Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (26 page)

Here’s an example from my novel
Color the Sidewalk for Me
(Bradleyville Series book 2) of a quiet scene hitting sudden action. The first two paragraphs show the character’s hesitant and thought-filled walk through woods. The third paragraph—only one sentence—transitions into the action. Note how sentences in the following paragraphs shorten when the action begins. Even the longer sentences are divided into shorter phrases of individual action. The whole feel becomes choppy, more intense, like the sudden quickening of the character’s heartbeat.

I entered the grove, relative coolness surrounding me. I paused to wipe sweat from my face. Following the weaving path, I listened for Danny but heard only the sound of my own footsteps.
He’s not coming
.
He doesn’t want me.
I leaned against the last tree.  What now? I couldn’t appear on Danny’s front lawn. But I was no more than a hundred feet from his house. I could almost feel him.

I prayed for him to appear but knew I’d waited too long. I needed to get back to Kevy. My chest sank. I tossed hair from my face. Well, so what, it didn’t matter, I didn’t need Danny Cander anyway. Who did he think he was, trying to hurt me? I emerged from the trees, blinking in the sunlight, repeating that I didn’t need Danny, I did
not.

A muffled sound came from Danny’s house.

I halted. Cocked my head. There it was again. A man argued vehemently. A woman’s voice pleaded.

I held my breath. The pleading escalated, then stopped.

Silence.

My eyes danced across the field as I waited, muscles tense.

The woman screamed. My heart revved.
Mrs. Cander.

As this scene illustrates, Sentence Rhythm depends on more than just the length of your sentences. These additional guidelines will help you create the right rhythm for your scene.

1.
Past participles (past-tense verbs ending in “ing”) are best used in quiet, easy-rhythm scenes. When action or suspense begins, use regular past-tense verbs. (Assuming, of course, you’re writing your novel in past tense.)

Note the number of past-participle verbs in the first two paragraphs above—surrounding, following, blinking, repeating. These verbs have the sense of continuation, an action that takes place over time. Regular past-tense verbs convey a sense of immediacy, of sudden and quick action. Once the action starts in the paragraphs above, we see verbs such as halted, cocked, argued, pleaded, screamed, revved.

2.
As noted before, complex sentences work better in quiet rhythm. Simple sentences work better for action.

Let’s look a little deeper at this point. I mentioned that complex sentences have descriptive phrases before the subject and verb. (Following the weaving path, I listened for Danny ….) Readers have to work their way through this phrase before reaching the most important word of the sentence. In action or suspense sequences, that most important word is the verb. You want to give it prominence, not bury it. (I halted. Cocked my head.)

3.
In general, the higher the action level, the shorter your sentences should be.

Shortening your sentences into incomplete phrases gives off the beat of extreme action or fear. A one-word sentence really can pack a punch. Of course, not every sentence should be that short. But if you divide those that are longer into phrases, each phrase will carry its own sense of immediate action. (The pleading escalated, then stopped.)

4.
In high action sequences, such as fight scenes, divide the action and reaction into separate sentences or short phrases within the same sentence.

The rhythm of fight scenes is rapid-fire, one action leading to another. You want your readers to feel the punches, hear the beat of fear. Every action should be definite and strong. The best way to show this strength is to keep each action distinctive, in a unit of its own. This also helps the most important word of the sentence—the verb—to stand out.

For example, consider this fight sequence on a flight of stairs, first without using sentence rhythm:

Throwing out her fist, she punched him in the eye. Growling in pain, he threw himself on top of her. She was screaming as he pinned her arms and legs. She strained to free herself, lunging up to bite him. He started jerking backwards, and his movements made them slide down a stair.

The beat of these sentences is too languid for the rhythm of the scene. There are too many “ing” verbs, which slow down the feel of the action. Remember, these kinds of verbs connote action over time instead of quick, immediate events. Now consider the scene using Sentence Rhythm as it appears in my novel
Eyes of Elisha
(Chelsea Adams Series book 1), noting in particular the separation of each action:

Her right fist caught him in the eye. He growled in pain, then threw himself on top of her. She screamed. He pinned her arms, her legs. She strained to free herself, lunged up to bite him. He jerked backwards. They slid down one stair. She tried to scream again. He slapped a palm over her mouth, his breath hot on her face.

Feel the difference?

Over and over again in novels I see long, complex and/or compound sentences used in action scenes. The result in my own Inner Rhythm? I don’t
feel
that action. I’m told it’s happening. I may visualize it. But I don’t feel it, because the unconscious “beat” these sentences place in my head are exactly opposite from the “beat” of action.

The beat of chaos

As you’ve seen, short sentences are best for moments of action. Most of the time. There is one important exception. This exception involves scenes that contain action so intense that it moves from a string of quick , individual events into the blur of chaos. In the scene examples above, we could delineate each action. They were sequential in nature. But in scenes of utter chaos, many things are happening at once. The character is so bombarded by stimuli that they don’t have time to react to individual pieces of action. How do you best convey this rhythm?

For the “beat” of chaos, use long, strung-together

sentences to convey continuous, confusing action.

