An action is an intentional event.
Unforgettable characters don’t exist as static objects on the page, but as fascinating subjects in a process of becoming. Characters act. They make us care by doing things that matter in ways that reveal the dynamic, volatile energy that makes them who they are.
Remember our discussion of alignment. We carry a stack of books from the bottom, but what element anchors all those scenes in a story or characteristics of characters? Do you start with their stats and statuses? Their pains and strengths and vibes? Their attractions and interactions? The roles and ranks? Their GMCs or archetypes? Their aspects and affects? All the details and trivia in the world can only suggest a character’s nature or a scene’s skew. You can’t write those things, underpants gnome; you can only extrapolate from them.
In genre fiction, alignment starts with character actions.
At core, characters must do so they can be. Everything that person says, does, avoids, and wants exists in alignment so that they cohere, even as they seem to morph and evolve on the page. To render the effects of energy visible, authors depict the character’s intentional efforts, internal and external, that have meaningful impact.
Writing guides refer to this type of effort variously as action, intention, subtext, want, task, ambition, problem, need, spine. What you call it doesn’t matter so long as your characters do meaningful things in pursuit of their own happiness.
I prefer the word action because it reminds us to keep our characters doing stuff to accomplish their goals with consequences. There’s a reason directors call “Action!” on set when shooting footage. Actors need to act to tell the story. A statue exists separate from the hands that create it. Sculptors may need metal or marble, but in fiction character actions are the medium of choice.53
Characters are sculptures that carve each other.
For entertainment to entertain anyone, you need people paying attention, and that means providing them with an emotional experience that meets and exceeds their expectations. Scenes are driven by the issues and interests native to the characters, and all other details arise organically from the core story. If you can pinpoint a character’s action, you know what they are actually doing as they act upon the other characters, who will act upon them as a consequence.
Instead of allowing you to rely on generalizations about a character’s emotional or mental state, specifying the precise action requires scrupulous care and attention to the situation you’re writing. This in turn allows all the other narrative elements to play directly into the energetic flow of the scene for maximum efficacy.
This emphasis on action rather than impersonation comes straight from the Poetics, cornerstone of western lit-crit (and worth a read if you haven’t).54 Character attributes, aspect, and affect only emerge via a character’s intentional efforts to attain their story goal.
Action connects the character with their goals by giving their energy purpose. If you’re a GMC writer, the action is how they pursue their goal as a tangible expression of their motivation which opposes the conflict they face; if you think of GMC as heat, fuel, and oxygen, then the action is the fire.
What exactly do we mean when we say action in relation to a genre story?
An action is an intentional event caused by a character in order to achieve an objective made meaningful to the reader which makes another event possible.
That’s a mouthful, so let’s break that definition down. An action is
• an intentional event. Action involves a specific choice with a tangible impact, reflecting a character’s unique energy and story goal.
• caused by a character. Action requires the agency of a person participating in the story, so accidents and coincidences need not apply.
• in order to achieve an objective. Action directs the energy of a subject toward a clear story goal, which creates stakes and suspense for the audience to keep them turning the pages all the way to the end.
• made meaningful to the reader. Action results in significant consequences, both to characters in the story and the audience reading it, which creates empathy and emotional resonance.
• which makes another event possible. Action connects causally to the events preceding and following it, allowing escalation and revealing the circumstances around the character by inference.
Energy is not visible; only its effects are visible. Audiences need action as a tangible expression of character energy so they know what is happening and why it matters. To elicit emotion, you’re going to need readers to engage with your story and its characters, and that means Action is paramount.
Action transmutes emotional energy into intentional events, distilling a character’s internal reality into tangible behavior. Since readers experience characters the way they do actual human beings, action creates emotions in them via empathetic magic, and the story’s action figures take the audience for an emotional ride.
Once you involve other characters and external circumstances, that action requires applied force to overcome the friction between where they start and their ultimate focus. Hidden energy manifests as visible action.
