Body Language

I'm very conscious of the body language of my characters. A lot of body language fills the gaps and provides characterization in silent moments.
One of my characters interacts with a lot of people, his body language in relation to others has been very important, but probably more than him, the character that is in scenes quite frequently alone, his body language is key.
With a degree in Communications, I think this is something I pay particular attention to. Unspoken is oftentimes more telling than spoken language.

All the time - drives me nuts trying not to overdue it. My MC has a habit of running his hand over his hair when he's thinking. Another had a ring he coudn't stop spinning around his finger when he was upset. They often slouch back in chairs and stare at the ceiling when they're trying to work something out in their heads.

One liked to pace when he was talking, drove the other one crazy.

It's hard not to cross the line between adding character and life, and being repetitive. For me, anyway

I think the subtler body language is often the most significant in characterization. The things people do without being very aware of them. I have a couple of nervous habits that I don't even notice, but others do.
Also action and reciprocation are important in body language. I use that a lot.
"Powerplays" in communication often come down to body language.

As an actor, I do think about body language. Sometimes it's very effective, and sometimes not, especially in literature. Actors have the privilege of conveying emotions (or conveying the "hiding" of emotions) through body language, sometimes on its own -- it's one of the best tools an actor can have. Watch the best actors and you will notice their superb mastery of body language.

In written words, though, body language is harder to accomplish. You can only wiggle or squirm or flick your hand or nod or shrug so many times before they get really tedious. I think a little goes a long way. Most body language in literature tends to be very obvious and superficial, because without the actual visuals, it's really difficult to imagine the subtlety, unlike seeing a real person's body language.

Movie scripts need to be kept pretty concise. So unless a bit of body language is critical, I usually leave it out. But I do constantly run the movie projector in my mind with SOME body langiage creeping into my visualizing. Very little of that imagined body langauge ever makes it onto the page though. Hair color, eye color, even skin color are actually discouraged in script writing, unless any of the above are somehow crucial to the actual story. And acting directions (including body language) are generally frowned upon as well.

Probably the only body langauge I ever consistently employ is when someone talks to someone and looks them DIRECTLY in the eye, or else DENIES eye contact. So I use parnetheticals that say things like

(to the floor)
(to the table top)
(looking up at the sky)

My one main protagonist on my curent script has an asthma problem, and later on in Act 2 it's very plot-critical that he suffer an asthma attack at a rather precise moment. So in order to establish ahead of time the fact that he even has asthma, all through Act 1 I have him at totally random moments slipping an asthma inhaler out of his pocket while he's talking to people, and taking an ocassional puff. He never once SAYS "Gee, I have asthma" you just have to figure that one out on your own by seeing the inhaler come out from time to time.

After a few instances of these random puffings in public, it got kinda comical and became an extension of his character so that he almost always only ever took it out when he was nervous. And since the script is a comedy, the silliness of his inhaler actually kinda helped things and did NOT become the distraction I feared it would.

Writing for kids, body language is very important. There is more acceptance of verbal tags and such at the MG (9-12yo) level, because this age group needs a few more clues to interpret dialogue than an adult reader.

maestrowork said:

As an actor, I do think about body language. Sometimes it's very effective, and sometimes not, especially in literature. Actors have the privilege of conveying emotions (or conveying the "hiding" of emotions) through body language, sometimes on its own -- it's one of the best tools an actor can have. Watch the best actors and you will notice their superb mastery of body language.

In written words, though, body language is harder to accomplish. You can only wiggle or squirm or flick your hand or nod or shrug so many times before they get really tedious. I think a little goes a long way. Most body language in literature tends to be very obvious and superficial, because without the actual visuals, it's really difficult to imagine the subtlety, unlike seeing a real person's body language.

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Yeah, that is just what I was going to say. It's great to add body language when you're acting, because it's subtle. But the subtlety is somewhat lost when you are describing body language in narration. When I'm acting, it's really the viewer's choice to pay attention and notice body language, or not. When I type it out in a story, the reader doesn't have a choice anymore, and s/he is forced to notice it. If a writer describes body language, I think readers will automatically assign a meaning to it, and it's no longer a subtle thing the audience sometimes notices.

To some extent. I find it's very easy to overdo -- the heroine in my first book kept covering her mouth with her hand when she wanted to laugh. It made sense for her as a character; she is shy and somewhat repressed. But when I did a reread of the entire book, I was like, damn, this girl never stops! I cut all but two mentions of that particular gesture.

I think it's important to keep a character's physicality in mind and to use that, but a little goes a long way.

It absolutely can be overdone. Paying attention to it doesn't mean putting it in every scene. Sometimes simple actions rather than the common "tells" are better.

I'm very conscious of body language as a tool to show rather than tell. A character who crosses her arms and takes a step back is thinking something very different from a character who throws her arms wide and steps forward, for example.

ClaudiaGray said:

To some extent. I find it's very easy to overdo -- the heroine in my first book kept covering her mouth with her hand when she wanted to laugh. It made sense for her as a character; she is shy and somewhat repressed. But when I did a reread of the entire book, I was like, damn, this girl never stops! I cut all but two mentions of that particular gesture.