In writing scenes of chaos, you can throw out all four of the guidelines listed above. In fact you
should
create complex sentences, use past participles, even write run-on sentences—do anything you must in order for your sentences to beat the rhythm of chaos and confusion.

The study sample from Dickens’
A Tale of Two Cities
included in the chapter on Inner Rhythm contains an excellent example of Sentence Rhythm that matches the beat of chaos breaking out in a mob. The revolutionaries have cornered their old foe, Foulon, and long moments of tension follow in which they confront and watch him. Then, suddenly, the crowd lunges and chaos erupts as they lynch him:

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him, shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.

Note that the entire paragraph is only two sentences. And the paragraph uses many participles. The resulting effect is the rhythm of perpetual, chaotic motion and confusion.

Sentence Rhythm and Inner Rhythm

One more important thing to note about Sentence Rhythm. So far, we’ve focused on the rhythm of outer action in a scene. But after studying Secret #5, we know that the Inner Rhythm of a character is just as important. So how do you know which rhythm your sentences should match?

Sentence Rhythm should match your character’s

Inner Rhythm when this rhythm—

rather than external action—is the beat

that carries the scene.

Let’s go back to that character sitting by the babbling brook. An easy, mellow Sentence Rhythm is fine as long as he’s merely relaxing. But what if his insides are churning? What if he’s wrestling with the biggest decision of his entire life? Since you want the reader to hear the beat that most affects your character, you should focus on this Inner Rhythm. Are his thoughts sequential, distinct? Use the Sentence Rhythm for action. Are his thoughts completely convoluted and tangled? Then the Sentence Rhythm of chaos may work best.

In some scenes you’ll need to go back and forth between the Inner Rhythm of your character and the outer action, changing the rhythm of your sentences accordingly. This changing beat heightens each of the rhythms and their contrast to each other.

Here’s an example of changing rhythm from my novel
Dread Champion
(Chelsea Adams series book 2). This is a dream sequence—but the nightmare is something that really happened. (Even though the rest of the book is written in past tense, because this is a dream it’s written in present tense. When you’re dreaming, the action is always occurring “right now.”)

Rain pounds the windshield of Dave’s car. Kerra senses the motion of driving, feels the familiar fabric of the seat beneath her.

From nowhere a high-sided truck leaps into view. Its brake lights reflect blood red through the rain. The truck’s back tire bursts, flaps in the wind. The truck swerves into their lane.

“Dave!” The scream rips Kerra’s throat.

Dave throws on his brakes. The Acura veers.

Something jolts inside Kerra, and the picture transforms into cruel slow motion ….

Her hands rising to her mouth, her hair floating around her face, sticking to her tongue. Dave’s head slowly turning, his eyes drifting too late behind him to check for traffic, his head turning back. The squeal of tires against wet pavement, sounding on and on like a stuck record as their car merges onto that record, revolving, revolving, the world spinning, the tree, its bark shiny with rain, disappearing, cycling closer, disappearing, cycling closer. Nausea rising in Kerra’s stomach ….

A horn blares, rams the scene into warp speed. The tree rushes at them. Dave yanks the wheel to the right. The tree jumps left. The smash deafens the world. It splinters and grinds and tears and shatters. The left front of the car dissolves. A ragged branch explodes through the windshield and crunches Dave’s shoulder. His head snaps back. His eyes glaze. The steering wheel crumples toward him, buries itself in his stomach. Dave’s jaw sags. Blood bubbles over his bottom teeth.

Somebody screams. Kerra feels the gush of air through her own mouth.

Dave lifts dazed eyes to her.

The scene freezes, just for a moment. A moment hanging in the air, fuzzed at the edges, like a paused frame on a home video. Kerra’s eyes lock onto Dave’s, reading their pain, their utter disbelief, their hopelessness. Shock immobilizes her. She wants to reach for him but cannot. She gazes deeply into his eyes — and she knows. They remain fixed, and she sees life ebbing from them, as a wave would pull back from shore. The wave recedes … recedes … recedes … then is gone. The eyes settle, flatten, like sand once the water has passed. The lids slowly droop shut.

You can see the various rhythms of this passage. First, as things happen quickly, regular verbs are used. (Pounds, feels, leaps, bursts.) As the dream moves into slow motion I wanted the reader to feel that rhythm. So I switched to past participle verbs. (Rising, floating, sticking, turning, drifting.) When the car goes into a spin I used a series of repeated verbs and phrases to connote that circular motion. (… as their car merges onto that record, revolving, revolving, the world spinning, the tree, its bark shiny with rain, disappearing, cycling closer, disappearing, cycling closer.) I chose each verb in that sentence for its own rhythmic emphasis (reVOLving, reVOLving.) When the scene rams into fast motion regular verbs return. Then everything slows once more as Dave is dying. Again, I wanted the reader to feel that lull. So I added in a long sentence of description to connote the passage of time. (A moment hanging in the air, fuzzed at the edges, like a paused frame on a home video.) For the rest of the paragraph the sentences carry the beat of drawn out motion.