The action is who a character is. An action isn’t just what a character tries to do or dreams of doing, but what that person actually, constantly does, cannot help but do, on every page, in every scene, at every moment. That character embodies that action throughout the entire story, whether that’s one book or a dozen.
Actions speak louder than words, more clearly and powerfully.
The audience considers what characters do and what they want to achieve, and develops opinions and feelings about them, just as they would with any person they knew. The more deeply the reader engages, closure fills in the blanks until the character seems like a living three-dimensional being.
Characters make things happen so they can have happiness. Action is what they do to achieve happiness. Since actions must change something outside the character, they are directed outward; even an “internal” process like scrutinizing evidence or choosing a ring focuses on a target outside the character. They do things (actions) so they can get things (objectives).
We all just want to be happy. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that “every action aims at some good.” Characters want happiness. They may be misguided or deranged, but characters always reveal what they want by their actions.
Stories don’t critique actions or comment on actions; they’re not about actions. Stories are made of action the way that pigs are made of pork.
“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
William Shakespeare55
EXERCISE: Fan Fave
Writers start as readers, and in a real sense, every story is a reaction to all the stories that came before it. Analyzing stories and characters you love can help you develop the skills to follow suit.
Pick one of your favorite fictional people and break down what makes them who they are on the page.
1. What does this character do in every scene? Make a list of characteristic behaviors, find a common thread, and create a list of possible options.
2. Test each possible action to see if it defines the sum total of the character’s behavior in the story. The easiest way to do that is to formulate it in the mode of Descartes, “I [action], therefore I am.”
3. Test the action for every moment the character appears in the story. At what points does this person get close to betraying this essential action? Is the sentence true for the character at every point?
4. If not, try to improve or perfect it. Are there better options that capture a different nuance? Notice the slight variations in meaning that shift the character’s nature.
5. Test other options until you find the clear winner. Make certain it works in consistent alignment in every context.
When you’ve nailed down an action for a beloved character, consider how you would have written that action. How would the story and the character differ in your hands? How would that affect the other story elements?
An action is an intentional event caused by a character.
By definition, a verb expresses all the energy in a sentence, an action or a state of being. For fictional purposes, a wise author gives characters a juicy, compelling action verb with plenty of punch. Focusing on the character’s actions from the start ensures the character is active, not to mention why those actions are significant.
For any character I create, I always want to pick the most potent, unexpected, specific action I possibly can…a dynamic verb choice that will force me (and my readers) to salivate and sweat and shiver and soar through the course of the story. Action always occurs in the present tense…it is what characters do right now, rather than what they did or will do. Action must unfold in real time so that readers can experience it.
The action acts as a kind of emotional circuit breaker for the character through which all of the behavior, traits, and energy passes. Every problem and solution starts from and aligns with the action. All of the character’s potential and failure, impact and imbalance can be traced to it.
For best results, an action should operate internally and externally with a tangible physical effect outside of the character as well as a mental image and an emotional impact inside them as well. When identifying your character’s action, look for juicy resonance on all three levels.
• PHYSICAL: Make sure the action directs its energy externally into clear, tangible goals so audiences can engage easily.
• MENTAL: Look for actions that create dynamic, dramatic images in the mind’s eye. (e.g. not take, but pilfer; not look, but scrutinize; not ask, but interrogate)
• EMOTIONAL: Opt for actions with a wide range of variation and intensity expressing the complexity of your character’s interior life.
You’re going to have to write this story and bring this character to life, so keep those actions physical and fun, visceral and vital. These same qualities appeal to audiences so this approach is a twofer.
A clear action allows you to conjugate the character dynamically in every situation so that what they do always matters. Identify that action and every other detail of the book will align with it for maximum emotional coherence and impact. Characters embody their actions at every moment.
Think of Odysseus tricking, Alice wondering, Scrooge denying, Gollum coveting, Hercule Poirot outwitting, Empress Livia poisoning, Edmond Dantès avenging, Lisbeth Salander hacking, Dracula draining, Zaphod Beeblebrox flouting, Cleopatra seducing, Willie Wonka astonishing, Auntie Mame embracing, Schmendrick the Magician bungling, Lorelei Lee luring, or Allan Quatermain exploring…all of them relentlessly pursue the central motivated lines of action that define them and shape their stories.
