I'm reaching the end of my first draft (novella). I'm feeling that the more I have the describe facial expressions and bodily gestures, the harder it gets to avoid repetition. There's a limit to how many times I can describe someone smiling, laughing, etc... I also noticed a tendency to use hand-oriented words: grasp, clamp, grip, hold... as well as an overreliance on eyes: his eyes narrowed, her eyes widened, his gaze pierced me, etc... The first obvious solution would be to vary the body language. So instead of expressing a character's surprise with "Joe's eyes widened" I can go with a different body part or trait: "Joe stammered the words." The problem is it doesn't always fit the situation. And like, god damn, sometimes characters HOLD things over and over, and sometimes they SMILE all the time. I suppose another solution, instead of outright cutting the gestures, is to imply body language via other means. The line, '"Well," he said' implies some handwavy motions or a rising pitch in the voice delivery. But how many times can you really on that? I'm interested in hearing what other solutions you might offer to repetitive description of body language.
Short answers: don't use it. You only need the occasional beat here or there. If the reader can't understand the inflection of the dialogue from the context and the occasional gesture, the writer is doing something wrong.
What POV are you writing in? An over-reliance on body language and facial expression sounds like a problem with being in too external of a POV. A person doesn't know about their own body language or facial expression, they know what they're doing from more internal cues, or rather they don't even need internal cues because they're inside their own body. We should know what the POV character is doing from different kinds of cues (I don't even know what to call it). The body lingo etc should only be from external characters, and as Homer said, there shouldn't be very much of it. A little goes a long way, like adjectives and adverbs. The best way for us to see the problem would be for you to post something in the workshop after meeting the 2 for 1 requirement. Just as a quick way to avoid body language— He gripped the yardstick tightly so I couldn't pull it out of his grasp. Could be written: He refused to give it up no matter how hard I pulled, and no way was I letting him have it! Rather than write about what their physical bodies are doing I wrote about their intentions directly. The physical actions are implied.
Thank you! I'm definitely not big on body gestures in every other line. I'll have to inspect where in my writing I'm using body language when it isn't needed. Writing their intentions as actions is great. Thank you! I write in 3rd person limited. I have this issue mostly with external characters who are not the POV. I do reserve things like smiling for the POV, but otherwise it's internal sensations, thoughts and telling actions (tapping foot in impatience, etc...). I'll consider posting an excerpt once I went over my 1st draft and see where people can highlight this issue. Thank you!
As an exercise, you might try writing something like pure dialogue, only using gestures when absolutely necessary, in other words, only when it replaces dialog. (She scowled and said nothing.) See what you end up with. From there, sprinkle in physicality only where you feel vital information is lost that the reader absolutely cannot infer from the dialog. You may realize just how little is needed. If you haven't overdone it at this point, a third pass might be warranted. In this final phase, look at the flow of the dialog. Does it pause where it needs to? Is there decent variation between sentences structures to the point of avoiding overly rhythmic "he said, she said?" Break it up with description where it really needs to be broken up for pacing and flow and be done with it. This technique would mimic what a lot of people are doing who naturally lack physicality, like myself. I forget to break up the dialog unless I want a break in the conversation for a second. I have to go back through and add things to it much in the way I've outlined above. Try it. See if it helps. You don't have to do this every time you write dialog. I just think it might help you identify how much description is actually needed throughout a conversation.
In my opinion, NLP is bollocks - but iirc they have a theory that everyone has a subconscious orientation to one of their 5 senses over the others - i.e. out of touch/taste/see/hear/smell I doubt that has any biological or scientific basis, but maybe you're touch-oriented. Now that this has been suggested to you, it's productively unprovable - but what NLP go on to sell people is the idea that as salespeople we can build rapport more confidently by consciously orienting our word choices to match the subconscious preference of the people we're shilling rubbish to over the telephone. Which is much easier for writers than telesales people - we can edit afterwards - so rather than paying gurus to coach us, we can go back through what we've written and try to switch those words for neutral ones, or mix them up a bit. And I suspect at some point the same bullshit was co-opted into the creative writing courses - you often see advice to "use all five of the character's senses to make the descriptions more vivid." These sensory markers can be metaphorical - truly they are never anything else, since characters' bodies aren't real. "He clenched his biro" is structurally equivalent to "He tasted the sweat on the back of his knuckle" or "He heard the deadline drumming down on him" or "He could almost smell that sweet, minty word-rate." "If in doubt, cut it out" applies in spades. Don't waste words describing unreal scenes: instead only use these beats when there's an opportunity to control pace, theme and tone. "Joe's eyes widened" > "The piggy pin-holes became limpid pools"
I agree wholeheartedly. What I usually do is write the dialogue first, without any attribution tags or actions. Then I ask myself what happens in this scene, physically, and from there which actions taken by the characters are not obvious to the situation. Same with the intonation - which of their vocal deliveries are spoken in a non-obvious way. Then I add only those things that deviate from the norm.
I see it as something character dependent. We have several cultures that are just as expressive with their hands and body language as the speak.
Just don't do it. Don't use them at all if you can. You're trying to break a bad habit that you realize is a problem and is holding you back as a writer. If anything, it's seems like it's just wordiness when used at the level you're talking about. I say get rid of them all and quit cold turkey. I'm not saying to never use things like that again, but until you feel like you don't need the, my suggestion is to stop using them. Good luck!
I don't know what creative writing courses you took, but you seem to have a very negative view on them, not just from this post but others as well. I've taken more creative writing courses than I can count. Of course, I've heard this advice (I think all writers have), but it didn't come from any course I took and there was never a class discussion or anything like that. I mean, that's pretty basic stuff. And it doesn't mean to cram in a bunch of stuff. We always talk about rules and tools. I think this is a tool that can add different elements into a scene, but, surely we wouldn't try to use them all. I think this is said to remind writers they have these options. I don't think I ever received any bad advice or direction from any of my creative writing courses. I am sorry your experience with these kinds of courses was so different than mine.
