Action. Description. Dialogue. (Writing with the Fiction Trinity)

During my early years of writing my first novel, I joined an online writing course which laid many of the foundations of my writing skill today. I was led by a wonderful and engaging tutor who guided me through many exercises to flex my creative writing skills in ways I couldn’t have thought of myself. Today I wish to share a small wedge of what I learned during those thrilling months of the course. Hopefully, it can help you in your fiction writing as well.

When it comes to fiction writing and storytelling, the type of prose you write often comes in three distinct strains.

Description.

Action.

and Dialogue

The way that you balance these three as you describe the scene, the plot and the structure of your story chapter by chapter can make a massive improvement to the quality of your writing.

The important thing to remember is that it’s not necessary to contain all three of these in equal balance all the time. Rather, depending on what your story calls for, a varying ratio of each can go a long way. Some scenes can have a lot of description and moderate dialogue with little action. Some can have no description at all, and a lot of dialogue and action woven together. You don’t need all three to write a good scene if need be, but if it can be worked it, the variety and readability will help. You can work well with two, especially in intense action scenes where description would slow things down. In short, make sure you’re not writing with just one!

Description is often the easiest element to get carried away with as a beginning writer (I know I did). Description can range from describing the environment that characters may be in, the appearance of a character or anything that paints a distinct picture in a reader’s mind. The power of adjectives and analogies reigns true, but I encourage you to try and describe anything in your writing without relying too heavily on these. You might surprise yourself!

I believe you should only ever add as much description as how fast or slow you want the pacing to be. Engaging the senses is a major aspect I focus on when it comes to description, portraying what the characters (and then the reader) may see, smell, hear and even touch or taste.

There is certainly a limit on the description that you should add, as it is the beauty of books that it is a unity of author and reader in which the author triggers the imagination with the right amount of language, leaving the reader to fill in the rest with the theatre of their minds.

Some say to add only description that’s absolutely necessary, and while I don’t condone forcing your reader to see exactly what you do with mountains of description, I still say you should find a delicate balance between the two. Some readers prefer very little, or a great deal more. This is their prerogative and don’t let it hold you back too much on the level of description you wan to add.

Action can refer to any, well, action being made that most especially moves the plot forward. It can involve any actions taken by characters (human, animal or otherwise!), or important events occurring, or what kind of blocking and action characters are taking during these events. Much like blocking and direction in a play.

Action will serve you well in scenes and moments of high action and fast pacing, such as fight scenes and chases. Once again, too much can be detrimental. If two characters are engaged in thrilling combat, it may not be best to detail every single step, punch and kick one after another, especially if you want to keep things fast and exciting.

If you’re writing anyone doing anything at anytime, rest assured you’re no doubt writing action.

Dialogue (no pun intended) speaks for itself. Humans are complicated creatures and the ways in which we communicate can be extremely impactful. Never underestimate the power of words and language. I believe writing dialogue is a journey that is easy to learn, but tricky to master. You can work well with dialogue tags, understand proper use of quotations and all manner of structure when writing out your dialogue between two, multiple or even one character. But it steeps into a whole other ballgame when you must first have a strong understanding and foundation of the cast of characters that you are having talk in the first place.

There is no move without motive, in the same fashion that a character cannot talk without just reason to not only speak, but the reason behind why they speak what they say. The interactions and dynamics that they have with the characters they speak to can be a major game-changer also.

A deeper understanding of human behaviour and psychology, or even just having acute social skills can be a massive boost in improving the engaging dialogue you hope will have your readers care about the characters.

Once again, some will say there is such a thing as too much, but if there is anything that will deliver the message or theme that you wish to convey through your work or story, it’s your characters and what they say. And if they need to speak just a little bit more in order to do that, then I say, so be it.

Maintaining a steady and ever-changing balance of these three elements of storytelling/writing will lend themselves massively to your own work. Take note of each of them and learn how to master each one by one. The holy trinity of speculative fiction, keep it sitting on the back your mind when scribbling that first draft. I suspect you’re going to need it.

Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!

• Daniel