Writing advice #?: Have your characters wash the dishes while they talk.
This is one of my favorite tricks, picked up from E.M. Forester and filtered through my own domestic-homebody lens. ย Forester says that you should never ever tell us how a character feels; instead, show us what those emotions are doing to a characterโs posture and tone and expression.ย This makesย โI felt sadnessโ intoย โmy shoulders hunched and I sighed heavily, staring at the ground as my eyes filled with tears.โย Those emotions-as-motions are called objective correlatives.ย Honestly, fic writers have gotten the memo on objective correlatives, but sometimes struggle with how to use them.
Objective correlatives can quickly become a) repetitive or b) melodramatic.ย On the repetitive end, long scenes of dialogue can quickly turn intoย โhe sighedโ and โshe noddedโ so many times that he starts to feel like a window fan and she like a bobblehead.ย On the melodramatic end, a debate about where to eat dinner can start to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer becauseย โhe shriekedโ whileย โshe clenched her fistsโ and they bothย โground their teeth.โย If you leave the objective correlatives out entirely, then you have whatโs known asย โfloatingโ dialogue โ we get the words themselves but no idea how theyโre being said, and feel completely disconnected from the scene.ย If you try to get meaning across by telling us the charactersโ thoughts instead, this quickly drifts into purple prose.
Instead, have them wash the dishes while they talk.
To be clear: it doesnโt have to be dishes.ย They could be folding laundry or sweeping the floor or cooking a meal or making a bed or changing a lightbulb.ย The point is to engage your characters in some meaningless, everyday household task that does not directly relate to the subject of the conversation.
This trick gives you a whole wealth of objective correlatives.ย If your character is angry, then the way they scrub a bowl will be very different from how theyโll be scrubbing while happy.ย If your character is taking a moment to think, then they might splash suds around for a few seconds.ย A character who is not that invested in the conversation will be looking at the sink not paying much attention.ย A character moderately invested will be looking at the speaker while continuing to scrub a pot.ย If the character is suddenly very invested in the conversation, you can convey this by having them set the pot down entirely and give their full attention to the speaker.
โIโm leaving,โ Anastasia said.
โWhat?โย Drizella continued dropping forks into the dishwasher.
โIโm leaving,โ Anastasia said.
Drizella paused midway through slotting a fork into the dishwasher.ย ย โWhat?โ
โIโm leaving,โ Anastasia said.
Drizella laughed, not looking up from where she was arranging forks in the dishwasher.ย ย โWhat?โ
โIโm leaving,โ Anastasia said.
The forks slipped out of Drizellaโs hand and clattered onto the floor of the dishwasher.ย ย โWhat?โ
โIโm leaving,โ Anastasia said.
โWhat?โย Drizella shoved several forks into the dishwasher with unnecessary force, not seeming to notice when several bounced back out of the silverware rack.
See how cheaply and easily we can get across Drizellaโs five different emotions about Anastasia leaving, all by telling the reader how sheโs doing the dishes?ย And all the while no heads were nodded, no teeth were clenched.
The reason I recommend having it be one of these boring domestic chores instead of, say, scaling a building or picking a lock, is that chores add a sense of realism and are low-stakes enough not to be distracting.ย If you add a concurrent task thatโs high-stakes, then potentially your readers are going to be so focused on the question of whether your characters will pick the lock in time that they donโt catch the dialogue.ย But no oneโs going to be on the edge of their seat wondering whether Drizellaโs going to have enough clean forks for tomorrow.
And chores are a cheap-n-easy way to add a lot of realism to your story.ย So much of the appeal of contemporary superhero stories comes from Spider-Man having to wash his costume in a Queens laundromat or Green Arrow cheating at darts, because those details are fun and interesting and make a story feelย โreal.โ ย Actually ask the question of what dishes or clothing or furniture your character owns and how often that stuff gets washed.ย Thatโs how you avoid reality-breaking continuity errors like stating in Chapter 3 that all of your characterโs worldly possessions fit in a single backpack and in Chapter 7 having your character find a pair of pants he forgot he owns.ย You donโt have to tell the reader what dishes your character owns (please donโt; itโs already bad enough when Tolkien does it) but you should ideally know for yourself.
Anyway: objective correlatives are your friends.ย They get emotion across, but for low-energy scenes can become repetitive and for high-energy scenes can become melodramatic.ย The solution is to give your characters something relatively mundane to do while the conversation is going on, and domestic chores are not a bad starting place.
