"Reaction Shots" in Prose, 400 CE to Present
by Abby Roberts
Yesterday, unfortunately, I posted:
Meh. I’m not satisfied with how I worded this post. I think it can easily be misread as suggesting that novels written before the invention of photography didn’t use setting description, which isn’t true. Look at the early Gothic novelists.
But when I made this post, I was thinking about how, in my writing, I use descriptive language in ways that mimic visual media, such as film or TV. I’ll write “establishing shots” of a character’s surroundings to create context for a scene. Or I’ll write “reaction shots” of a character’s physical response to events in the story. For example, I’ll write “she blinked in surprise,” even though I’m working in a textual medium, and I can’t cut to a close-up camera shot of an actor blinking in surprise. I wondered how writers working before visual media were widespread used description.
I think this is worth looking into.
So I did, a little.
Using a non-representative sample of books on my shelf at home, I pulled out passages that described characters having emotional reactions—where, in my writing, I’d be likely to use textual “reaction shots.” (I’m still interested in setting descriptions, but I’ll return to that when I have more time.) The books I used include texts written in the pre-modern period and the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
In the passages below, I’ve marked in bold text what I’m calling “externalized” emotion, outwardly observable actions that most people would understand as arising from some underlying emotion. For example, a character laughing or turning red in the face. I’m particularly interested in how authors use this technique because I feel it comes the closest to mimicking reaction shots in film.
Red text indicates “internalized” emotion, physiological and psychological responses that only a point-of-view character or narrator can be aware of, like being afraid or having a dry mouth.
Italicized text marks free indirect speech. Typically, this term refers to when a character’s voice merges with that of the third-person narrator, but here I've applied it loosely wherever I sense a character’s voice being projected “outside” of themself.
These are imprecise categories with a lot of gray areas and overlap, and I’ve used my judgment to distinguish between them. Also, there are other ways writers can convey character emotion that I haven’t explicitly marked here, such as through external or internal dialogue.
Confessions, Saint Augustine, 4th century CE, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin, 1961
It was about five days after this, or not much more, that she took to her bed with a fever. One day during her illness she had a fainting fit and lost consciousness for a short time. We hurried to her bedside, but she soon regained consciousness and looked up at my brother and me as we stood beside her. With a puzzled look she asked 'Where was I?' Then watching us closely as we stood there speechless with grief, she said 'You will bury your mother here.' I said nothing, trying hard to hold back my tears, but my brother said something to the effect that he wished for her sake that she would die in her own country, not abroad. When she heard this, she looked at him anxiously and her eyes reproached him for his worldly thoughts. She turned to me and said, 'See how he talks!' and then, speaking to both of us, she went on, 'It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you! All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.'
Erec and Enide, Chrétien de Troyes, 12th century, translated by Carleton W. Carroll, 1991
They spent so much time talking that all the tents were set up ahead of them, and Erec saw them; he saw clearly that he was to be lodged. 'Oh ho, Gawain!' he said. 'I am dumbfounded by your great cleverness; you have very craftily detained me. Since that's the way things are, I shall tell you my name at once; hiding it would do me no good. I am Erec, who used to be your companion and friend.'
Gawain heard this and went to embrace him; he lifted up his helmet and untied his ventail; for joy he embraced him again and again, and Erec for his part did likewise. Then Gawain parted from him, saying: 'Sir, this news will be very pleasing to my lord the king. My lady and my lord will be delighted, and I shall go ahead to tell them. But first I must embrace and welcome and comfort my lady Enide, your wife; my lady the queen is very eager to see her—I heard her speak of it only yesterday.'
Then Gawain drew near her and asked her how she was, whether she was quite healthy and well; she replied with appropriate courtesy: 'My lord, I should have neither pain nor sorrow were I not extremely concerned for my lord, but it frightens me that he has scarcely a single limb without a wound.'
