The Specificity Problem

Your descriptions and action beats have a specificity problem

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash

I will not argue that it feels like good instincts to peel back a layer of your writing so the reader can better see when you’re writing a scene. A character is doing something, they’re performing some kind of action or their behavior has them acting out, and you want the reader to know, in this character’s emotional state, why they’re doing it.

So it looks something like, “character does X” and then in the narration the writer reaches for internal monologue, or adds language with enough emotional weight, hoping that the reader feels what the writer is trying to make them feel.

I want to talk about that instinct.

Because it’s not a craft solution, that instinct is a signal and what it’s signaling to you is that the action underneath it isn’t doing its job yet, and the signal is being misinterpreted that the behavior is weak enough that the narration MUST elaborate.

That is the problem.

The action.

No amount of interiority is going to fix that.

Here’s the distinction I want to help you see. There are two kinds of action in fiction. Action that describes and action that reveals. And the difference between them comes down to one thing:

Specificity.

Generic action is stage direction. It moves a character through a scene. It tells your reader what’s happening and where everyone is. But it doesn’t tell them anything about who this person is. And the reason it doesn’t is because it could belong to anyone. Any character in this situation could perform the same action and it would mean the same thing regardless of who they are.

That’s not showing, that’s just blocking. It’s functional and nothing more.

Showing happens when the action is so specific to this character, to their belief, to their psychology, to the way their internal logic processes the world, that no one else in your story could perform it and have it mean the same thing.

That’s the threshold. Until the action crosses it, you’re going to keep feeling that urge to explain, to MAKE it specific by tacking on the narration.

Let me show you what I mean.

Let’s say a man’s house burned down yesterday. His partner very simply, and very unfortunately, forgot to unplug a heater. Now, it’s the next morning and they’re in a motel room.

And they’ve gotten into an argument.

He slams his hand on the nightstand and his face burns red and his hands are in fists. Tells her he can’t believe she did this, tells her that she ruined everything. His voice is yelling. She’s crying. The narration says he feels a rage he’s never felt before, it’s white hot, blinding, consuming. A fury that has no ceiling. An anger so total it has stopped feeling like anger and started feeling like the only thing left, an unbridled rage.

Yes, sure, that’s a man who is angry. But it’s any man. Any person can squeeze their hands in fists, any person can yell. The narration is doing the heavy lifting, it’s reaching for that inner specificity to give the reader the explanation of this anger, because the action isn’t carrying anything specific. And you can feel it, it’s generic anger, it’s boring anger to be frank. That’s why the writer kept going, layering rage on top of fury on top of an anger that has no ceiling. Because the action alone wasn’t enough to clearly show how devastating that anger is inside.

Now. Same man. Same motel room. Same morning.

But this time we have tool that is going to help inform what this persons’s specific behavior should be, and we’re going to be using belief to do that.

So, let’s say this man believes that relying on others will always lead to disappointment. And yesterday that belief got the most catastrophic confirmation of his life.

He wakes up before her. Goes to the bathroom. Closes the door without making a sound, he’s not trying to avoid waking her, but the door is the only separation this room will give him and he needs it between them. He needs isolation. That self-reliance is kicking in. And he sits in there on the toilet pulling on his clothes and pulling on his hair. His face twisting. His eyes are red flames and tears are rolling down his cheeks.

He comes out and sits in the chair by the window. Moves it six inches away from her side of the room before he sits down. Six inches. In a motel room. He is trying to build a wall and this is all the architecture and division the room has to work with.

She stirs. Asks if he slept. He says yes. He didn’t.

She asks if he wants to talk.

She says his name. He says he’s going to go get coffee. There’s a coffee maker twelve inches from where he’s sitting.

He puts on his shoes. Takes his wallet, his phone, his keys, everything that was his before she existed in his life, and he leaves the room.

I didn’t write a single word of interiority or inner monologue. I didn’t tell you he was angry or explain the depths of his rage. I didn’t tell you something had permanently shifted in how this man will occupy space with another person from here onward.

You already had some idea. Because the action was specific enough to only belong to him. To his belief. To the way his psychology processes betrayal. No other character in that story moves a chair six inches in a motel room and leaves for coffee that’s already in the room.

That specificity is what makes it showing and makes it meaningful. Whenever I discuss this, people will say they don’t want to write mechanical actions, and I always agree with them. Mechanical actions are not interesting, because they lack that emotional depth and specificity beneath them. When you have those attached to the character’s behavior, they don’t feel mechanical.

So when you feel that urge, when you finish an action beat and immediately want to explain it, add to it, load the narration around it, please don’t. That urge is the action talking. It’s telling you it isn’t specific enough yet. Use narration and interiority to do more interesting, less redundant things.

If you struggle with this, ask yourself one question:

Could any character in this situation do this exact thing?

If the answer is yes, you haven’t found the action yet. Keep going until the answer is no.

---

If you want a running start on building this kind of specificity into your characters, I put together something that does exactly that.

It’s called 100 Story Engines Built from Belief.

The man in the motel room, the one who moves his chair six inches and leaves for coffee that’s already in the room, that behavior came from one place. A belief so specific that it filtered everything. How he expresses anger. What he reaches for when he’s in pain. What he would never allow himself to do regardless of the cost.

That’s what every engine in this collection gives you. A core belief the character operates from. The counter-belief that creates inevitable collision. The observable behavior, what that belief actually looks like on the page. The decision logic, what this character chooses when it costs them something. And the pressure, the specific situation that forces the belief to break.

You don’t start from a blank page trying to invent a character. You start with something that already has operating logic. Already has behavior attached. Already has conflict built in.

Pick a belief. Put it in a situation. Apply pressure. Follow what breaks.

100 engines. Ready to run.

Grab that HERE.