BrainPick Creasing his brows – How do you approach stage business?

[Rich.]

"Stage business? You mean?" He rolled his shoulders.​

"Don't roll your shoulders at me, you great oaf. I see those balled fists. Relax, for goodness' sake." She set her mouth into thin line.​

--

I'm sick of rolling shoulders, balled fists and thin-lined mouths, to be honest. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stuff. What's your take on stage business? Do you ever fall into that trap of thinking, There's too much dialogue, they need to do something! – and then you throw in a smile or a widening of the eyes just to relieve the tension? Or is stage business an effortless extension of your dialogue, every gesture a sentence in itself?

His fingers rested lightly on the keys, a pause, a defocussing of the eyes. Then a coming back. His fingers twitched...​

How do you do the little bits of doing?​

 

[CageSage]

Putting in an action beat rather than stage business makes it stronger. Think in terms of something the acter [not a mistake] can accomplish, or something they can block from the other participant.
example:
"Stage business?" Jock flung his hands up. "What the bloody heck is that?" He shoved the chair back and the drawer in as he lunged to his feet. "Who said you could do that in here?"
"What's in there?" Andy's fists came up and he jabbed at Jock.
"Stand down, mate. Stand down." Jock leaned against the drawer and used his knee to turn the key. How could he knock the key out of the lock and kick it under the desk before Andy figured out what happened?

--
Action speaks louder, and it's stuff even kids do when imitating a good story. No rolling shoulders unless there are other aggressive actions, and no sighing, eye-rolling, or growling.
Yes, the above example was off the cuff, so rough.

later edit: And I never say pause in a story, instead I make an action or deferral by activity/events rather than tell it.

 

[Hannah F]

I am a visual writer and reader. I see everything that is happening on the page. If the person is e.g. answering a question and I see them shrug, I'll write that they shrug. I don't do it as a need though, only if I see it. However, if I have a large block of dialogue (which is probably draft one thinking-process), I'll go back and "watch" it and throw in a bit of what they're doing or chuck out some of the too detailed dialogue.

What annoys me as I read stories is the number of times people flash white teeth instead of smiling.

 

[Rich.]

And flashing eyes! Makes me think they have a battery secreted about their person.

You know that thing with meaningful similes?

The baker set about relaxing her shoulders like he was kneading wholegrain dough.​

Rather than...

The baker set about relaxing her shoulders like a treadling cat.​

​

(which I suppose could be meaningful if the context was right).

I was thinking about applying that logic to stage business, action beats, call them what you will, within dialogue; expressing body language as a means of moving a story forward, as a means of communication. I often have to remind myself to do this, or my actions become untethered.

Do you find that?

--

And I never say pause in a story, instead I make an action or deferral by activity/events rather than tell it.

Depends on who's narrating the word, pause, I guess. If it's what a character sees another do, I don't think there's a problem. I'm always wary of, "I never..."

 

[CageSage]

thinking about applying that logic to stage business, action beats, call them what you will, within dialogue; expressing body language as a means of moving a story forward, as a means of communication. I often have to remind myself to do this, or my actions become untethered.

I'm not sure I understand this. Is it about the simile/metaphor usage aligned to the character's role? Or frowns and smiles and non-action activities?

If it's using body language as communication and moving the story forward at the same time, it's more like action beats rather than stage business. Body language is a form of communication, and the POV character will make a judgement call or react to the instinct of the body language. If it's the body actions of the POV character, it can be mediated to install subtext -- what's happening on the outside is off-kilter to what's happening on the inside. This makes the beats more interesting, but they still need movement/action for best effect, as opposed to activity (the frown/smile type that does nothing much).

The 'pause' issue is more because it's a tell and if the action is happening in the now, the tell needs to be a show. To show a pause needs some activity or interpretation of activity.

The fiddling fingers gave her away. She didn't stop talking, and it sounded like she was telling the truth, but her fingers pinched and dug at her pants like she was punishing herself for every word.

That's a pause.

And I never pick these things up until about the fourth draft. Maybe later. Still learning how to instill tension and subtext through as much of the story as possible.

 

[Rich.]

