Suit up: A Guide to the Action World

⤷Tips on Conveying Information without Stalling the Story Part 1

╔══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ══════╗

𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖞𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕴𝖓𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 

𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕾𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝕻𝖙. 1

╚══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ══════╝

It is valid—and usually pretty easy—to break narration down into action and inaction. The stuff that happens and the stuff other than the present-time, filmable story. Such digressions include character interiority, back story, description, and scene-setting. 

≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪

To Start Let's Read the Dialogue in one of the scenes in Game of Thrones...

We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are dead."

"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.

Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. "Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with the dead."

"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"

"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough for me."

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling."

Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?"

Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear .

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him . Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander . Especially not a commander like this one . Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was concerned .

His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. "Bet he killed them all himself, he did," Gared told the barracks over wine, "twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior." They had all shared the laugh .

It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same .

"Mormont said as we should track them, and we did," Gared said. "They're dead. They shan't trouble us no more. There's hard riding before us. I don't like this weather. If it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow's the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice storm, my lord?"

The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out."

----

In creating a movie scene out of this dialogue, one of the first things that the director should remove is the action (which refers to those words that are underlined.) 

Sure, you might do a bit more to emphasize a sense of trouble looming. Have Will and Gered turn up their collars, gaze around the forest, calm their agitated horses—things like that. And yes, you might consult the highlighted descriptions for ideas about costuming and set. But if we were watching a filmed version of the above story, we couldn't know Will's thoughts in any way other than through implication via external action (barring voice-over, which is pretty frowned-upon in film these days).

And though we could include a flashback or two, we'd want to budget those, and here, it's probably unnecessary. So we'd have to forego most of the back story stuff.

With me so far?

In some ways, we could consider all of the inaction stuff to be information: action is about doing; information is about being.

INFORMATION VS ACTION

Information

- Information conveys states of mind, and states of existence, but not states of affairs.

- When we hear that Gered "was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go," that's expressing a state of existence, not a character doing anything.

-When we read that "Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner," we're reading about Will's state of mind, not what he's doing.

-And when we learn that "Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife," we're understanding the contextual state of existence that underlies one of the conflicts in this scene.

"Information" does two things:

1) provides context for the action

2) conveys the states of mind of the characters.

Action

- Action is anything that happens in a story. It can be an event, it can be dialogue, it can be a reaction to an event or dialogue, or even to another character's reaction.

-While buildup is necessary for other parts of the story, and is a potent tool for ratcheting up the tension and creating conflict, capturing readers from page one is almost a necessity in our day.

To further explain it Move to the other Chapter for more examples. 

≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪

Storm. T.D. (N.d.). Action vs. Information: Convey Info without Stalling the Story. retrieved May 19, 2022 from.https://www.stormwritingschool.com/action-vs-information-convey-info-without-stalling-the-story/

Hill, E.  (2011). Action in Fiction. Retrieved May 19, 2022 from https://theeditorsblog.net/2011/09/05/you-got-my-attention-but-wheres-the-action/