#they were just clunky and awkward and i dont like what they conveyed

[hibiscuslynx]

u ever go back to one of ur published fics and in a fit of i-should-be-sleeping-but-im-on-ao3 insanity edit the entire thing to be properly capitalized bc for some reason 1 and a half years ago you thought it was a good idea to post things in lowercase ? yeah. anyway...

[ambientwriting]

Hi! I'm struggling with a chapter. It has many characters and their reactions are important. How can I include all their reactions to one event without sounding boring, repetitive or slowing down the pace?

Hi there, sorry for not replying to this yet, Tumblr didn’t notify me!

Writing Scenes with Multiple Characters

This is something I’ve had to tackle in my own writing myself, as I tend to write stories with HUGE casts. 

When writing scenes with multiple characters it’s way too easy for the scene to get bogged down with repetitive actions and dialogue as you try to hop from one character to the next to convey what they’re feeling. 

You might get a clunky scene, like this, that pulls you out of the action and slows down the pace:

E.g 

June screamed, huddling in the corner of the room. Beatrice had screamed too, huddling next to her, shaking slightly. Lee hadn’t screamed, but it had been close, he huddled in the corner with them, “What happened?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Beatrice whispered back.

“Me neither.” whispered June in response.

Daniel was frozen still but shook his head, regaining his composure. “Anne, are you ok?” 

She sniffled, close to tears. “Yeah.”

Mia was wailing loudly. “No!”

Sarah was frozen to the spot too, but Mia’s wails had snapped her back to the moment. She exchanged a glance with Daniel. 

“Check on Lucas, would you?” Daniel said, nodding to the corner.

“Ok,” said Sarah, “Lucas…are you ok?”

Lucas stood on his own in the corner, arms wrapped around his knees, face pale. “Yeah.” 

That was almost painful to read.

It slowed down the pacing and the switching between each character and unnecessary attempt to give them all dialogue made it a clunky, awkward mess. You want to streamline the scene as much as possible. A way to do this is to remove any unnecessary ‘padding’ dialogue. You often don’t need dialogue to express how a character is reacting to a scenario. Describing a character as “shaking” and also saying “I’m scared” would be redundant, and pretty obvious to the reader. There are also characters who would likely not speak in certain situations, out of shock, shyness, or fear. 

Another way to avoid it feeling like you’re just hopping from character to character as if you were just ticking them off of a checklist, is to group characters together. It’s likely that there are several characters that would react similarly, so if two are likely to be crying put them together int he scene. If there are three or so that are likely to be in shock, describe them together. You can do this with several characters who aren’t likely to react the same and show characterization. For example, if you have a responsible character have them console the scared characters and telling the argumentative characters to stop bickering. 

One thing I tend to do to avoid “listing” off characters when I write, is to focus on one major character to base the POV on. Select this character to be the eyes of the scenes, this way you will feel less likely to ‘head hop’ from each character and muddle the scene by accidentally switching POV and creating a confusing mess. Write what this one character see’s and feels. Show how the other characters feel by their actions, and how the POV character reacts to them.

Here’s a slightly better rewording of the same scene, notice how much it’s condensed, unnecessary or repetitive dialogue and actions were removed, yet the characters reactions are still shown:

E.g 

A jolt of shock slapped Sarah in the face. She leaned on the wall for support, vaguely aware of what was happening around her. Someone had screamed, was it June or Beatrice? She didn’t know. They sat huddled in a corner with Lee, speaking in hurried, shaking whispers. Sarah shook her head, snapping out of her daze. Daniel, it semed, had too. He was already crouched, consoling Anne and trying to get Mia to stop wailing. He shot her a worried expression as she aproached on shaky legs, nodding to Lucas. He didn’t look too great. He stood on his own in the corner, arms wrapped around his skinny knees, face ashen. 

In fact, there was zero dialogue in that scene, but it still did the job of conveying the reactions of eight different characters without needing to bog down the scene with repetitive actions. 

I hope I could be of help, but if not, here are some further articles that might be worth reading: 

http://literarylab.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/too-many-characters-in-scene-mix-and.htmlhttp://jamigold.com/2014/10/ask-jami-how-many-characters-is-too-many/https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/dont-let-multiple-character-scenes-run/http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/10/25/dialogue-my-characters-talk-too-much/

~Lana

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[bromosapiens]

@crimsongenetics ((putting this here so we dont have a clunky thread))

crimsongenetics:

Karkat was not aware. But that’s just who he was as a person.

Had it been someone he hadn’t known, maybe he’d have caught onto the fact he was unconsciously making skin contact without consent. But, as it were with Karkat knowing someone for a certain amount of time, he didn’t catch on to his progressively man-spreading self and the increased akimbo’d position of his arms as time passed and he became more relaxed, resulting in a hand encroaching on personal space that wasn’t his own and, well, contact. And then more contact. Because Karkat was otherwise occupied, and thinking too hard about something often resulted in a lack of awareness for his surroundings, something that had only gotten worse with age.

What was he thinking too hard about? He was wondering what it would be like to be able to look directly into the camera to make a point or convey an emotion without any spoken commentary, because that would be pretty useful. Sure, he’d probably abuse the feature if it were applicable to real life, but it was his life to live. Think of all the times he could put it to use! He could think of at least three that had happened in the past few days alone. Why couldn’t he be on The Office?

The word “lotion” stabbed into his subconscious, immediately bringing about a wave of confusion, and he snapped back to himself and turned to his TV companion with a half-confused, half-judging expression. “What? Who says I use lotion?” He paused, eyes flicking back to the TV. “The hell are you even talking about?”

Avi almost actually, physically, painfully, bit down hard on his tongue to stop himself from snorting. Karkat looked completely blissfully zoned in on the pixels of the big box in front them, and Avi could only dream of having that kind of long-term attention span. As it was, he had to use every force of will not to laugh.

He debated as long as possible without making it too awkward (which lasted a grand total of three seconds and a few deadpan deliveries on-screen), to just go with the flow and lose some punk rock points or alert Karkat to his subconscious appendage agenda. 

He took pity on the man, squeezing his hand a bit as if to say, ‘hey dude look at this, just two dudes holdin hands i mean theres nothin wrong with that or anything just want this to be a-ok consensual bro hand-holdin no need to be alarmed or anythin its all good here’

He wasn’t sure that Karkat would get the message, so he also added, “I was just wonderin’ what kind of lotion Jim uses. His skin looks smooth.”

Just for good measure.