I suppose what I'm talking about is making everything count, making it all mean something, and not be just dressing. Though dressing can be many things as well. (I'm not expressing myself well because I'm not sure what I'm driving at.)

Stage business and action beats, as non-verbal communication, are the same thing, aren't they? Mine's just a theatre term.

Subtext. Yes, that's it. Something about how the dialogue and the body language combine to mean more than the sum of their parts. That's what I'm asking about, wondering if any of you have a considered approach to this kind of thing.

--

The 'pause' issue is more because it's a tell and if the action is happening in the now, the tell needs to be a show.

I'd been peering through the crack in the curtains for half the morning when she finally turned up. She shuffled up to the door in that way she had, all knees and elbows. And then she paused. It was the pause that made me sit up. It wasn't like any pause I'd seen before, not a dither or a nervous twitch or a bit of misdirection, but a complete cessation of activity, like a toy robot winding down to a stop. I was convinced she would never start again. And in that moment she seemed to be someone else entirely, a hole in the world where a moment before there'd been a person. The world wrapped around that pause until I fancied my own heart would stop. And the pause stayed with me. That night as I lay between the sweaty sheets of the creaking hotel I thought of that pause. And even now, as I write this, three decades later, it's the pause that I think of. In that howling moment of quiet, she was who she really was. She was the pause and the pause was her.​

Show don't tell as literary advice is way overrated.

 

[Steve C]

I am unclear as to what this is about but here's my take. In a piece of dialogue, it is the conversation which counts and any actions should only be mentioned to reinforce the spoken words. She leant forward. 'Fuck you,' she said is fine. But describing how she played with her hair or looked at her watch can be irrelevant. In short, any actions must either replace words and so be part of the conversation or reinforce those spoken. Good dialogue needs very little embellishment.

 

[Jonny]

I'm also not entirely sure of what we're getting at here but I think (broadly speaking) I'm with Steve and Hannah.

If when writing a scene and I 'see' my character do something when they are speaking, about to speak or reacting to another character's speech, then I'll add it in, but very succinctly in a very few words (hopefully ) Extended pieces of hair-twirling, eye-rolling, hand-wringing or moody-gazing off into the distancing often read as padding for me.

One who's really good at this lean "let the words do the talking" (ouch ) approach is Roddy Doyle. I've just been re-reading The Commitments and it's really very dialogue-heavy but with little or no 'business' mixed into the exchanges.

 

[Hannah F]

Think about when you're chatting to someone. How much do you notice stage business? You probably don't unless it is non-verbal communication. (Except you will now, over your next few conversations, and it will drive you potty! )

 

[RK Capps]

I think you also need to consider the genre too. What is expected from that? I'm with Hannah, too many flashing white teeth instead of smiling. It seems prevalent in YA. So the question is, do YA writers cave to this demand? Same for other genres.

Ultimately, other writers need to accept the author's opinion (hopefully, they wrote the book for themselves first, readers second). All we can do is read, read, read and decide what our own personal opinion is. Readers can always exercise their right to stop reading. Deciding what we do and do not like (and considering the genre) is a stepping stone on the way to finding our voice. White space, subtext, stage direction is nice, but it's all ultimately a choice.

 

[Rich.]

I think you're right, Rach. So in this particular case – the writing of stage business during dialogue scenes – can I push you to share the general choices you make? What's your take on this?

 

[RK Capps]

I think you're right, Rach. So in this particular case – the writing of stage business during dialogue scenes – can I push you to share the general choices you make? What's your take on this?

Sure It's always a juggling act, and 80-110K are a lot of words to juggle. But I like subtext and subversion, if I can find a way to do that, I will. And that might include stage direction. But I can't see rolled shoulders telling the reader much subtext. It isn't a choice I'd make. But, of course, others are perfectly free to disagree with me.

A book never leaves us as a perfect product. I wonder how much of a first draft survives to the final cut? Could that? It's no doubt different for different people. Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing through that first draft with fluff. I tell myself, "ignore it, come back and fix it.'

