Lending A Helping Hand: Writing Tips

Nuts and bolts: Punctuation with Gesture and attribution pt2

Watch yourself. Watch a movie. Look for specific bits of physical "business" that characters perform as they speak. Look for the tasks that keep their hands busy, and Create a distraction from the convo at hand, adding tension and visual interest to the scene. Two people talking gets instantly boring, doesn't matter the clever &witty dialogue. Even stage plays , with very little room for action, use gesture and expressions to pace the dialogue and add another layer of meaning
to what's being said.

The way a moment of silence during a piece of music, it makes you wait, expecting the next note, and create a sense of relief and pay off when that note finally arrives...that's how gesture and attribution can control timing better than Standard punctuation: a comma or a period or semicolon. Inserting a bit of physical action—maybe one step in a process that's completed over the course of the scene. These can be as subtle as eye movements, or as arriving late in a scene. Panting or apologizing and sweating from their hurry. Or entering from a rain storm, giving them lots of cost shaking and hair mopping or umbrella flurrying. Watch yourself and people around you. What do you do as you speak or listen? Do you leaf through magazines when you're on the telephone, do you speak while petting the dog? Dusting the furniture. Start using physical business and attribution to better control your passage of dialogue.
•••Avoid boring terms : describing land and building in dry legal terms. " square feet " "Room dimensions"