I think it's important to keep a character's physicality in mind and to use that, but a little goes a long way.

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Amen to that! Over-doing it has been a real problem for me lately. Part of my story involves a love interest for my MC, and I'm much too caught up in describing the body language between the two of them (and I'm not talking x-rated or anything, just trying to work on the subtle attraction factor), so it's as if I'm directing a play: "Your foot should shift while you look down. Her head should be tilted slightly while she looks at you... Make sure you do that flirty-eye-thing..."Thank you. Thank you. LOL

Honestly, I think I'm forgetting my book isn't a movie and that my job is to convey the action with the right words, whereas in a movie the characters can convey so much with a simple look... and let's face it... how many simple looks are there in the written word, other than the same ol' boring: gaze, stare, etc...

Whew. I'd better get back to the drawing board!

I tend to use it sparingly and only in scenes that are especially emotionally fraught. Perhaps it's because I've spent a lot of time writing screenplays, where describing body language and such is often considered stepping on the actor's toes, but I find that level of subtext mostly unecessary in most other types of fiction writing.

I, too, fall into the favorite-gesture trap on occassion.

But I try to use body language when I can show that what a character is saying is opposite to how they're feeling, or to increase the awkwardness of a confrontation, or to show that a character knows something he's not telling (but not the narrator character, ya know).

Because you've got access to people's heads in a way you don't have in screenwriting. You don't necessarily need to be so coy about indicating a character's emotions when you can actually just say "he was pissed off."

pconsidine said:

Because you've got access to people's heads in a way you don't have in screenwriting. You don't necessarily need to be so coy about indicating a character's emotions when you can actually just say "he was pissed off."

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Unless you're not in his POV. If you're in Mary's POV, then saying "John was pissed off" is a tell -- and a very unconvincing tell.

Very true, though not entirely disproving my point.

I have a book on Kinesthetics--reading body language--and it is very eye-opening to interpreting people's body language. I always just found the subject interesting and hadn't considered it as research for writing. I don't know the title off hand, but if anyone's interested, I can dig it out (it's packed away as one of those items from moving into our house that was considered unnecessary to unpack).

My male and female MC (husband and wife, happily married, have been for some time) are very adept at reading each other that way. I think the most overt bit I use, though, is the fact that she bites her nails almost to the point where here fingers bleed - she's good at acting calm, but that's the thing that gives her away.

I agree, body language, like any form of accentuation, can be overdone.
But if I follow what I think is the intent of the original post, I offer that expressing subtle interaction is employed in just about everything I've read over the past 50 years.

People cross their arms, legs, hands, chest; turn their heads, look up, down, around, behind; kick the ground, curb, dog, spouse; sniffle, cough, spit. How these traits are treated is often paramount for creating and developing characterizations.

In my opinion, how well a writer accomplishes this, through whatever shading, is what separates the S. King's from T. King's.

Useful thread. I've had a growing uneasy sense that maybe I was overdoing some things. I'll definitely keep it in mind when I hit the revision stage.

I was thinking about this last night (like all good topics at AW, this one lingers well past logging off) and the best example I can think of is a handshake. Certainly that is an action to be described, but the kind of handshake it is, who initiates it, if someone hesitates before extending their hand to take the hand offered, the handshake where one person grabs the elbow of the other (we call that "The Senator"), all are body language and important. the handshake is the vehicle for expressing the body language and therefore emotions of the characters. One man extends a hand looking the other square in the eyes, and the other hesitates and is reluctant in returning the handshake. Or the man who starts a handshake from across the room, or the handshake that lasts too long, the handshake where you feel attacked with your whole arm rattling from palm to shoulder, and the other hand with a firm grip on your elbow so you can't lean out of it.
All indications fo character. The handshake is the vehicle for that expression.
Isn't it? Isn't body language in that instance integral to the relationship between your characters?


The other example is sitting across the table from someone. Now I'm not talking about gestures, I'm talking about postures. Leaning in, (shows interest and intimacy), leaning out with arms crossed over chest (closed off and distant), choosing a seat so one person is higher up than another, is a play of authority, (looking down to or looking up to are physically happening rather than figuratively and play a major role in how people feel in interaction).

Body language doesn't have to be a "habit" or a fidget, or a nervous tick, or an immediate display of what they are feeling at a moment, but the casual interactions too - posture and reciprocation are key to that.

I use handshakes too. In my novel, the protagonist and his "antagonist" had a long handshake. It's one of those moment that you can feel the tension in the air and the way they both squeeze their hands, etc. Or how a man stands with his chest out, his hands firm on a spear or something. It tells you something pertinent about the person and what he wants to convey by his posture. And then there are subconscious body languages like Stew described -- the way you sit, fidget, etc.

I still think a little goes a long way. If you use it to accentuate the plot or characterization, it's very vivid. But if the character fidgets all the time or shrugs every two pages, the body language loses its effectiveness and it becomes tedious to read.