Out of interest, I just searched my first draft of a new book for 'rolled' and 'balled' (at 42.5K). Nada.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I pay a fair bit of attention to this, because of a bad habit of writing a lot of sighs into my dialogue on the first draft. I've learned to go back and either remove them or change them to things that are more helpful to moving the action along or adding to the meaning of the dialogue. I think there's great opportunity with those 'beats'--they can indicate a speaker's words don't reflect their thoughts, or they can reinforce a character's words. They can move a scene along in a more natural way than a block of dialogue and a separate block of action can (let's face it, in everyday life we tend to talk while we're doing things, rather than stopping everything and talking). One of my editors once described it as 'adding more tea and biscuits' to the dialogue--showing the dialogue in context.

But it takes thought and work to ensure those 'beats' aren't simply filler. My knee-jerk 'sigh' is a filler. Fine for the first draft (because it gives me a nice search term during editing to find those places where I want more detail about what's going on or how a character is feeling), but not very helpful to the reader.

 

[CageSage]

I suppose what I'm talking about is making everything count, making it all mean something, and not be just dressing. Though dressing can be many things as well. (I'm not expressing myself well because I'm not sure what I'm driving at.)

Stage business and action beats, as non-verbal communication, are the same thing, aren't they? Mine's just a theatre term.

Subtext. Yes, that's it. Something about how the dialogue and the body language combine to mean more than the sum of their parts. That's what I'm asking about, wondering if any of you have a considered approach to this kind of thing.

--

I'd been peering through the crack in the curtains for half the morning when she finally turned up. She shuffled up to the door in that way she had, all knees and elbows. And then she paused. It was the pause that made me sit up. It wasn't like any pause I'd seen before, not a dither or a nervous twitch or a bit of misdirection, but a complete cessation of activity, like a toy robot winding down to a stop. I was convinced she would never start again. And in that moment she seemed to be someone else entirely, a hole in the world where a moment before there'd been a person. The world wrapped around that pause until I fancied my own heart would stop. And the pause stayed with me. That night as I lay between the sweaty sheets of the creaking hotel I thought of that pause. And even now, as I write this, three decades later, it's the pause that I think of. In that howling moment of quiet, she was who she really was. She was the pause and the pause was her.​

Show don't tell as literary advice is way overrated.

Ah, the pause in the quote is a summarisation of a past event, not in the now. That's the difference between whether it can be a tell and appropriate. In the now of a scene, though, the pause is better as a show. Showing the pause can also indicate the underlying subtext of the moment as it happens.

Stage business, dialogue beats, and action beats are subtly different.
Stage business is the form of blocking and filling space on a stage or screen because small movements are too small to be noted by the audience. They are non-verbal communication, but the bigger things that use the setting to show or hide.

Dialogue beats are usually short actions/activities used as a speech tag to do two things -- indicate the speaker in that paragraph without using 'said' (especially if there are a lot of 'said' said already).

Action beats are a different breed. They include dialogue, but this action drives the story forward, gives introspection that progresses the understanding of the character, and indicates the physicality of the next possible action (like foreshadowing when fists are clenched and the thoughts are short, sharp and aggressive).
Some writers call every action a beat, but not every action is more than activity (which may show characterisation or something else, but doesn't connect to/with a story event).

Do I have a considered approach to subtext when writing?
Oh, my, yes. The dialogue may appear to be all there is, but the POV character's action/introspection with the dialogue may say something more.

“Drink,” Aventi said. They’d need it.

The subtext behind the thought is foreshadowing, even though there's no action there.

“Pen and quill, do my will, mark my message within the seal.” She waggled thumb and forefinger as if she held the old-fashioned ink-quill in her hand.

That's an action, something the reader could imitate, but which also indicates the use and possibilities and reality of magic. Exposition hidden in an action beat associated with dialogue. Subtext: you can do this, too -- and the character is also showing off a bit, despite her building trepidation.

“You can’t let yourself get drawn in until the guide arrives.” Where was the bloody guide? “Hold hands,” she yelled.

Dialogue that implies action from the way the words are shaped, and progresses the story. The subtext here is fear and loss of control.

I love subtext and it's only taken years to find the many examples of how to use it in stories. It's not just dialogue in opposition to introspection, although that's one part. It's also actions that lie, activities that mean more than what's presented, actions and events that are at odds with the goal, and they all say more than the words on the page. A bit like an extended metaphor, but that suits only this moment in this story with these characters.
And I'm still learning just how deep subtext can go. There's a warning, there: too deep, and the reader is lost, or won't understand.

