I began reading the time machine (h g wells) and was struck by the rough use of gestures on the first few pages as they jarred a lot, seeming almost like a first draft. But I didn't see why it irritated me quite so much until I recognized how often my own writing clunks over gestures.
The thing is, if 80% of real communication is non-verbal, then gestures and expressions should matter in fictional discussions too, but writing these nuances invariably feels contrived and leaving them out makes the dialogue colourless.
So, I put it out for discussion;

How do you use gestures? Are they characterization, wallpaper or a waste of momentum?

That's an interesting question, and makes me want to reread Wells.

Maybe we are more sophisticated these days in our interpretation of gesture, because so much of the culture we absorb is visual, presented to us through TV and film, rather than realised in our own heads, through the printed page. Or because of widespread pop psychology - most people understand basic body language.

I use gesture principally just to counterpoint speech, so a character may say one thing but their gestures betray something beneath or beyond their words. Or use it to amplify, instead of an adjective, and to give space around a conversation. Also to anchor the conversation physically and graphically in the reader's mind as too much dialogue with no description can begin to feel like disembodied voices, so gesture helps place the characters in a setting which can augment the mood of the scene. It's pretty irresistible if you play with it this way.

Also gesture as activity to flesh out the scene is good. In real life conversations don't take place over cups of coffee at kitchen tables or halves in pubs all the time - who except soap characters has time for that, or drinks halves anyway? So it's nice to have an important conversations take place while someone is loading a van or building a wall. There again, gestures can counterpoint the action or be used symbolically. Coarse example off the top of my head, but if a performer were applying heavy make up during an antagonist conversation prior to going on stage, the delicacy of their brushwork could counterpoint the vicious conversation and also suggest symbolically the masks they wear to succeed. That's a trite example but if you play around for a while with scenes you need to write, the gestures can really add layers. But I must confess to not doing most of this consciously - it comes out this way. When a scene is dead but essential to the plot, then I play around with the mechanics of it consciously to try and breathe life into it.

What do you do? This is a fascinating thread - thanks for setting it up -look forward to reading what others use gesture for.

What do you do?

TBH, I have the conversation running through my head and I can hear and see the way they are saying it, but unless I ensure that my characters only ever speak when they are teetering on the edge of a heartfelt emotional outburst, it seems like quite trivial overstatement of the bleeding obvious.

I can see that this has more colour in the build up to an argument:

"But she did so much good for the country." Cedric picked up a breadstick, wagging it in Quentin's face to emphasise the point. "Without her, who would have," he snapped the breadstick viciously in two, "sorted out the unions?" "Balderdash," Quentin slammed his empty wine glass onto the counter, "without her, we might still have an industry."

Than this:

"But she did so much good for the country." Cedric declared authoritatively. "Without her, who would have, sorted out the unions?" "Balderdash," Quentin replied, angrily, "without her, we might still have an industry."

But almost every functional adult member of society that I know is capable of expressing an opinion without wanting to kill the person they are talking to and in that situation this seems to establish both who is speaking and that they have a different POV without going OTT:

"But she did so much good for the country. Without her, who would have, sorted out the unions?" "Balderdash, Cedric," Quentin replied, "without her, we might still have an industry."

But in the HGWells excerpt (and I acknowledge I am guilty of much worse) there are examples like:

'But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, 'if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it and why has it always been, regarded as something different? [...snip]'

What benefit or purpose does the coal serve here? The scene has already established they are having a cosy, after dinner chat. Any reader with a brain will know he is concentrating on the conversation because of the questions. It seems that the descriptive detail is just padding out the text.

So... to get to the point:

What do you do?

I try to separate descriptive scene setting from dialogue gesturing and only use the gesturing details when they are relevant to the dialogue. And I still either edit out 90% of it and half of what's left is picked up on by readers (and later binned by me).

Hmmm. I'd argue that the coal adds a concrete image to counterpoint an abstract argument, so the reader can continue to visualise the scene whilst grappling with an enormous concept. Also a burning coal is a microcosmic symbol of the sun, a burning rock, so it helps us visualise the conceptual argument of time as an element of space.

