Moving Characters Around in Your Story Space: Improve Your Choreography Skills

AI-generated image (ChatGPT): depict a woman standing on the other side of a round dining table, looking out of a window, historic and romantic aesthetic.

Today’s post is by author and book coach Susanne Dunlap.

One aspect of writing that writers have the most trouble with (and, ahem, so do I) is simply the physical presence and movement of characters—in both fiction and memoir—in imaginary spaces: indoors or out, public or private. In effect, choreography.

What do they do? Where are they and why? Which direction are they looking? Where do they move to? How big is the space?

When you start thinking about those things, it’s easy to tear your hair out about how many ways you can say “looking” or “walking.” But the words themselves are often secondary. What matters is the picture you paint in the reader’s mind so they can be in that space with your characters without distractions. They don’t have to see it exactly as you do, they just have to see it enough for it to make sense.

And a character’s movements and gestures in that space similarly must convey enough without becoming too detailed. At the same time, to create that magical sensation, your characters (or you, in memoir) have to bring their whole selves to the spaces they inhabit and occupy them realistically.

That result depends on making good decisions about what to leave out as much as what to put in. It’s a delicate balance that can be hard to achieve.

A little forethought comes to your aid

I’m as guilty as any writer of throwing my characters into a room, knowing vaguely what should happen, and suddenly realizing I have no idea how they will maneuver through it.

But if I stop to think and ask myself a few questions before I launch into the scene, it’s easier to form my own image and then translate it to the page. For example:

Why are they in this particular space?How long will they be there?What do they need to accomplish in that space?Who else is there?What do they see when they walk in?Will they have to move around in the space, and why?Does the space have any meaning to the characters involved?

Those are story-related questions, and if you can’t answer them, it’s possible that the scene in question doesn’t need to occur in that particular manner, or doesn’t need to occur at all.

But in order to give a sense of a room or other environment, you need to know some practical things too:

How large is the space?What are its physical characteristics? (Including smells and sounds) And do they matter?Are there physical obstacles your characters will have to negotiate?Are there expected actions that normally occur in that place (a dining room? A gym? A hiking trail?)

Finally, to sum it all up: How much does the reader have to know about the space and placement of the characters to enter into the scene?

Doubtless there are more considerations, but for now, let’s work with those. To demonstrate how those questions apply, I’m going to use a scene from my own work in progress. I’ll start by lacerating it for the purpose of making different points, so don’t judge!

A tricky scene pulled apart

This is from the second book in my series of unpublished Regency romances. The scene is at the come-out ball in London of the female protagonist, Olivia. It involves her and the male protagonist, Lewiston, who at this point believes he will not be the suitor to win the heiress, because his friend and noted-but-impoverished society heartthrob—the Duke of Hartland—has set his sights on her.

But she has run out of the supper room and escaped the guests after her mother has asked her to sing for the company. Lewiston slips out and goes in search of her, eventually finding her in the breakfast parlor on the ground floor of the mansion.

Here are my answers to the first set of questions I listed above:

They are in this space because Olivia had to find somewhere the guests at the ball would not likely be.The scene is not long, so they won’t be there for more than a few minutes.Lewiston wants to discover what made Olivia run away (she has a big secret that I won’t reveal at this point).In this part of the scene, just he and Olivia are there.Lewiston recognizes the room as the breakfast parlor because of the furniture, and he sees Olivia gazing out of a window.He will need to get closer to Olivia.It’s a neutral space for both of them.

Here is the lumpy, awkward way I may have begun the scene in the very rough draft:

Lewiston went down the stairs to the ground floor and stood in the hall, looking around to see if he could discover where Olivia was. After a minute, he heard a sniffling sound coming from a room on his left where the door was slightly open. He walked over to the door and listened, then peeked around it to look inside. He saw Olivia standing on the other side of the round dining table, looking out of a window. He recognized the room as the breakfast parlor, and realized that Olivia was in distress.

Walking backward with the intention of leaving her alone, he stepped on a loose floorboard. The creaking sound made Olivia turn around to face him. She was crying, and held a handkerchief crushed in her fist, which she lifted up to wipe her cheeks.

Leaving aside the repetitive syntax and other cringe-worthy factors, I’ll just tear it apart—noting especially details that could be left out—before I fix it:

Lewiston went down the stairs to the ground floor

You probably don’t need to say he went down the stairs, since that would be the only way to get to the ground floor. The reader will easily supply the stairs.

and stood in the hall, looking around to see if he could discover where Olivia was.

Again, you don’t have to say he’s looking around to find Olivia because we already know this from his previous actions.

After a minute, he heard a sniffling sound coming from a room on his left where the door was slightly open.

