Free Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron Page A

might, she couldn’t come up with a single hopeful reason why he would sit hunched in the corner of the couch, staring at the frayed rug that, she realized, was in dire need of cleaning. When she could stand it no longer, she turned to him, “Jeff, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She knows, Jeff thought. I can feel it. Sure, I told Michelle about her. Who knew she’d laugh and say, “Go ahead, run off with that loser. I bet she’s the kind of woman who has a houseful of dirty rugs.” I’ve been such a fool. But how do I tell Ann it’s over? Maybe if I just sit here and stare at the rug, she’ll figure it out. Women are pretty intuitive that way, aren’t they?
When Jeff didn’t answer, Ann’s heart sank. It could mean only one thing: he’d told Michelle, and she’d mentioned that dirty rug thing again. She’s been obsessed with it, ever since she opened that rug cleaning business back in March. God, Jeff is such a fool!
     
    Disorienting, isn’t it? So why do writers do it? Because they see it as the only way to convey information that is crucial to the scene. But is it? Not exactly. There is, in fact, a language that speaks louder than words. Let’s have a listen, shall we?

Body Language
     
    Imagine you’re walking down the street; you turn a corner, and two blocks up you see a figure ambling away. Although from behind it could be anyone, you instantly recognize your best friend. How? By his gait. 12 Welcome to the world of body language.
    Body language is the one language it’s impossible to really lie in. As Steven Pinker says, “Intentions come from emotions, and emotions have evolved displays on the face and body. Unless you are a master of the Stanislavsky method, you will have trouble faking them; in fact, they probably evolved
because
they were hard to fake.” 13 In other words, body language is the first thing we humans learned to decode, because even back in the Stone Age we knew that what a person grunts and what he really means might be two very different things.
    The same is true of your protagonist. In a story, the goal is to show us how a character really feels—especially when there’s a big discrepancy between what he
wants
to say and what he
can
say—through his body language. The most common mistake writers make is using body language to tell us something we already know. If we know Ann is sad, why would we need a paragraph describing what she looks like when she’s crying? Rather, body language should tell us something we
don’t
know. At its most effective, it tells us what’s really going on inside the character’s head. This is why body language works best when it’s at odds with what’s happening—either by telling us something that the character doesn’t want known
    Ann pretends to be completely calm but can’t stop her right foot from nervously jittering.
     
     … or by dashing a character’s expectations:
    Ann expects Jeff to be glad he’s finally left Michelle; instead, he sits there, hunched, staring mournfully at the embarrassingly dirty rug.
     
    We feel Ann’s pain, because the author made sure we already knew what she expected—that Jeff would return grinning, with luggage. Instead, he’s come back frowning, with baggage. Unless we’re aware of
both
what Ann wants and what she then gets instead, all the body language in the world will be rendered mute. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often writers forget to let us know what a character
hopes
will happen, so that when it doesn’t, we have no idea their expectations have been dashed.
    With that in mind, let’s revisit Ann and Jeff, this time using body language to convey the information:
    Finally, when she could stand it no longer, Ann turned to him. “Jeff, what is it? What’s wrong? Did you tell Michelle about us or not?”
Jeff said nothing, slouching further into the sagging couch, eyes downcast as Ann paced back and forth with such force that dust flew from the mangy rug. She saw