In your breadsticks case I'd be concerned that the breadsticks shouldn't do a job your dialogue has already done. No need to use the breadsticks as you do or the adjectives from the second example, as the dialogue amply conveys the tenor of the scene. So... I'd get the breadsticks to reveal something else. I'd definitely look to include gestures in a way which opens the scene out, and adds more to what's already there - something that reveals personality or status or the underlying reason for the argument rather than what's already present in the scene.

No need to use the breadsticks as you do or the adjectives from the second example, as the dialogue amply conveys the tenor of the scene

I wholeheartedly agree.

But...

I'd argue that the coal adds a concrete image to counterpoint an abstract argument, so the reader can continue to visualise the scene whilst grappling with an enormous concept

Surely, what he is doing here is clogging up an otherwise clear statement of the "enormous concept" with banal detail of utter insignificance? I would draw a parallel here with science teachers who (IMHO) waste a lot of time talking about history when all that is important (from the POV of understanding and applying scientific theories) is _what_ the concepts are and _how_ they can be applied.

Also a burning coal is a microcosmic symbol of the sun, a burning rock, so it helps us visualise the conceptual argument of time as an element of space.

Sometimes I wonder if I am just far, far too shallow a person to ever be a good writer! I saw the coal as burning fuel used to warm the room - a detail, and not even a very interesting one. (This comes to the question I failed to express clearly enough on another thread: Do people other than writers _really_ read beyond the words they see on the page?)

G

suggest symbolically the masks they wear to succeed

I think this gives the most appropriate (IMHO) use of gesture.

The importance of gestures come into play for me when the words don't match what is actually going on or to highlight communication of something non-verbal.

I read this last night but a family problem prevented me from answering. This will sound very shallow but I wanted to get my two penn'orth in even though I'm pretty sure you will both disagree. I think gestures are just the visual aspect of a scene - no more, no less. If you miss them out and just concentrate on what people are saying, you are missing a whole slab of communication, not just in terms of metaphor, but also in terms of bringing a scene to life & helping the reader to see the action & understand the characters involved.

I use gesture principally just to counterpoint speech, so a character may say one thing but their gestures betray something beneath or beyond their words. Or use it to amplify, instead of an adjective, and to give space around a conversation. Also to anchor the conversation physically and graphically in the reader's mind as too much dialogue with no description can begin to feel like disembodied voices, so gesture helps place the characters in a setting which can augment the mood of the scene. It's pretty irresistible if you play with it this way.

I think all these are true. However, do they belong to the end of the process - when it comes to looking at what has been written and whether it works - rather than the beginning - doing the actual writing?

Damn, I've got to go, so I'll try to be quick. I worry that writing is a creative act and that if we get too analytical up-front, we run the risk of stifling that creativity. Obviously, at a later stage I think we should go back over our work and do everything we can to make it better, but that is a more analyical process and requires a different mind-set. Therefore, in terms of gestures, I wouldn't worry too much about what their role is; I would simply write the scene as I imagine it (words/ gestures & all) and then refine later if necessary. There is so much bloodless literature out there, it seems a shame to inhibit what we could produce. Hope this makes sense. Gotta run.

I certainly agree with Saturday - write first and analyse afterwards. In the Wells example my first thought is that I feel as if I could have written that sentence myself, it's so much in my rhythm and idiom, and the proces would have gone something like this. No idea if Wells was the same, and of course it all happens with barely a pause of the pen

'But,' said the Medical Man, [some low-level instinct dictates that the sentence breathes here, and I can see him: he's]

staring [is he just staring? Do I want more specific staring? What's he doing? What does he want? (in the Stanislavskian intention sense) I know, he's try to think it out, he's thinking hard]

hard [what at? Where are they sitting? Okay, and what, from there, could he see? Does he move his head, or is his gaze going that way anyway? He'd withdraw his gaze from the other person, the way you do when you're thinking something out. What do you watch, when you're staring into space? Well, in a room with a fire, everyone watches the fire]

at [yes, the fire, but just the fire, or something specific? What can I see? Yes, the contrast you get with a coal fire, the cark coal so black you can hardly see it, specially if the room's not much lit. And he thinks for quite a long time, so I need this breathe/beat to go on for a while]

a coal in the fire,

[ah, we've got there]'if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it and why has it always been, regarded as something different?

