Thread by @maxgladstone

Great thread. When scenes feel static and repetitive I return to a few core principles:
1. What's the conflict?
2. Encode that conflict in a physical element of the scene characters can interact with.
3. Don't use food or drink unless it's important.

https://twitter.com/kbwagers/status/1108361501994176512

'Conflict' doesn't mean fight, obviously. Example of (2):
Tina is getting ready to leave for a business trip, but Alex is trying to work her way up to a confession of love. Tina's packing the suitcase, Alex is dancing around her trying to continue their conversation.

Just giving the characters that bit of business lets you describe their relationship to one another, to the luggage, to the closet, picking up clothes, putting down clothes, justified movements that can express emotion.

Back-and-forth dialog without any movement feels like it's shot Camera A-Camera B, two actors sitting on a sofa.

Now, some writers master this sort of back-and-forth dialog; Hammett's Thin Man is a brilliant case. But he's using that technique for its effect. Each pithy sentence is an artillery shell.

These aren't IRON LAWS or anything. As always in art: ask yourself what you want to do, choose your tools, do it (in an impermanent form), then step back and ask yourself how it could be better.

To clarify: I try not to use food and drink unless it's important mostly because they're like the Hadouken move: effective entry points that can prevent skill development if you rely on them.

Drinking and eating scenes are expressive, full of hands and eyes and mouths and natural rhythms. If I let myself, every conversation would involve at least three cups of coffee.

Cigarettes, in terms of blocking, are even worse/better: all the benefits of drinking, plus FIRE