Young Writers Society

Hello there!

Recently it was brought to my attention, by a critique from a friend, that one my main characters grins too much. Normally this wouldn't concern me, I've learned from previous experience to take critiques with a grain of salt but after rereading I've realized that I am guilty of this.

There is no particular reason for this character to grin a lot, she isn't an overly happy character but she isn't a person who hates the world. The reasoning behind it was mainly just so I could give her something to do, kind of like a filler.

So, if anyone has suggestions as to what I can make my character do instead of grin, please let me know. Considering that she grinned is dead.


P.S. Here’s the link to my first two chapters, it seems most of grinning has taken place in these:

Chapter One: The Good Life - Chapter One: Losing It

Chapter Two: The Good Life - Chapter Two: Resistance is for Losers


P.P.S. Maybe you could help me @Lucrezia You know my book pretty well!

You could say she smirked...? Or gave a sly smile?

I probably won't be of much help, considering I, too, am guilty of doing this. *hangs head in shame* Although I do have an excuse—a lot of the characters that are grinning are sly and therefore beg me to write them as a grinner. XD

Moving on.

I liked ShadowWings's suggestions. Other options would be:

*She gave a knowing smile/she smiled knowingly
*She smiled challengingly
*She smiled broadly (which is literally what "grin" means lol)
*She beamed
*She simpered

Those are sadly all I have. Oh, and this might help a little: http://thesaurus.com/browse/grin

It's synonyms for "grin."

Does she need to grin or do anything, though? Perhaps try replacing every "grin" with something completely random, like a potato (it's a good word for these things), or simply remove them all, and then reread it - if it works without that word, or all it needs is a bit of changing the word order, do that. If it absolutely can't exist without the infamous grinning, put that back c:

Prehaps instead of grin do a smirk, a half smile, a shy smile, or even just alternate between grins, and different ways of smiling to give your character variety

I'd suggest finding something else for them to do and only keeping a handful of really impactful ones. When you're just giving characters something to do, it tends to be because there's nothing else you think they can do (I do this with laughing) and I start switching everything up so basically every action is different.

It actually helps me figure out the character by pulling away from default quirks I give to everyone. We all have our defaults, and these can actively prevent us from figuring out the character because it's easier to grab a default than to think about it. By actively looking at how the character would honestly react in these situations, instead of going "oh of course they'd do x", you break apart the character deeper than you thought possible.

Ah, this brings me back to the wonderful Stanislavski.

Why do you have to be doing anything?

In Satnislavksi's 'An Actor Prepares' one of the first exercises he does is he makes his pupils sit in the middle of a room and everybody watches them. The result is that they all end up looking up, down, fidgeting, blushing, getting pretty stressed.

Then the teacher sits in the chair, completely still, and all of a sudden every flicker of a movement means something huge.

I noticed in your work that people are always doing stuff. In fact, I couldn't find a sentence that didn't have somebody doing something. There is a whole other world beyond actions, you should explore it =p

For example, if you have a character standing in her bedroom and you need her to be there for just a little bit longer, you could just describe the room. 'There was a pile of clothes heaped in the middle of the floor. The washing machine was overdue a visit and the room was starting to smell bad, but laundry always was such a chore and there were more fun things to be doing with her life.'

Generally I'd say find a balance between Dialogue, Description, Action and Introspection.

Dialogue is the speaking stuff. Action is what your characters are doing, which seems to make up about 90% of your work.

Description is the environment, the people, the impression and atmosphere. It's all the things that surround your characters actions and in quite a large part govern them. Can you imagine how someone putting lipstick on in a bright light would be completely different to how they'd put it on in a dim light?

Introspection is what I think could help you a lot. If you're always using actions and expressions to show what your characters are thinking then you could just snip those parts and actually say what they're thinking.

My challenge for you is to work on that first chapter and rewrite as much of the action as you can into either description or introspection. Or dialogue, if you're feeling brave.

Try to get a 1:1:1 ratio on these things. Of course, that doesn't mean methodically have one sentence of each, but like, have two sentences of action, then one of description, two of introspection, another of description, kind of thing.

If you do that and either link or PM me I'll give you something nice =]