Sequence in Description, Part 3
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Sequence in Description, Part 3
* One More Thing
* Two Days Left
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"Readers don’t come back just because two characters gaze at each other across a dimly lit room. They come back for emotional movement…the ups, the downs, the twists that keep them turning pages...." Kris Maze in "Write Emotional Scenes that Better Engage Readers" (highly recommended)
A New Short Story
"Before I Forget" went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It's free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.
Sequence in Description, Part 3
Who knew there'd be a part 3? But here it is.
I noticed this while cycling through the previous day's writing.
In addition to the stuff I talked about over the past two days, the sequence of how the description is woven into the dialogue matters too.
In other words, describe what happens when it happens in relation to the dialogue.
Consider this excerpt from earlier in my current novel. Especially look at the fifth paragraph:
"Maybe." She shrugged. “It’s just me and a two-bedroom house and the divorce papers. They came a few days ago, certified mail.” She paused. “I haven’t signed them yet, but when I get home, that’s the first thing I’m going to do.”
Uh-oh. “Why?”
She frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“No, I mean, why now?”
“Oh.” She smiled and wagged a hand. “Don’t worry, Paul. It isn’t about you.” She paused. “Well, it’s a little about you.” She put her hand on mine. “You reminded me of who I am. That I don’t have to be glued to the hip of some jerk for the rest of my life.”
I grinned broadly. “Glad to be of service. In fact, it was my pleasure. But I guess being married wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. If I didn’t have to travel so much—”
Her eyes went wide and she jerked her hand away. “Ohmygod! You aren’t gonna ask me to MARRY you, are you?”
I sat back, and I think my heart skipped a beat.
Fortunately, she couldn’t hold the poker face and she busted out laughing.
As the heat of color rose in my face, I pointed at her. “Ha. Good one.” I chuckled. “No, not quite yet. Seriously, I was just thinking, it would be different for a contact, right? At least you can be home as much as you want. So if you did find the right guy—especially one you could trust and who wouldn’t judge you for how you make a living—marriage might not be so bad.”
Do you see the difference it might make in the visuals you convey to the reader (and the depth of the scene) if you omitted any of the brief narrative descriptions (others call these 'narrative beats')?
Dialogue never happens in a vacuum.
When two characters are talking, never let them be just 'talking heads' with no expressions and no body language or gestures.
Fortunately, if you're down in the story with the characters, you don't have to make anything up. Just write what you see and hear, but be careful to write it as it occurs.
Any questions, email me or leave a comment.
One More Thing
This is a brand new realization for me.
You know how I always say, especially in regard to punctuation, you need to know the 'rules' so you can break them effectively when necessary in service to Story?
I last talked about this in TNDJ in August of 2024 in a segment titled "Commas." Scroll down to "Commas" when you get there.
Sometimes a character gestures or changes facial expression or whatever in the middle of a sentence.
When that happens, I used to indicate an interruption with an em dash, as in the second paragraph of the following example, then insert the description, then continue the sentence of dialogue:
“I’m not doing ‘the lord’s work’.”
She chuckled. “You work for TJ—” She crossed herself. “Hallowed be his name—and that’s pretty close.”
Or I would achieve a similar effect with commas, as in the following:
She chuckled. “You work for TJ,” and she crossed herself, “hallowed be his name, and that’s pretty close.”
But as I was cycling yesterday, something about that felt too—something. So I read it aloud.
Then I wrote it like this:
She chuckled. “You work for TJ,” she crossed herself, “hallowed be his name, and that’s pretty close.”
Notice I couldn’t write She chuckled and crossed herself in advance of the dialogue because she crossed herself (natually) just before she wrote “hallowed….”
So I intentionally used a comma splice (a syntactical no-no) to negate the need for em dashes and the uppercase H in the first example, and the 'and' in the second example.
Why? Because all of those might have been at least minimally disruptive to the reader. (Never Interrupt The Reading Of Your Own Work). So now the passage reads more smoothly and (this is important) more quickly.
If you're wondering, I could also have set off 'she crossed herself' with parentheses, but that would quiet the information too much. The reader might even skip over it.
Anyway, here's one more example of this new (to me) technique:
“First I keyed in the target’s name. And from that,” I twisted my laptop around so she could see the screen, “all these results popped up. See what I mean by billions of articles?”
Punctuation is the second most important tool in your writer's toolbox. It's second only to knowing the letters of the alphabet and being able to use them to form words.
If you've never done a deep dive on this stuff, or if you aren't sure how to use punctuation to intentionally direct the reading of your work, I suggest you get a copy of Punctuation for Writers. It will open up a whole new world for you.
Or you can get a lot of the same information in Writing Better Fiction while that one's still on sale:
Two Days Left
Writing Better Fiction has pretty much everything you need to write excellent fiction.
Through tomorrow (Sunday), March 16 at 5 p.m. (MST) you can get Writing Better Fiction for 30% off (under $10.00).
To get this deal,
Visit the Writing Better Fiction page.
During checkout add coupon code VCP2YKDNDD. (I recommend you copy/paste.)
Of Interest
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1070
Writing of Blackwell Ops 39: More Paul Stone
Day 1…… 2789 words. To date…… 2789
Day 2…… 3308 words. To date…… 6097
Day 3…… 2019 words. To date…… 8116
Day 4…… 4404 words. To date…… 12520
Day 5…… 3598 words. To date…… 16118
Day 6…… 4106 words. To date…… 20224
Day 7…… 3421 words. To date…… 23645
Day 8…… 2418 words. To date…… 26063
Day 9…… 2758 words. To date…… 28821
Day 10…. 3355 words. To date…… 32176
Fiction for March…………………….. 43685
Fiction for 2025………………………. 229516
Nonfiction for March……………........ 14340
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 68270
2025 consumable words…………….. 291276
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3120
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 5
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 109
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 281
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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