What is the Character Doing?
W hen we write, it’s easy to get caught up in all this stuff about the emotions of the character and the details of the what he sees, hears, smells, tastes and feels. We don’t want flat writing. There’s a place for all of that, but we must not lose sight of the most important thing. What is the character doing? No story is about how a woman feels when she looks into her lover’s ice blue eyes or smells his cologne or feels his hardened biceps. No story is about the pain she feels when she remembers her former lover, presumed lost at sea, or whatever. I won’t say those don’t have a place in writing, but they are unimportant if we don’t do well in telling what the characters are doing. The place those things have in writing is that they explain why a character does what he does. A character places his hand on a pot and quickly pulls it away. Why? Very likely, because he is in pain. The pot may be very hot. But its his reaction to the heat that makes the story, not the pain he feel...