Don’t worry if you disagree with my take on the above characters or others later in this book. Don’t expect everyone to agree on the actions you identify for your own creations. Different writers draw power from different words, themes, symbols. You’re a writer, so voice should guide your choice: Word choice is personal.
Verbs express different kinds of energy that moves in different directions. Weigh the differences between someone who pushes the world away or pulls it toward them, someone who joins things together or splits them apart.
The purpose of an action is to help you build a satisfying emotional ride for your readers, full stop. Verb choice reflects your voice, your experience, and your perspective on a story. What matters most is that you get results. Whenever you don’t, re-verb accordingly. As long as those actions help you tell the story as powerfully as possible, you’re golden.
We all know that characters take action, so why would you start anywhere else when trying to verbalize a story?
Consider Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series. I’d argue his action is “to vex” because of its layered meanings as…an act of hostility, a bluff, promise, blackmail, a defense mechanism, a looming maneuver, foreboding, a leadership tactic, a warning, a theoretical threat, a legitimate menace, and a misunderstood sacrifice. Snape seems dangerous, but more than anything, he impedes and intimidates Harry throughout all seven books…like the pebble in the shoe, hair in the butter, salt in the sugar. In every sense of the word, Snape vexes
• his family, his community, his prospects, his affections, and his reputation.
• Harry’s reputation at the school and any illusions about his parents.
• James Potter’s superiority, Lily Potter’s infatuation and marriage.
• his students, instructors, and colleagues, their lessons and work, discipline and rules.
• Gryffindor’s chances and Slytherin’s assumptions.
• the leadership of Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Umbridge, whenever it suits him and often when it reflects most terribly on his reputation.
• Harry’s actions publicly and Harry’s enemies secretly.
• Quirrell’s snooping, Lockhart’s fabrications, Lupin’s secret, Moody’s machinations, Umbridge’s interrogation, and Draco Malfoy’s curse.
• Dumbledore’s plans (apparently) and the Death Eater’s siege (actually).
• Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, the new Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army, the Dementors, and ultimately Voldemort.
• the history and future of the Wizarding World.
• Harry’s lifelong loathing (by revealing his memories).
• himself, constantly following his heart or head precisely when he shouldn’t, doing everything the hard way and the long way round.
In every scene of the books and films, Snape vexes. His compulsion to vex actually puts him at cross-purposes with everyone and everything in his world, complicating every possibility of contentment or reward. He is vexation in human form.
Calling Snape sinister, grim, petty, malicious, lonely, bitter, repellent, snide, stern, treacherous, or melodramatic only describes how others perceive him. Likewise brave, vulnerable, devoted, resourceful, protective, remorseful, heroic, shrewd, or tragic. Modifiers invariably skim the surface, elide contradiction, and reduce a life to misleading impressions.
Describing him as a menace, a magician, a master, a Machiavelli, or martyr only gives a cursory sense of his role in certain scenes and books and ignores others. He isn’t static enough to remain a person, thing, or idea. Nouns beg the question and erode complexity.
But by focusing on verbs, his tactics and interactions—victimizing, disciplining, shielding, harassing, misleading, scolding, puzzling, sacrificing, conspiring, cursing, snooping, sniping, snapping, snaping—his essential energy emerges. Using verbs, I can encapsulate all of Severus Snape in a kind of narrative rhapsody on one central, essential action of vexing. The tactical shifts are merely notes in his core melody in the key of vex.
For anyone who’s skeptical of my analysis, the character’s actual name is an archaic, regional synonym for vex. The verb “to snape” literally means:
• to criticize, shame, rebuke, or reprimand
• to offend, revile, or snub severely
• to injure, bite, or nip (as with cold)
• to limit, thwart, or impede
• to blight or stunt growth
• to call off a dog
• to taper or bevel raw materials for a snug fit (in shipbuilding)
• And (in Sussex dialect) boggy ground…just for evocative flavor and to drive the point home.
