Stage Direction
Action and movement are both crucial to a compelling narrative, both symbolically (pacing, timeline, propelling the narrative forward) and physically (a character interacting with other character and with objects, relocating, moving forward in the narrative).
If movement is unclear on the page, it is disorienting, confusing, and can ultimately break the reader’s immersion. The same can be said for action.
But writing too much detail, working too hard to add clarity by adding a movement-by-movement rundown, is overbearing, and reads more like stage direction than narrative (‘CUT!!! I said pick up the cup with your right hand, pinkie finger up!’).
Consider the following (unartful) example:
‘I left. I was there.’
With minimal detail, this almost jumps into the timeline’s past (‘I was there’). There’s no sense of the setting (from where? was where?), no sense of interaction, and no sense of the mode of locomotion. By giving none of the author’s imagination, it asks far too much of the reader’s imagination. Truly uncompelling stuff.
What might be the solution, then? To add detail, of course!
‘I turned around to face the hallway behind me and walked, starting with my left foot, to the front door. I reached out with my left hand and took hold of the doorknob, twisted my wrist to turn the doorknob and then pulled the door open with the same hand. I walked through the doorway and then turned and closed it with the same hand I opened it with.’
Exhausting. And, somehow, this long, descriptive passage offers the same level of emotional engagement and interest as the previous, minimal example. But how can that be?
The easiest improvement that can be made is to remove any mentioning of specific body parts. Unless the character is using an unusual body part for an action – say, turning a doorknob with their teeth – there’s nothing interesting or compelling about the mechanics.
‘I turned around to face the hallway behind me and walked to the front door. I reached out and took hold of the doorknob, turned it and then pulled the door open. I walked through the doorway and then turned and closed it.’
Tighter, faster to read, maybe even carries a certain tension depending on if this were the moment where a detective learns an obvious clue they’d overlooked or some such scene. But it’s still got an air of uninterest, of detachment, while still offering too much detail.
The next step, then, would be to remove any intermediary action – that is, anything that would be obviously part of a motion and so doesn’t actually need clarification.
‘I turned to the hallway, walked to the front door, and opened it. Outside, I closed the door.’
Through these edits, we have removed 3 lines of unnecessary stage direction. Still not fantastic writing, but it isn’t exhausting like its earlier iteration, and has more clarity, feels more like a scene, than the original minimal description. Granted, we still haven’t got the character ‘there’ yet, but this has created space to add some words back and make the writing interesting, creative.
How? By adding emotional response and sensory description in place of the stage direction. What does the scene want to convey? It can be anything, but if it’s, say, a party, warm and fun and social, and the character is having a small anxiety attack, we could utilise the character’s opinions and psychophysical responses to give the stage direction while also telling the story, without it feeling like actual stage direction.
‘I couldn’t stand the harsh light, the smiling faces, the music thrumming in my ears and in my chest. I spun around to face the dark hallway and fled on unsteady feet. The doorknob was cool and slick in my sweaty palm. A promise of relief. I pulled the door open and stepped into the night’s snowy embrace and shut away all of the noise and the drama, the bass beat becoming my own rapid heart, slowing, slowing. Slow.’
The basic information is all still there – the hall, the door, the doorknob, the outside. But now it comes with a whole lot of ‘why’ that, inside an actual story, would probably be pretty compelling. At least, a whole lot more compelling that all that stage direction earlier.
There are sometimes reasons for narrative, character, and/or voice to be objective, detached, minimal, and even to use excessive stage direction, but more on that another time.