ksmith | A business trick

As you know, Stanislaw, I hate thinking up business, the stuff that characters do in between the dialogue and the general plot-propulsion stuff. Ideally, it should be used to convey character or highlight something about the setting. Niall Pierce smokes, and the instances where he can't smoke, where his hand keeps moving to his trouser pocket and the nicstick case within and his temper gets shorter and shorter...fun, but easy to overuse. Scenes where Jani uses her scanpack are gifts to myself because I can break up the action and fill in the gaps around the dialogue and the Big Revelations for two to three pages, easy.

One thing that comes in handy--if one of the characters is doing something that requires several lines of description, I try to break up the action into several paragraphs instead of one. Frex:

Old version:

"Your voice hasn’t changed. It still--" Val gestured at waist height. "--sounds like it's coming up through the ground." He cocked his head, his pronounced widow's peak and arched brows giving his high-boned face a catlike cast. "The Mistys you sent didn’t do the transformation justice. My God." He held out his hand--John took it, and they shook. Then the grins broke through and John pulled Val close. Man and male hugged, Val thumping John's shoulder while John mumbled something that made them both laugh.

"Any idea what he's doing here?" Niall muttered.

"None." Jani. "I'd like to believe that it's purely a social call, but somehow I doubt it."

**********
I needed some business for Jani, but couldn't think of something that didn't break up the flow. Then I realized that I had John and Val working through three sentences worth of stuff. Couldn't they make do with two?
*************

New version:

"Your voice hasn’t changed. It still--" Val gestured at waist height. "--sounds like it's coming up through the ground." He cocked his head, his pronounced widow's peak and arched brows giving his high-boned face a catlike cast. "The Mistys you sent didn’t do the transformation justice. My God." He held out his hand--John took it, and they shook. Then the grins broke through and John pulled Val close.

"Any idea what he's doing here?" Niall muttered.

"None." Jani watched man and male hug, Val thumping John's shoulder while John mumbled something that made them both laugh. "I'd like to believe that it's purely a social call, but somehow I doubt it."

Yeah, it's basic. But it always tickles me when I figure it out. Like having the vending machine kick out two candy bars when you only paid for one.