 

[Rich.]

Out of interest, I just searched my first draft of a new book for 'rolled' and 'balled' (at 42.5K). Nada.

¡Venga, muy bien, eres un crack! (Because... in fantasy, thrillers and action, particularly, you find a lot of those words. Well avoided!)

I pay a fair bit of attention to this, because of a bad habit of writing a lot of sighs into my dialogue on the first draft.

My fillers are smiles. Makes all my first-draft characters seem pretty vacuous. I love the "tea and biscuits".

I love subtext and it's only taken years to find the many examples of how to use it in stories. It's not just dialogue in opposition to introspection, although that's one part. It's also actions that lie, activities that mean more than what's presented, actions and events that are at odds with the goal, and they all say more than the words on the page.

Well put, Cage. That does about sum it all up.

--

Ah, the pause in the quote is a summarisation of a past event, not in the now. That's the difference between whether it can be a tell and appropriate.

You're right of course. I guess what I'm pushing against is the idea of in the now. If you're writing in the now, you're almost certainly writing in close limited third, the POV beloved of creative writing courses the world over, but there are other possibilities, and despite the pressure of prevailing wisdom, there are plenty of successful modern genre novels that aren't quite as locked in to that one POV as we might be led to expect.

But... if you are writing close limited third, sure, you can't have a character pause because it implies that the narrator has knowledge of the future.

 

[RK Capps]

@Rich. I'm reading a book you recommended to Steve last year, and I just came across this:

The piece which Reader A likes and labels good is, to Reader B, distasteful and bad. “Strong” and “weak” mean different things to different people. So do “trite” and “fresh,” “profound” and “shallow,” “obscure” and “rich with hidden meanings.”

Swain, Dwight V.. Techniques of the Selling Writer (p. 116). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

Says it all

 

[Rich.]

Very true! It's what I was alluding to with Cage while we were discussing POV. But as for the main topic of this thread, the character behaviour we weave through dialogue, I'm endlessly fascinated with how other writers do it – with how they approach any aspect of craft, for that matter.

He waved his hands as if he could gather their thoughts from the air.​

 

[Mythobeast]

Stage business is a new term for me. I'm reading it as having the characters be physically expressive in a way that doesn't improve the way that the scene is communicated. Possibly even in a way that is out-of-character. This is probably equivalent to stagecraft's term "chewing the scenery."

I consider action beats to be essential for two reasons. The first is because it avoids "he said", "she explained", "they shouted" from becoming noisome. The second is to remind the audience (and sometimes the writer) that bodies and environment are part of the scene.

Clempson said, "Tell me how this works."
vs.
Clempson pulled up a chair and dropped into it. "Tell me how this works."

@CageSage, I don't differentiate between dialog beats and action beats. Unless you're in a very restrictive environment, a dialog beat should be used to add insight into whatever the person is saying, or the person's character, or their attitude, or the world around them. Otherwise it's a wasted opportunity. In the above example, it hints that Clempson finds this exchange tiring, but is resigned to listen.

Has anybody watched Midnight Gospel? The main character jumps into virtual worlds and interviews some extremely colorful characters for a podcast. A lot of fun and fascinating action goes on during the interviews, but it's usually completely disconnected from whatever is being discussed. It's animation, so they don't really need dialog beats, but the whole of the animation exists purely to avoid the "talking heads" issue.

 

[CageSage]

discussing POV

POV wasn't what I was referring to, but time. There are two times in story, the now, and the not now. Not now can be written as summary, exposition, or flashback (or forward, but this is harder for me to conceptualise) -- these are the places where the tell of the story fits in very nicely because whatever happened is not happening in the now. And it doesn't have to be present tense POV or third close to be in the now of the story -- the now is only what's happening right now, the action unfolding in real time in the story. An action scene happens in the now because if it's in the past, it's either flashback or summary of an event or an explanation of an event.
In all POVs, the now of the story is the same concept and it's the writing that's showing the world of the story as it's happening.
Anything else is 'not now' and fits one of the tell categories.
[I have my fingers crossed behind my back, but this is how I understand it, right now]

