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Creating Motion in Fiction

he reader of today, because he is so strongly conditioned by the movies and television, loses his interest in a novel or short story easily when the narrative drones on and on. To keep the interest of the reader, the writer needs to insert motion into his storytelling.

This means not just the characters but also the narrative need to move with action-producing words and sentences, as the expository parts of the work create momentum and evade flatness and boredom. To start with, the show, don't tell principle has to be at work here, as trite as it may sound.

Then, since even the trite principles need an explanation, here are a few examples for showing instead of telling.
* She was bored -- is better shown as -- Yawning, she tapped her fingers on the desktop and looked away.
* He knew she was nice to her children -- is better shown as -- He always caught sight of her as she pushed the baby in the stroller while trying to hang on to the toddler’s hand. Her children, with robust faces, cooed and smiled at their mother.
* She was shy -- is better shown as -- Blushing, she shrunk from being touched or looked at and said very few words with an almost inaudible voice.
* He imagines he is going to win the boxing match -- is better shown as -- He imagines himself grinning with delight and waving at the crowd amid a thunderous roar of cheers, as the referee holds his gloved hand high.
To a novice writer, the skill with show, don't tell will come after a lot of practice. A practical exercise is to take an already written piece and circle all the sentences that can benefit from being shown and then to re-write the entire piece.

Another useful way for the writer to find out if he is telling instead of showing is to circle all the adjectives and adverbs in his story. Afterwards, he can try to replace what is in those circles with dynamic verbs and sensory phrases that draw vivid pictures.

To create motion in a piece of fiction, the pace of the scenes should be taken into consideration, also. Even if fluctuating the pace from one scene to another creates additional motion, variety, and interest in the story, the change of pace between the scenes must not disregard the overall pace of the work, and from scene to scene, that change must be eased in smoothly.

The genre of the story usually determines the right pace. A thriller, for example, will have faster scenes than a romance story. In addition, for faster scenes, the actions and the speech of the characters as well as the sentences need to be shorter in length to impart a feeling of vigor and immediacy.

Creating motion in a narrative will improve the effectiveness in the style of a writer; therefore, it is well worth the effort to practice, review, and re-write in order to carry one's craft forward.


About the Author

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Fiction Writing. Joy Cagil's education is in linguistics, psychology, and humanities.