First, you can get rid of the filter (he heard). Filter words are those words that remind the reader that it’s the character who’s in the scene, not the reader (heard, saw, smelled, perceived). Usually they can just be eliminated. And here, it probably doesn’t matter that the room is on his left, and it’s probably obvious that the door would be open if a quiet sound could be heard through it by standing in the hall.

He walked over to the door and listened, then peeked around it to look inside.

He already heard the sound, so he doesn’t need to listen, and of course he’d get to the door by walking over to it, but it might be necessary to say how he approached the slightly open door. Also, why else would he peek but to look inside?

He saw Olivia standing on the other side of the round dining table, looking out of a window.

You don’t need the filter (he saw) and it might not matter that the table is round. That Olivia is on the other side might mean he has to somehow get around the table to approach her, which could introduce an awkward bit of stage management later in the scene that isn’t necessary.

He recognized the room as the breakfast parlor, and realized that Olivia was in distress.

It is to be hoped that the reader would get to this insight before this point if the scene were a bit better written, but there’s nothing to indicate how Lewiston would perceive that she was in distress.

Walking backward with the intention of leaving her alone, he stepped on a loose floorboard. The creaking sound made Olivia turn around to face him.

Subtle movements like this are hard to pull off. This does the job, but not very elegantly. And having to describe the resulting sound is also clumsy. Plus, when Olivia turns around, she’s obviously going to be facing him, so no need to say so.

She was crying, and held a handkerchief crushed in her fist, which she lifted up to wipe her cheeks.

Just stating that she was crying does little to paint an affecting picture. And the handkerchief is an afterthought—it’s important to the rest of the scene, so it has to be there.

The thing is, the way this part is written makes it pretty clear where Lewiston is and what he sees. But there are reminders throughout that place the reader at a distance from the action (filtering), and too much of the page space is taken up describing things that don’t add to the ambience of the scene or provide any insight into the characters themselves.

Remember what I said about knowing what to leave out? You also have to know what to put in.

The same scene—but better

There are, of course, some important elements missing from the example above. For one, it’s completely lacking in emotional content. We have no idea what either of the participants is feeling, although we can guess that Olivia is sad because she’s crying. Even though places are inanimate, how you move the characters in them works hand in glove with getting emotion on the page—which is one of the hardest things to do, in my opinion.

Here’s another draft of the same section:

A sudden desire to see if she [Olivia] was in the library sent Lewiston down to the ground floor.

Now we know why he decided to go down the stairs.

He paused in the center of the hall uncertain where to look, until the unmistakable sound of sniffling issued from a room whose door stood ajar.

We get a sense of his uncertainty, no filtering, and no unnecessary detail.

He crept to it and peeked inside.

The more descriptive “crept” conveys more information about his emotional state, a bit of uncertainty. Also, no need to duplicate peeking and looking.

Noting the table and sideboard of a family breakfast parlor, Lewiston was vaguely conscious of trespassing on a private realm.

Although there’s filtering (noting), it telescopes the information about the function of the room. And then it’s clear that Lewiston is conscious that this is not a space normally appropriate to company—which illuminates something about his character.

Across the room, Miss Fontenoy stood looking out one of the windows at the darkness beyond, her shoulders shaking slightly, her head bowed.

No detail about a table in between, only that she’s some distance away from him, so we don’t have to worry about how he gets around the table when he later walks over to her. And we see her as he does, clearly in distress without saying it.

Intending to leave her to her solitary grief, whatever it was, Lewiston stepped back to withdraw and trod on a creaky board.

Mostly here we get a glimpse into Lewiston’s sensitivity, and we get the creak not through having to describe the sound (still not happy with the sentence, though).  

Miss Fontenoy wheeled around. Her eyes were red and her bunched-up handkerchief sodden. She drew in a shuddering breath and then hastily tried to erase the evidence of tears from her cheeks.

We know she’s surprised (wheeled), and her red eyes and sodden handkerchief convey that she’s been crying without saying it. Her efforts at controlling herself (shuddering breath) and hiding her sadness—or anger (erasing the evidence) in turn give us insight into her character.

The scene above is from a work in progress, as I said, and will doubtless undergo more changes before it reaches its final form.

But it serves to demonstrate that the trick with stage-managing your characters in different spaces is giving enough specificity to inform the reader of where they are without calling attention to unnecessary and distracting details. At the same time, don’t waste any opportunities to deepen characters or move the plot along. When readers complain of long descriptions, it’s often because no matter how beautifully they’re written, they don’t accomplish one of those two important objects.

A challenge for you

Take a scene from your own WIP and subject it to the kind of scrutiny I’ve shown above, rewrite it to fix what you’ve found, and see if it doesn’t make a difference to how your characters feel and behave in space. The goal is for all the mechanics of their movement to disappear, for the characters themselves to be alive on the page, so the reader can just sink into your story—in both fiction and memoir.