dialog beats and action beats

There is a difference. A dialogue beat can be an expressive movement or an activity that doesn't have an effect on the progression of the story. Clempson sat is a dialogue beat with subtext (Clempson dragged out a chair and flopped onto it . "Show me." -- gives more subtext through the use of words with emotional context), but if it also has something that will move the story forward (Clempson darted a furtive glance toward the windows as he dragged out a chair and perched on the edge. "Tell me." -- that opens up a question and becomes foreshadowing -- what is he looking for/worried about; why is he perching and ready to leap?). Subtle, but meaningful.

 

[Mythobeast]

There is a difference. A dialogue beat can be an expressive movement or an activity that doesn't have an effect on the progression of the story. Clempson sat is a dialogue beat with subtext (Clempson dragged out a chair and flopped onto it . "Show me." -- gives more subtext through the use of words with emotional context), but if it also has something that will move the story forward (Clempson darted a furtive glance toward the windows as he dragged out a chair and perched on the edge. "Tell me." -- that opens up a question and becomes foreshadowing -- what is he looking for/worried about; why is her perching and ready to leap?). Subtle, but meaningful.

This is the point where we disagree about terminology. I often hear beats discussed with screen plays, where you have to throw an action beat in because you've had too many sedentary scenes in a row, and the audience might get bored. In that context, a beat is any shift in tone. You might have romance beats or scenery beats in a screenplay.

This has nothing to do with the literary concept of action beat. When writing fiction, an action beat is also called an action tag, and it's an alternative for identifying the speaker. I feel that your concept of an action beat is more a matter of mixing plot points into the dialog. This is preferable when such plot points are meaningful, but is subject to becoming gratuitous action if you force it.

I think that this brings us back to the original topic of stage business.

 

[CageSage]

This is the point where we disagree about terminology. I often hear beats discussed with screen plays, where you have to throw an action beat in because you've had too many sedentary scenes in a row, and the audience might get bored. In that context, a beat is any shift in tone. You might have romance beats or scenery beats in a screenplay.

This has nothing to do with the literary concept of action beat. When writing fiction, an action beat is also called an action tag, and it's an alternative for identifying the speaker. I feel that your concept of an action beat is more a matter of mixing plot points into the dialog. This is preferable when such plot points are meaningful, but is subject to becoming gratuitous action if you force it.

I think that this brings us back to the original topic of stage business.

I'm not trying to force anyone to one way of thinking over another. However, I don't like the level of ambiguity for some of these terms. It doesn't help me improve my craft skills for storytelling.

What I'm trying to do for my writing is to distinguish between an activity that doesn't move the story forward and is set dressing or blocking. I call that a dialogue tag or beat, used to do a bit of stuff while a character is talking.
I'll call it an action beat if the action undertaken is part of the forward progression of the story/plot stuff, and it's an action beat whether it's part of a dialogue paragraph or not (which means it should be one of the POV char's actions). And subtext is a bonus, so if I can put more than one purpose into the beat, I'll give it a go.
But it's harder if the beat is no more than activity like beetling the brows or frowning or sighing, which might show a bit of character or possibly give the POV character something to interpret when another char is speaking/doing the activity, because the POV char can't see themselves doing these things and are usually the POV character's observations of other chars. The interpretation becomes subtext, maybe?

I've found I need to define it for myself because -- like a lot of words/terminologies used in writing craft discussions -- it means different things to different people, or in different fields, or even in the same books! The way I've defined it for myself makes it easy to distinguish so when I'm editing, I can find ways to make more of activities and ensure the action and subtext are doing as much as possible and not just adding words.

 

[Robert M Derry]

My approach to this is very much driven by my experience as an amateur actor. To me 'stage business' in a novel is not purely a substitute for where stage directions would be in a screenplay, but where 'pauses' would be.

Pausing at the right moment is a vital tool for any actor/director to grasp, as pauses allow you to dictate the flow/rhythm of a scene. Fast dialogue between opposing characters followed by a pause is a great way to create tension; who is going to act? What will they do?