The only reason I don’t propose the actual, obvious verb to snape as this character’s action is that the word fell out of common use several centuries ago, and to vex covers a broader and more dramatic range of tactical possibilities. He does more than snape, but he vexes on every page in which he appears. All of his being aligns with that central urge to vex.
Of course, I’m not doing a lit-crit reread of J.K. Rowling’s epic series, but trying to imagine a way an author could arrive at a character that appealing and complex. Likewise, I’m not suggesting that Rowling would agree with my take on her legendary antihero, but rather to point out a strong character in a memorable series full of incendiary moments all defined by a single action.
Nailing down a character action for Snape gives me a hold on his essential nature and would steer my writing process. The coherence of Snape’s tactics and his multifaceted appeal spring from that relentless, counterintuitive drive he has to vex everyone and everything that might bring him ease and happiness.
Severus Snape vexes, therefore he is.
Since characters are their action, that action doesn’t change even across multiple books. The character coheres because their action does.
Alignment is everything! For us to connect with characters, to invest in the growth and emotions of a protagonist, their actions must transform them and those actions must cohere over the course of the book. Casting each significant character with a specific verb immediately
• releases their energy on every page and engages reader emotions.
• anchors their relationships with enemies and allies, lovers and losers, mentors and tempters.
• reflects all your choices about them, from wardrobe to history to foibles to outcome.
• invokes their authentic voice, belief system, and idiom organically.
• telegraphs their journey’s scope and core story arc in each interaction.
• articulates their goal, motivation, and conflict in clear contrast to the rest of the cast.
• builds coherence across their scenes and prevents “out of character” glitches.
• provides opposing dramatic objectives for every other character in the story.
• structures your narrative organically, in situ, no matter your preferred writing process.
Embrace your character’s action and your character will return the favor by taking action on every page. Verbalize your story from the outset and you allow the story to tell itself.
“All fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald56
EXERCISE: Amp Site
Modern media has a grim habit of shrinking and homogenizing everyday speech, shaving our language down to the dimmest and dumbest options in an attempt to maximize audience share…great for ratings, terrible for writers who need to find the right words.
Reading widely and wildly can reverse that process, but you can just as easily exercise your verbal faculties as you would any essential muscle. Get in the habit of upgrading language to the most dynamic and interactive verbs possible.
1. Write down 3-5 adjectives that describe your character.
2. Write down 3-5 adverbs that express the way your character would do something.
3. Write down 3-5 nouns that identify your character.
4. Now expose the actions buried within all those modifiers and nouns by transforming all of them into verbs your character might embody in a scene. (If your hero is hungry, he gobbles. If your heroine is a bandit, she plunders.)
What is gained and lost by the transition into verbs? Are the resultant verbs appropriate for your character in every circumstance? Why and why not? Note how certain verbs indicate subtle information about setting, period, career, and morality. Splash around in that vocabulary and you’ll stretch your authorial voice.
An action is…caused by a character…made meaningful to the reader.
Where do these magical actions come from? How can you select the strongest, sexiest action available that can sustain several hundred life-changing pages?
The action of every character arises from their void…the wound, lack, or need within them that drives all their decisions. That void is the root of their desires and the source of all their energy, so of course it exerts a gravitation pull on every possible action.
All characters (and arguably all people) struggle with an empty space they cannot fill or a mortal wound that will not heal or a dark need they cannot resist. The greater that void, the higher the stakes, the stronger the conflict, the more powerful the action. That motivating lack always sparks the perfect action.
The action arises from their void and points them toward a happiness they believe/hope/pray might fill that inner emptiness permanently. However and whoever they are, they pay attention in order to secure that happiness. The void creates the emotional context for all their decisions. Exactly what they pay attention to lets us know what they care about and why we should care.
What is their purpose? A character doesn’t just act, they take action in order to… accomplish something. Think of it as a mad lib: “[Character] is [context] who pays attention in order to [action] [objective].”
