Write right, Wright p2: The Business of Business

I minored in Drama at the University of Georgia. One of the things I learned in my acting classes was the idea of character business. Typically, business is whatever the characters happen to be doing in a dialogue scene to keep the actors from having to just stand there. It might consist of pouring a cup of coffee or straightening up a desk.

Character business can help bring a scene to life, grounding it in believability. I have found myself recalling this lesson as I construct scenes in my novel. I have also found that good use of business can provide insight or commentary on a character. If you are a writer, find ways to do this. A lot can be conveyed this way, perhaps saving you from long passages of description or clunky dialogue.

You should also extend character business to the overall direction and blocking of a scene (to borrow terms a film director would use). A creative juxtaposition of words and actions can do wonders in terms of heightening the dramatic tension of a scene.

I have three examples from scenes I've written this year.

For Scene A, I needed to portray the inner conflict of a character stuck in a situation for which he could no longer feel any excitement. Essentially, all I had on my notecard for the scene called for him to sit there and think about stuff. If it was going to be an interesting scene, it needed a lot of help. It came to life when I found a way to metaphorically represent the same conflict in an external way. That was the hook that kept the scene alive. At the same time it allows the reader insight to the character's attitude by the way he reacts to the external conflict.

For Scene B, I ended up writing two scenes in one. It needed to be a dialogue scene between the protagonist and a bad girl-type with whom he shouldn't have been alone. The dialogue was important to the plot but just the fact these two were alone in the same room needed to provide tension. I accomplished it completely through character business. The business throughout the scene provides information that is completely independent from the plot stuff going on in the dialogue. Each action (the proximity of the characters, the offering and refusal of a glass of wine, the posture, etc.) tells you something about the characters and, all the while, they are talking about something else entirely. In my opinion, that juxtaposition really cranked the tension of the scene way up.

Scene C started out as two different scenes and they both would have been boring. In one scene, the protagonist was to sit down over a meal and agonize internally over the idea of turning to the bad girl for help. It would end with him deciding to do it and the next scene had to show him making his way to her and asking. Wow, that would have been boring. My solution was to combine the scenes so that he is agonizing over his decision (internal dialogue) as he makes his way to her chambers (action). Hopefully, this provides a sense of tension as he needs to hurry up and make up his mind before he gets there. 

That's about it for this post. Just remember you can layer not only conflict but information through contrasting words and actions. This business of business can help bring characters and scenes to life.