: Re: Ways to reduce the -ing verbs in dialogue and action tags? I find myself writing these a lot: "Thanks." She tilted her head shyly to the side. As soon as she did, her chin-length hair

@Berryessa137

Vote Up Vote Down

Adding to Mark Baker's excellent answer, there's a concept called "beats" about how actions dictate the pacing of a scene. Every time you interrupt the dialogue with an action that's basically another beat. This has the effect of a very strong punctuation mark - I do mean it when I say it interrupts the dialogue. It should thus be used to accentuate important parts of the dialogue, not liberally sprinkled for more description.

(0)

Login to post a comment!