• Rooster Cogburn is a disgraced, battle-scarred marshal out at the edge of the US territories, who pays attention in order to recover his grit and good name. (True Grit)
• Whitney Stone is a headstrong hoyden who pays attention in order to agitate Regency society with the only husband who can handle her. (Whitney, My Love)
• Hercule Poirot is a fastidious Belgian detective who pays attention in order to outwit criminals and police using only his little grey cells. (Death on the Nile et al)
• Arha is the enslaved high priestess of the Nameless Ones who pays attention in order to master her false fears and her real enemies. (The Tombs of Atuan)
• Hiro Protagonist is the mafia-pizza “Deliverator” who pays attention in order to hack enemies and human consciousness via his sword and “mad skillz” to save the world. (Snow Crash)
• Idgie Threadgoode is a Depression-era Alabama troublemaker who pays attention in order to defy bigots and build a loving community. (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café)
• HAL is a ship’s artificial intelligence who pays attention in order to regulate his human crew and a secret mission. (2001)
The strongest action comes from the void because it occupies that character’s thoughts at every moment, even when alone. Its inexorable vacuum sucks everything and everyone toward it, bending each situation like a black hole at the heart of the character. The void generates energy and the action expresses it in their world.
If your heroine operates from a fear of exposure and scandal, then her action might be to disguise or to dictate. If your comic sidekick’s greatest fear is silence, then his actions could be to entertain or to incite in all his blathery chattering. Whatever your character needs will force them to take the necessary actions in pursuit of their intention. By testing and discarding options in search of the strongest, most dynamic action possible, you can upgrade your character to the best choice available.
The easiest way to test actions: Can the character undertake this action without any explanation? If yes, groovy. If no, then you’re not creating an action, just baking a big, ugly exposition cake. An action that requires explanation will confuse your readers and hobble your story. Make certain that an audience understands what’s happening so they can pay attention.
Always kick the tires: the right action is the one readers can imagine this character pursuing without any explanation or exposition necessary.
In his book A Sense of Direction, theatrical legend William Ball notes that though an actor chooses an action, the audience may never consciously know it, but nevertheless senses the consistency of the character’s behavior. Again, this applies perfectly to writing, but unlike impersonal ad questionnaires and other murky methods, this behind-the-scenes prep work pays off handsomely every time.
Ball also offers what he calls the “all-purpose, shortcut, surefire, knockdown, bring-em-back-alive, fail-safe, self-cleaning, inexhaustible magic trick” of identifying a character’s action: get and make.57 If you’re stuck, these work as a perfect starting point for verbalizing your characters.
• What is the character trying to get the other person to do?
• What are you trying to make the other person do?
If you can answer those questions, you can identify the action of any character.
Articulating the action as a verb in its infinitive form (e.g. to get, to make, to take) allows actors and directions flexibility and clarity. (e.g. Odysseus tricks, but his action is to trick.) An infinitive verb presents a neutral, flexible starting point for whatever characterization is necessary.
From those rudimentary origins, you can easily sharpen and polish an action until the character pops off the page. If you’ve identified the perfect verb, good job! And if things are still murky, then let’s dig further. When struggling, many authors default to what characters see and how they seem: nouns and adjectives.
For characterizations bogged down in what they see, the things and beings around them, eliminate nouns so that
• “She wants a mansion.” becomes “She wants to purchase a mansion with her windfall.” or “She wants to demolish a hospital to clear space for a mansion.”
• “He wants fame.” becomes “He wants to dazzle audiences around the world for fame.” or “He wants to blackmail a group of celebrities for fame.”
• “She wants a ferret.” becomes “She wants to kidnap a ferret from its owners.” or “She plans to lobby her co-op to legalize ferrets.”
By focusing the effort of the character rather than their expression, on what they do rather than a nearby thing or a person, you pinpoint their energy in a scene and across a story. They embody the action evoked by their void. Alignment to the rescue!
For characterizations seemingly stuck in appearances, moods, and how things seem, try to find the verbs hidden by the adjectives. Rather than letting a character simply be “sleepy,” that person demands a nap or escapes to a bedroom. A “harsh” character would instead dominate a discussion or ridicule their employees. Again, by focusing on the specific action, the character becomes clear and the context comes into focus.
