tool for relating them to my own writing.
So, that's to say that the number of posts you make is fine, but I'll probably continue to skip the ones that are trying to analyze something specific piece by piece, and jump into the ones where you want to talk about a specific idea or group of ideas as theory.
Thank you for some excellent food for thought.
I can't speak for others, but I never get tired of reading these blogs. Even if (and that's a big if) some people disagree, sharing knowledge and helping others improve their own writing is never something to apologize for. It should be applauded.
Kind of an aside, but...
I actually find pony body language in many ways easier than human body language, because they have extra features (tails, wings, ears) which you can use for the purpose of expression in addition to most of the human ones (as they do do things like wave their hooves around). Ears in particular can be very expressive; different ear positions can mean different things (laying back can mean sad or angry, or possibly just lazy depending on the context; fully forward means paying attention, alertness, interest; twitching ears for hearing something or something irritating them or whatever; ear movements can be used to indicate some change as well), and you can do similar things with wings and tails.
Looking at birds, dogs, llamas, and other real-life animals can help you learn about animal body language. Threat displays, signs of affection, all of that stuff can be used as source material, not to mention the show itself.
Though I'm not entirely sure that telly dialogue in this way is actually a bad thing in the first place. I mean, just looking at a random chapter from a random book on my shelf (it happened to be Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince), in a few pages Harry turned eagerly, looked around surreptitiously, tried to keep a note of accusation out of his voice, Hermione said something irritably, Harry outright said Dumbledore looked worried, Mr. Gaunt shoot his son a threatening look... in the next chapter, Hermoine looks upset. Looks upset. Clearly, this filth is not fit for Equestria Daily.
I mean, these are all telling us how characters are, and saying someone looked angry (or that their face twisted in anger, or gave someone a dark look, or whatever) all mean something, but while they may involve body language, they don't... well, when you say someone looks upset, that's just saying they're upset with an extra word.
I dunno. I think the whole "use body language" thing may be overrated in the first place. Not that it isn't important - it definitely adds to a scene - but I think that throwing in telly things is actually not a big deal as long as you aren't doing it to excess. Not that JK Rowling is the greatest author of all time or anything, but it seems to me like I remember many instances in many books of exactly this sort of thing, and yet, somehow, it works just fine.
"Too many Bad Horse posts" is a phrase in the same category as "Too much chocolate." It takes an awful lot of both to be "too much."
I've been practicing my sideways descriptions, such as when a pony's lips draw back in a thin line, or they avoid looking at the speaker, but it's going to take a lot more work to make them flow. Celestia is the most fun to work with because you can "For just a split-second, Celestia looked every year her age, then the mask came down and the tranquil Princess of the Sun returned."
Weirdly enough, Cheerilee fits the same category, because with students around, the faces and words she uses can be phrased such that the reader knows what she's thinking even as she's keeping from 'educating' the kids just a little too much.
“Miss Cheerilee,” asked Diamond Tiara with an ill-concealed smirk. “What was Miss Twilight doing in the tutor’s wagon?”
“Studying,” replied Cheerilee firmly and without hesitation. “No doubt the new tutor was taking advantage... I mean using Twilight’s knowledge of... I mean... After we go to the library and everypony checks out a book for this afternoon’s reading, why don’t we go by Sugarcube Corner and get everybody a muffin. I mean a cupcake. My treat.”
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Yes; see, um, this post and my previous two posts. I was thinking of annotating a Harry Potter excerpt the way I did The Last Unicorn. Would you want to do that on your blog?
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I guess I completely missed your last blog post. Maybe I'll do that with one of the Harry Potter books. Might be fun. *wanders off to do just that*
But I guess I was just kind of agreeing with you. Sorry if it sounded like it was otherwise. I should really work on my rambling.
Hell no!
Do keep them coming, by all means. 
I learn from each one as much as I would from your average 'how to write a novel with one hand tied to your back' guides. 
).
If anything, I should thank you for posting them (which I'm doing right now, by the way
I'm not quite sure if I'm the only one that sees meaning in this, but the difference I saw between these two was more in how her body interacted with her position. In the former example her body happens to passively relate to a location, and the latter actively interacts with her surroundings.
4138239 If it's active interaction, I probably shouldn't call it blocking.