Unfortunately, authors cannot write 'Pause' as playwrights do because readers are not going to stop reading for a few moments to allow the tension to set in. Playwrights are just taking the lazy way out here, because they know that when an actor pauses on stage they won't freeze still, they'll 'do' something. Maybe they'll pull a face or drum their fingers on the table, either way, they show how the character is feeling internally and leave the audience thinking; what will they say/do next?

Too many pauses however, and the scene is so slow that the audience is bored and irritated that everything seems to be endlessly drawn out. Usually in this case the actor is also being overly self-indulgent (see Calculon in Futurama)

No pauses at all and the scene is so fast that the audience has no time to digest anything and is exhausted by the time they get to the end of the scene.

I try to find a happy medium using this approach. If I want the scene to hurtle along, maybe the two characters are having an argument, I'll write dialogue with no pauses and barely any dialogue tags until one of them 'fingers the knife on the table and glares'. Weather observations also work well here i.e. the clichéd, tumbleweed rolling across the street in a shootout.

Alternatively if it's an introspective scene between two old friends, I'll throw in loads of pauses because I want the scene to be leisurely and I want to underline subtext in the scene establishing the two friends' relationship without getting them to voice it aloud.

I think, as @CageSage has suggested, if you can insert subtext, character motivations, foreshadowing etc into your pauses and drive the story forward whilst breaking up your flow it's much more effective than just shoving in filler beats to slow things down.

Ultimately, there are a lot of ways of handling stage business and I do think it's very much geared by the author's voice/style and the genre that you're in.

As long as your 'stage business' serves a purpose keep it in, otherwise...

 

[KateESal]

This is a fascinating discussion. TBH, it's not an area I've stopped to analyse before, but looking back over some recent dialogue-heavy writing of my own (I love writing dialogue!) I can see how and where I've employed these various devices. The business about inserting a pause struck a chord.

the pause in the quote is a summarisation of a past event, not in the now. That's the difference between whether it can be a tell and appropriate. In the now of a scene, though, the pause is better as a show. Showing the pause can also indicate the underlying subtext of the moment as it happens.

Unfortunately, authors cannot write 'Pause' as playwrights do because readers are not going to stop reading for a few moments to allow the tension to set in.

I think there are some instances when you can literally use the word pause as a stage direction when the dialogue is without tags (but there are two speakers, so it's easy to tell who's doing the talking)...it can work really well in humour and I've employed it myself, once or twice:

“Hahaha — I don’t know anything about darhahaha — sorry, darhaha — darts — hahahaha —”
<pause>
“Nor do I.”
<longer pause>
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA —”

I don't want any actions there, because I want to create a sense of momentary stupefaction and hopefully, add to the humour of the scene.

On another occasion, I used this:

“Brian and I,” PC Gates announces, “have written a little radio play.”
There’s a short, charged pause.
“A little radio play.” Jake’s voice wobbles.
“Yep — three scenes.”

I'm trying to create a beat of dramatic irony, because PC Gates has just said something which the other three characters find both startling and hilarious, but they don't want to show this outwardly.

Mostly, I find a good approach to adding beats to dialogue in the form of a pause can be achieved by caesura,eg breaking up someone's line with punctuation. The dialogue tag can achieve this:

"Stop," said Susan. "I've just thought of something."

Or by using full-stops/periods, em-dashes and the like.

"Stop — I've just thought of something."

As is often the case with crafting, it comes down to an authorial sense of what sits right with the voice/context/genre/scene etc. and if a stage direction (action beat, whatever you want to call it!) feels unnatural or noisesome (good word, @Mythobeast !) then it needs to be pruned or changed.

And flashing white teeth? Ugh.

 

[Robert M Derry]

Mostly, I find a good approach to adding beats to dialogue in the form of a pause can be achieved by caesura,eg breaking up someone's line with punctuation. The dialogue tag can achieve this:

"Stop," said Susan. "I've just thought of something."

Or by using full-stops/periods, em-dashes and the like.

"Stop — I've just thought of something."

I do this a lot and, likewise, I'd agree that it's a really simple way to break up the flow of dialogue and add beats.

Using the word 'pause' in fiction just doesn't work for me, but others' mileage may vary.