In turn that leads to your other characters and their actions which provide an ideal source of dramatic friction and will enrich all of their on-page relationships. Consider the interesting collisions possible.
If your main character needs to orchestrate every situation, then you’ll want to populate your book with a cast of folks who disorder, disarm, derail that character’s actions. If you have a heroine who lives to untangle problems or puzzles, then give her a whole cast of meddling, fumbling, scheming web spinners. As the author, you can solve most of your structural difficulties from the outset by specifying actions for all the characters that will produce the most dramatic friction in the least amount of space.
Don’t be afraid to use placeholders and upgrade later. You may stumble across the right action after a few days playing with possibilities. There’s no shame in trying them on like shoes and discarding the ones that squeak or pinch in the wrong places.
The more you verbalize this way, the more aligned your process will be, and the more efficient your efforts. Over time, you’ll develop those verbal muscles so that you can rule out clinkers and stinkers early and pinpoint a winner swiftly. As a bonus, collecting vivid verbs will strengthen your writing as a whole.
Characters may not be self-aware. Some characters can see and state their actions and the actions of others clearly. These folks may even state their action in plain language on the page, but that kind of blunt candor is rare and you should use it consciously.
Above all things, Trust your gut. You’ll know the character’s action when you find it. Identifying it resembles dowsing: as you pass over several possibilities, the correct one will tug you toward it with magnetic force because it aligns with the character’s aspect and affect on multiple levels.
In my experience the perfect action for the character plucks at your strings, prods your muse, and strikes a flint. It will evoke emotions and provoke your narrative impulses. That action will have a consonance and resonance that lights up possibilities you cannot wait to commit to paper.
Whatever your strengths and habits, take the time to choose those actions and every project will write itself.
“The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”
Ulysses S. Grant58
EXERCISE: Dark Matters
Every character’s action springs from a personal void. Knowing what haunts and drives a character can shape every moment they’re on the page. Look to the things they lack. Voids never stop sucking, and so the power they provide is limitless.
1. Identify the character’s central void and how it impedes their happiness.
2. Based on your character’s void, identify the ways this character might try to address that persistent suckage with a credible solution.
• What would fulfill them and ease their pain?
• What kind of effect would it have on their energy at the best and worst of times?
3. Make a list of possible goals driven by the character’s void.
4. Eliminate any nouns and modifiers by boiling those essential wants into a list of possible actions, listing the verbs in their infinitive forms (to + verb). What action will they embody to combat this void?
5. Add any other active verbs that might spring from that void as credible solution for this character. (n.b. a perfect opportunity to break out your favorite thesaurus). Narrow that list to the best candidate.
6. Complete a rough mad lib that identifies their context and desire: “[Character] is [context] who pays attention in order to [action] [objective].”
Don’t be afraid to get literal and physical. If a character’s void is enslavement, their action might be “to free” or “to unlock.” If a character’s void is abuse, their action might be “to heal” or “to nurture.” People never stop trying to outrun the thing constantly dragging them towards despair, destruction, and death.
An action is an intentional event…made meaningful to the reader.
For me, every project literally starts with dynamic verbs.
Before I commit a word to paper, I sit down and figure out the story’s verbal palette, the central forces driving my cast, and ways the resultant actions might produce enough interesting friction to elicit powerful, entertaining emotions for an audience. The verbs dictate subgenre, tropes, even niche appeal thereby.
A protagonist’s action roots the entire project by clarifying and energizing every moment they appear on page. The right action can
• structure the flow of scenes and escalation of events.
• charge all intercourse, social and sexual, violent and vibrant.
• indicate moments of drama and comedy.
• spawn other characters who can assist and oppose the protagonist.
• create universal, accessible conflicts with direct emotional impact.
Using verbs to construct characters rather than nouns or adjectives taps the energy of the story and builds actions directly into the bedrock of your project. That motivated flow keeps your characters’ arcs believable because they are consistent without being robotic, active without being frenetic, precise without being limited.
