With action, as with dialogue and description, it’s knowing how much not to write. For example:
Brian woke up at 7:36 AM. He closed his eyes against the glare from the bedroom window, opened them again, closed them again, opened them, closed them, opened them, closed them, opened them, closed them, and then, finally, kept them open for at least four point three seconds before experiencing his first blink of the day. Giving his scrotum a satisfying scratch with the index finger of his right hand, he let out a brief but comedic fart, yawned with an ‘Eeeeeeraw’ kind of sound, and started to get out of bed. He threw the duvet aside with his left arm, planting his feet on the carpet, thus enabling his torso, arms, neck, head, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, to rise from the mattress and greet the new day. Putting one foot in front of the other, right leg after left leg, in a motion that could only be described as ‘walking’, he headed towards the bathroom; a journey that took him five steps, including a sharp right turn. Taking the toothpaste in his left hand, toothbrush in the right, he squeezed out five point seven millimetres of blue sludge on to the two thousand and fifty three bristles, lifted the brush to his mouth, and painstakingly scrubbed each of his teeth: third molar, second molar, first molar, second bicuspid, first bicuspid, cuspid, lateral incisor, central incisor. He was just about to start on the opposite side of his upper mouth, when his Mother’s voice came floating up the twelve luxuriously carpeted stairs from their tastefully decorated hallway.
‘Brian? Are you up yet?’
Far too much action, in my humble opinion. Not to mention description. However, if Brian – in the context of the story – was to have a bad case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, this passage might actual work.
On the other hand, you could have something like this:
‘Yes, Mother,’ said Brian. ‘Of course I’m out of bed. But then you’ve never really cared about me, have you? You cold-hearted bitch. Well, if you think I’m going to stand here, with only a quarter of my teeth brushed, and let you stick your bony, black-headed excuse for a nose into my private affairs, then you’re very much mistaken. I’m a fully grown man! Do you understand? A human being, with thoughts, desires, passions, ideas. And you’re stifling me, Mother. Do you understand? Suffocating me!’
‘Oh,’ said Mother. ‘Sorry. Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘Coffee? What good is coffee when there are children starving in the world? How can you possibly talk about frothy hazelnut cappuccinos lovingly dusted with chocolate, while people are being systematically raped, murdered, and persecuted, all because of the colour of their skin, their sexuality, their religious beliefs? Answer me that, Mother, if indeed you are my Mother! Coffee? I spit in your coffee, and urinate on all who’ve been involved in the manufacturing of your sickeningly sinful brown dust!’
‘How about a cup of tea then?’
Brian has quite a lot to say for himself here. Too much, in fact. On the other hand, if Brian’s character is that of a pretentious, opinionated, ungrateful maggot of a son who deserves a good hard slap with a wet fish, then these examples of dialogue might well be appropriate.
So, how do you find the right balance between action and dialogue?
Erm … I’m not really sure. Sorry. I think it depends on the writer, the story, the characters, and what kind of effect you’re looking to create.
I hope you weren’t looking for a short answer to this question.
David Elliott was born in Liverpool in 1981. In addition to Penumbra, his short fiction has been published by journals such as The Rusty Nail, Eunoia Review, Danse Macabre, The Satirist, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Down in the Dirt, The Horror Zine, Linguistic Erosion, Flashes in the Dark, MicroHorror, Twisted Tongue, and Delivered.
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