Writing Body Language

Writing Body Language

How to Improve your writing

This is something that happens every day in your life. A shift of your eyebrow in skepticism, or the way your lip may twitch to a half smile cause you’re trying not to laugh. These behaviors are vital for writing in character, because not only do the allow you to visually see what is happening but it is also reaffirming whatever emotion your character is showing.

So why should you write it?

Much of human communication is non-verbal which means you need to also translate this non-verbal reaction in a post. It allows you to greatly enhance the emotions of another character and always another person to ‘visually’ see how they feel in a post. Most of all, this will add depth and volume to your post to make it feel more real. IT will make your character feel like a human instead of just another fictional person you look at from above.

Below you will find a list different type of emotions and what sort of body language can be exhibited to them.

Three ways to accent an action.

When writing about emotions, there are different ways to verbally write them out. Each one is unique in their own way, allowing you to show more about the emotion.

Emphasize the Emotion. But doing this, you are expressing both the emotion and the body language. We’ll use a simple example. It’s short and simple yet you can sense he is happy. John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall.

Complicate the Emotion. Sometimes, even when you are feeling one emotion, deep down rooted underneath the facade of it all, there is actually an underlining emotion they feel. This is something you have to truly express otherwise no one will know. John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. However, it was obvious by the way his nose crinkled that he was disgusted by the actions beforehand. Instead, John covered it up by appearing pleased today.

Contradict the Emotion. This is a little different than complicate. Contradicting means that you are claiming one thing when in fact its the other. In many ways, this has a variety of uses, from inner depth of the truth to what you see in person, or someone creating a wall. It could be considered a lie, but when is anything that easy? John felt so happy that he was humming a tune while walking down the hall. In truth, once he was in the classroom, his shoulders slumped and a pout crossed his lips when no one was around, showing just how displeased he was with the situation.

Remember that you do not always have to contradict or complicate anything. Sometimes all you need to do is emphasize and that will be just fine. You don’t always have to have an underlining complicated for an emotion to make it more enhanced.

Do be afraid to use the Thesaurus to also improve an emotion. Such things as “happy” is a nice emotional word, but think of how much more powerful it is when you heard some is “overjoyed” or “content.” She how these emotions matched up with a body language can give two different styles of happiness? Mix and match to find what works best for your character at the time.

More In Depth Information

What I’ve stated above is more of a simplistic overview. IF you truly want to improve yourself, go to this

LINK HERE

To see just how much body language can reveal about a person. You will find things such as how a person lies, how the eyes reaction, the positioning of a person in personal space, mouth, and head body language and so much more.

Use these resources to greatly increase the reactions of your character to another and create a more life-like world.

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One of the most common problems I saw while working at a literary agency was that a lot of the character arcs felt incomplete, or not fully realized. Characters didn’t really change over the course of the story, or even learn something new. 

Basically, a character arc is the transformation of a character over the course of a story. Their starting points and ending points must be different. Note: I did not say the end point has to be better, just different. Breaking Bad comes to mind, where Walter White started out as a pretty decent, average science teacher, and it went downhill from there until he was a drug kingpin and criminal.

The story has to affect your character! We have to see those effects!

Quick & Dirty Cheat Sheet to Make a Character Arc:

Figure out where the character is at the beginning of their story. How do they react to things? Defensive? Offensive? What are their flaws? What are their strengths? Is there any trauma they are dealing with? 

Think about the course of your story. Will the story help them fix those flaws? Will it make them worse? Will the roots of their trauma be addressed? Will there be a point where their faith in their strengths falters? 

Take the course you’ve thought about in step #3, and think about where it will leave your character. They should be somewhere different than the beginning, and decidedly worse/better off than they started. Readers should be able to see the transformation and note what is new! 

Lastly: is it satisfying? Does it make sense? Are the steps that changed your character spread out & well developed? This step is being made only because of Game of Thrones. I’m thinking of Dany’s quick descent into madness that lacked actual roots. We should have been seeing that madness ages ago for it to truly feel natural. Bran ends up as king; yes, it is different to where he started, but it really doesn’t make sense. You have to think critically about your arcs and if it’s a natural progression of events!!!

Notes: Beta readers and critique partners will be huge helps with looking objectively at your WIP! They’ll be able to tell when a character’s arc is not quite right, or if it’s upsetting/unsatisfying.

Note for pantsers: If you don’t plan your WIP out ahead of time, these steps might seem fruitless. I would advise: write draft one, then retroactively look back at your character’s start and end points. Make sure you took the steps to get them to where they need to be. Make sure they’re different. Make sure it feels natural. 

Some Other Thoughts:

Your main character should undergo the largest change and have the most realized arc. Put the most time into developing your MC’s arc!!!

Minor characters should also have arcs, unless they are one-scene-wonders. Characters we see often, even if they aren’t exactly main characters, should also change a bit! Just not as much as your MC. 

If you find your minor character has a more compelling and fleshed out arc than your MC, consider: who do I want to be the subject of the story being told? Would making the minor character the main character work better? Often, arcs can be indicative of character importance. Those with more developed arcs are likely more prominent characters!

The cabbage man from ATLA does not need a character arc, and frankly trying to give him one might make the story seem clunky and crowded. Delegate your arc-developing time to characters that need it. 

Heroes should have positive arcs. They should end up better off than they started. If not? They’re probably anti-heroes. Walter White, though he is the main character in Breaking Bad, is an anti-hero.

If there’s one key thing about your character that influences all their actions, maybe make their arc about that! Dealing with trauma, looking for love, etc. If your character has been desperate to fall in love, maybe they’ll end up realizing that desperation isn’t a good look for them, and realizing they don’t need love to be happy! 

The first arc you think of may not be the best one. For the example above, that arc is more compelling to me than finding love and being happy with it, though “finding love” might seem like the immediate solution to “looking for love”!

Arcs do not mean total personality change. It can! But it doesn’t have to be! Harry was still brave and loyal to his friends at the end of his arc, but he’d undergone the transformation into a hero by learning, growing, and completing the final task of taking on Voldemort. But he was still Harry! Han Solo became more loving, more open, and a little more open to working with others, but he was still snarky and a little gruff!

There are many different kinds of character arcs as well.

Other resources: 

The Four Different Types of Character Arcs

Creating Compelling Character Arcs

Types of Character Arcs in Novels [video]

Happy writing <3 

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Editing Tip: after reading through your fic/chapter for spelling & grammar mistakes, LISTEN to your story through a screen reader before posting to pick up on additional errors. Sometimes it's easier to HEAR a mistake than to READ one. If you don't have a screen reader, use Google Translate. Copy a little bit at a time (max 5k words) into the translate box then press the speaker button, sit back, and listen.

Bonus learning opportunity: you also get to hear what your fic sounds like to people who listen to fic instead of reading it, so you can edit out any weirdness before posting, thus increasing your fic’s accessibility :)