Action makes energy visible. Energy provokes emotion. Emotions can structure the entire story. If you know what characters do and why, every action produces a reaction in other characters. All you have to do is feel your way through the story by verbalizing it.
Remember the discussion of conjugation back in Chapter 3? If characters are their actions, then every character can be expressed most clearly as a verb. For clarity, and in order to encapsulate all of the potential in a character, I use the infinitive form of the verb (to + verb) as a base because with that form I can unlock all of the power of the action in whatever context a character acts.
Example: A colleague came to me excited because she’d cracked a character and his action: “Lost. He’s lost!”
I was confused at first. “You mean to lose? He loses in every scene of the story?”
Nope. She meant that the character was already lost, and consequently spent the whole story dealing with being lost. Since “lost” was a verb and fit his personality, it had to be the action. So I pressed, “Lost is past perfect. It’s already happened. How does he keep losing things? When? How is he going to lose something in every scene? How many ways can he lose?”
She agreed and started spitballing his habitual actions, looking for the common denominator…all of them driven by having been lost, past perfect. What she’d done was zero in on the character’s existing pain and confusion. “Lost” was the character’s void. He didn’t lose things…he was lost (a past perfect verb) in every scene. She found the solution instantly. He was always pushing to find solutions and people to keep from feeling lost. He was lost and so he was constantly trying to find.
If you can only use an action verb in past perfect, then you’re probably describing a void that drives the action. An action is not what the character is, but what the character does, intentionally. Using the infinitive as the character pushed her one step further to see what the void made him do in every scene.
Stories conjugate characters. Just as a writer takes a verb and alters it to specify its function in a text, a story alters a character to specify their function in the narrative. Consider the infinite power of the infinitive and make certain that action will apply to all possible moments with this character. Allow the character to act, and conjugate the character to situate them precisely in time and space.
Unlike film, fiction revels in subtle, complex actions that operate internally and externally, but clarity packs a punch. The more easily the reader can verify the success or failure of an action, the more dramatic the action will be. If you have to explain an action, you can do better. Clear actions make for powerful, moving scenes. If your heroine “wants” something, then you must tell readers what, why, and how she “wants,” but if her objective is to purloin or annihilate something, you can show the theft or the annihilation.
And like a circuit breaker, an action really does allow you to trace all of the character’s connections and the story’s power when you run into trouble or need to reroute something.
Always amplify where possible, and that doesn’t just mean making lurid word choices. Go action-shopping and give yourself options. For me, this stage of story planning always ends up as a delicious thesaurus salad. I slosh all the possibilities around in a bowl until I find the one that rings true, clear, bright, and resonant for that character in this context. Any hero can seek, but what about a hero that excavates, rifles, hounds, or craves. If you start out saying that your villain’s action is to punish, you might decide mutilate or torture feel flashier, but maybe the subtler hobble or dissect create scarier, less clichéd possibilities.
Strong verb, strong character. If you take nothing else from this book, remember that.
At my students’ urging, I’ve completed an author-specific action/tactic thesaurus called Activate that includes secondary divisions by genre and vibe. Though originally intended as an appendix to this book, its length made inclusion impractical. Having said that, any thesaurus will serve your purposes, so long as it notes transitivity and flags phrasals. You just need to consider gradations, connotations, and implications in selecting your character’s core verb.
Additionally, one slim guide I recommend to all authors is Actions: The Actors’ Thesaurus by Narina Caldarone & Maggie Lloyd-Williams, which they wrote for the express purpose of providing clear, playable actions for performers looking to squeeze maximum impact from a scene. My only caveat is that this book focuses on performable verbs, which are not always the same as writable verbs. I speak from experience when I say, What helps an actor won’t always serve a writer. For obvious reasons, Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams emphasize presentational options appropriate for the rehearsal process with a literal cast and also leave out many subjective/internal verb options ideal for fiction.