And, in revision, I might wonder whether he lifts his chin and looks at the arrangement of stuffed birds under a glass dome (space arresting the decay of birds over time), or the grandfather clock with the hands going round and the moon-and-stars calendar measuring space-time, and then decide that both of those would go on too long, Though I'll make a note that they might come in somewhere else. I'll settle for the coal - my first instinct often turns out to be right after all - and, yes, it does have that good sense of something both of our world and slightly other, because coal embodies (literally) the processes of time, doesn't it, having once been trees. But I won't spell that out, or the ration of speech to description will get out of balance, and though it'll mean more readers will get what I mean, the ones who'd get it without will feel like they're being preached to, and anyway the pace and pattern of the action is more important.

More generally, I think anyone with an A Level in English, or even a GCSE - and that's quite a lot of the book-buying population - has been at least slightly trained to pick up on this level of thing, either absolutely consciously and analytically, or in a more instinctive, generalised sense of richness and unanalytical visual and symbolic intuition. Just because you don't make a mental note of something and fit it into a logical pattern doesn't mean you don't apprehend it.

Emma

Saturday I completely agree write first and analyse afterwards, and said so - I don't do this stuff consciously. I agree too about the too-careful bloodless prose around these days. But we edit. It's in an edit that something can be moved from OK to good, from good to great. Why not have gestures that work on several levels - that light up the scene but also the underlying themes of the book?

OK, mea culpa as a writer of bloodless prose... but I'm happy to be educated.

I seem to be the only one that thinks the lump of coal was a waste of ink, but I'm quietly confident that a lot of gesturing in dialog will often break the flow. If, as per Emma's example (which I think we all do), it is a deliberate rhythmic device then fair enough. But I thought the rhythmic purpose there was served simply by breaking to tell us it was the Medicine Man talking.

So, how do you distinguish between:

gestures that work on several levels - that light up the scene but also the underlying themes of the book

And banal clunky trivia that serves no purpose beyond word count?

How do you distinguish them? Through reading, I think. Reading and rereading books you love and working out why you love them and how gesture is used in them. Ignoring use of gesture that doesn't work for you. It's no good my blathering on about what the coal represents to me if it's dead wood to you. You'll get it from authors who use gesture in a way that moves you, I guess.

I am frequently guilty of over analysis but separate it out from the act of writing which is fast and messy and full of loops and arrows to extra bits, so most of it is unconscious flow. A piece that works gets edited in the same way - snipped and trimmed to keep the flow without being over analysed. But there are days and pages which are like dragging through treacle and some of them have to be included in the final piece. that's where the overly analytical editing comes in handy. If a gesture amplifies a scene I let it stay. If it reads as ink on a page, it gets cut. It's subjective - my idea of what works will be someone else's idea of a waste of paper, but we can only trust our own judgement, and keep that judgement acute through reading and thinking about writing.

Being under analytical can also kill work. It can result in reams of bland, samey prose. Nothing wrong with it but nothing blazing either because the author hasn't read or thought hard enough about how language works, what syntax and rhythm and vocabulary best serves the scene.

Through reading, I think. Reading and rereading books you love and working out why you love them and how gesture is used in them.

I think this is key and often over-looked when people talk about the development of creative writing skills. Ultimately, I think writing is driven by instinct, and your instincts are honed more than anything else by reading as widely as possible so that you are exposed to different voices and styles and you can make a personal decision about what does and doesn't do it for you. I'm not saying you should then go out & copy your favourite writers (although personally, I started out by plagiarising Enid Blyton ruthlessly), but over the years I think everything you have ever read and admired seeps slowly into your brain, creating a kind of linguistic & creative compost heap, and ultimately informing your style. It's the same as the way you can hear one musician and hear echoes of artists who have gone before.

So, how do you distinguish between: gestures that work on several levels - that light up the scene but also the underlying themes of the book And banal clunky trivia that serves no purpose beyond word count?

