Are You Making This Common Writing Mistake?
Beware of ‘dud action’ in narrative beats
During the SCBWI Summer Spectacular I eagerly watched Deborah Halverson’s digital workshop, “Submissions Studio: Writing Queries, Strategizing Submissions, and Ten Ways to Translate ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’” After all, Deborah Halverson was an editor at Harcourt Brace before she became an award-winning author in her own right. She also founded the popular writers’ advice website DearEditor.com.
I’d heard a lot of the advice on querying, but when I reached the part of the workshop on narrative beats I sat up straighter in my chair. This was new.
“Narrative beats offer wonderful opportunities to enhance the dialogue and the overall story, yet too often writers fill them with dud action” like characters brushing hair from their eyes or looking down.
Uh-oh! I’m sure my main character brushed hair out of her eyes and looked down at some point in my story. I was rather proud of these additions. I thought they helped me ‘show, not tell’ more in my story. Come to find out, editors see these behaviors all the time and the action is meaningless. They are what Halverson refers to as ‘dud actions’ because they fail to move the story forward.
“You want action that takes its job seriously, revealing, illuminating…