As you dig around for the right option, look for verbs that push your creative limits. Recycling comfortable actions will also guarantee you keep repeating characters, which will leave you regurgitating the same book. If your voice or subgenre is truly focused on a single type of action (i.e. chase for thrillers), look for subtle variation via synonyms and other angles (e.g. hunt, pursue, track). Instead of asking “why?” ask “in order to accomplish what?” Focus on what a character wants to do, not what they want to be.
Of course, plenty of folks simply do stuff without taking action; we call these non-actions activities. An action tries to cause a change. An activity simply passes time.
For a million reasons, the life of the average person involves much more activity than action. As Swain points out, “The majority of us have drift, not drive. We fall into things through happenstance and follow the line of least resistance.”59 When readers pick up a book, they’re not interested in bobbing along, bored, while nothing in particular happens.
In the spectrum of impact, character behavior can take several shapes over the course of a story.
• ACTION requires that a character tries to change the status quo with consequences, pursuing a story goal made meaningful to the audience.
• ACTIVITY allows a character to pass time in stasis without cost or impact, in pursuit of a goal meaningless to the reader, even if it’s significant to them.
• AVOIDANCE can turn some activities into a passive action and weakens character appeal.
• ADAPTATION only happens when a character runs out of excuses or escapes and must take action.
• ADVANCEMENT moves a character closer to their goal by pushing past conflicts through sequential actions.
Establishing a clear action is both simpler and subtler than you might expect. One way to see if your character is taking action is to frame it with the phrase “in order to.”
• “She jumped in the pool.” is an activity.
• “She jumped in the pool in order to save her son.” is an action.
The same is true of anything a character can find or mind or make or take. Great sex scenes are actions that transform the characters involved. Crappy sex scenes are activities that fill up pages and change nothing. Actions are essential beats. Activities are discardable filler that serve no function. Readers skim them, as they should. When Elmore Leonard said “Try to leave out the parts people tend to skip,” he was talking about activities.60
The next time you’re outlining a story or you find yourself in the weeds with a truculent plot bunny, go verb hunting. Literally populate your cast of characters with a single action for each that they will embody for the length of the narrative. Identify the void that drives each of them and the singular action they hope/believe/trust will bring them happiness.
Think laterally, not literally.
Start with several intriguing placeholders and then spiral in on the right word. Amplify the options you choose by weighing dramatic contrast and narrowing that list to the one that resonates, escalates, and refracts with other actions in play. Sometimes the character will adapt to embody the action, and sometimes you’ll need a better verb to encapsulate the character. Allow each action to keep its character coherent and constantly unfolding as their actions change their world and vice versa.
Let your characters do, so that they can be.
“The art of verbs isn’t an art of invention. It’s the art of observation—learning to see dynamism in everyday events.”
Constance Hale61
EXERCISE: Add Verbs
Since character is habitual action, let’s build a character from the verb up. Using your favorite thesaurus, zero in on the one essential, intentional action this person will embody every time they appear. Give it a whirl, either for a possible project or for an actual work in progress. Give yourself time and do some mindful digging so that you arrive not just at the easy result, but at the best one.
1. Identify the character’s central void and how it impedes their happiness.
2. Choose active verbs that might spring from that void as a credible solution for this character’s ongoing predicament (n.b. a perfect opportunity to break out your favorite thesaurus).
3. Boil those options down to about 5-10 possibilities and try them on, see which ones the character can embody for the entire length of the story/series. Next to each verb, describe how using that action would subtly shift the character’s portrayal in the story.
4. Using that list of possible actions, let’s get specific. Narrow your list of possible actions to the one option which best expresses their void. Is there any way to amplify its expression as the story advances? How does this action reveal the absence that occupies all their thoughts and influences all their behavior?
• BONUS ROUND: Sell the story to an A-list actor using nothing but the action. Pretend you’re casting the miniseries based on this book: What would you tell the lead actor who asked, “What do I get to do over the course of the season? What’s my deal? Why should I choose this project over a cookie-cutter blockbuster?” Make sure your answer would appeal to that actor and the worldwide audience the show would require to get renewed for several seasons.