This is probably where I depart from everyone else here. Yes, I can see that sometimes you want

gestures that work on several levels - that light up the scene but also the underlying themes of the book?

but I also believe that sometimes you just want 'banal trivia' that adds texture & mood to that particular scene (although I'm always disappointed when my banal trivia turns out to be clunky). This may be partly a matter of personal taste. I grew up on, and still love, the big Victorian novels that unselfconsciously dance from profound to trivial. I know some people feel there are an awful lot of superfluous words in those books, but as a reader I wouldn't want them to be edited too rigorously of their 'banal' gestures, because I think the personality would be lost.

All of which maybe goes back to what Susannah was saying - read, read, read until you feel you know what appeals to you and then just follow your vision.

I grew up on, and still love, the big Victorian novels that unselfconsciously dance from profound to trivial. I know some people feel there are an awful lot of superfluous words in those books, but as a reader I wouldn't want them to be edited too rigorously of their 'banal' gestures, because I think the personality would be lost.

I agree there's not enough of this around - big sprawling novels have given way to a lot of over-pared down writing. But we love the detail in Victorian novels in the same way that Hosseini's fans love the detail in his novels - it's new to us. We haven't lived in Victorian England or Afghanistan. I think one way you can prevent lots of detail coming over as padding in a contemporary novel is to subtly, almost imperceptibly steer it towards amplification of the themes. Joanne Harris couldn't have got away with so many descriptions of sweets in Chocolat if the book weren't set in an austere, treat-despising village in need of sensory redemption.

I think one way you can prevent lots of detail coming over as padding in a contemporary novel is to subtly, almost imperceptibly steer it towards amplification of the themes.

Oh, I do so agree with this. It seems to me that it's the key to slow-build writing or lavish, sprawling writing, or elaborate baroque writing: that while it's not taking us as fast or directly from A to B, we gain enormous amounts along the way which add to the overall effect. Take a chunk of late Hery James, for instance: no one could call it wham-bam thriller, but actually, those immensely long, beautifully paced and balanced and crystal clear sentences move forward: you always know more by the end than you do at the beginning, and not just about the immediate circumstances.

In fact my rule of thumb, borrowed from the poets, is that every sentence in a novel should be doing more than one thing: not just saying what happened next, but saying it in a way which adds more than just facts. When you read something apparently plain and simple and direct, like Hemingway at his best, or Carver, that is, actually, what's going on, and why it's so, so hard to emulate them, because the layers are much less easy to spot.

Emma

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"I thought the rhythmic purpose there was served simply by breaking to tell us it was the Medicine Man talking."

But the rhythm's different, depending on how much there is in that break, and it's not just the rhythm as in prosody, it's also rhythm as in the choreography of the scene, which was what I was getting at in my breakdown: 'The medicine man said,' on its own, isn't long enough for the long, thinking-out sort of pause it would be.

Going back to the question of whether any readers apart from writers actually get this stuff, I think it's akin to people listening to music. The experience is, an intuitive one in that the experience is not, fundamentally, a process of following conscious, logical steps, even though music is the most ruthlessly logical of the arts in its structure. But whether or not they could articulate the technical details of what they're hearing, almost everyone hears the tune, most pick up on whether it's major or minor, rather fewer are alert to a key change, fewer still pick up on the different quality of, say G minor and E Flat minor, and fewer still could do you a Schenkerian tonal analysis of it. But just because they don't consciously think as they go 'Ah, now we're in transition from C major to A minor, and - oh - A major, that's making me feel happy and calm, sad, then happy and hyper', absolutely doesn't mean that those things don't have that effect.

Which is what I was trying to say when I said, "Just because you don't make a mental note of something and fit it into a logical pattern doesn't mean you don't apprehend it."

Going back to the question of whether any readers apart from writers actually get this stuff, I think it's akin to people listening to music.

Music is a good analogy. It can be the difference between a pair of talking heads - no description between the dialogue, which is a simple, possibly boring, melody - and a full scale orchestra - lots of colour, maybe boardering on OTT if it swamps the melody.
I find building it up in layers works well, especially as I'm someone who tends to start with a basic outline of talking heads.



- NaomiM

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You might find a little accompaniment on the piano is enough.