Gawain replied: 'This concerns me deeply. It shows very clearly in his face, which is pale and colourless. I might well have wept at seeing him so pale and wan; but joy extinguishes sorrow: he brought me such joy that I forgot my sorrow. Now come along at an easy pace; I shall go swiftly ahead to tell the queen and king that you are coming after me. I know well that they both will be overjoyed to learn this.’
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen, 1811
“I wish with all my soul,” cried Sir John, “that Willoughby were among us again.”
This, and Marianne’s blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. “And who is Willoughby?” said he in a low voice to Miss Dashwood, by whom he was sitting.
She gave him a brief reply. Marianne’s countenance was more communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning of others, but such of Marianne’s expressions as had puzzled him before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round to her and said, in a whisper, “I have been guessing. Shall I tell you my guess?”
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, 1847
Catherine surveyed him with grief and astonishment; and changed the ejaculation of joy on her lips, to one of alarm; and the congratulation on their long postponed meeting to an anxious inquiry, whether he were worse than usual?
“No—better—better!” he panted, trembling, and retaining her hand as if he needed its support, while his large blue eyes wandered timidly over her; the hollowness round them transforming to haggard wildness the languid expression they once possessed.
“But you have been worse,” persisted his cousin; “worse than when I saw you last—you are thinner, and—”
“I’m tired,” he interrupted, hurriedly. “It is too hot for walking, let us rest here. And, in the morning, I often feel sick—papa says I grow so fast.”
Badly satisfied, Cathy sat down, and he reclined beside her.
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster, 1908
Miss Bartlett, though skilled in the delicacies of conversation, was powerless in the presence of brutality. It was impossible to snub any one so gross. Her face reddened with displeasure. She looked around as much as to say, “Are you all like this?” And two little old ladies, who were sitting further up the table, with shawls hanging over the backs of the chairs, looked back, clearly indicating, “We are not; we are genteel.”
“Eat your dinner, dear,” she said to Lucy, and began to toy again with the meat that she had once censured.
Lucy mumbled that those seemed very odd people opposite.
“Eat your dinner, dear. This pension is a failure. To-morrow we will make a change”
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor, 1953
The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. “You’re The Misfit!” she said. “I recognized you at once!”
“Yes’m,” the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, “but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.”
Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.
“Lady,” he said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.”
“You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. “I would hate to have to,” he said.
If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin, 1974
“Alas,” said Mr. Hayward. He stared at me from behind his cigar, an odd, expectant, surprisingly sorrowful look.
I had stood up; now I sat down. “That filthy bitch,” I said, “That filthy bitch.”
“How much money?” Mama asked.
“I am trying to keep it as low as possible,” said Mr. Hayward, with a shy, boyish smile, “but special investigators are—special, I’m afraid, and they know it. If we’re lucky, we’ll locate Mrs. Rogers in a matter of days, or weeks. If not”—he shrugged—“well, for the moment, let’s just assume we’ll be lucky.” And he smiled again.
Uprooted, Naomi Novik, 2015
I’d forgotten myself and taken Kasia’s hand after all. I was squeezing the life out of it, and she was squeezing back. She quickly let go and I tucked my hands together in front of me instead, hot color in my cheeks, afraid. He only narrowed his eyes at me some more. And then he raised his hand, and in his fingers a tiny ball of blue-white flame took shape.
“She didn’t mean anything,” Kasia said, brave brave brave, the way I hadn’t been for her. Her voice was trembling but audible, while I shook rabbit-terrified, staring at the ball. “Please, my lord—”
“Silence, girl,” the Dragon said, and held his hand out towards me. “Take it.”
“I—what?” I said, more bewildered than if he’d flung it into my face.
The Monsters We Defy, Leslye Penelope, 2022
“I just don’t…I just don’t like it,” she mumbled.
“She’s the brains of the operation,” Jesse Lee said sarcastically. “Don’t like any idea she didn’t come up with herself, right?”
She spun around to find four pairs of eyes staring holes in her.
“I knew men like you in the service,” Jesse Lee continued. “Couldn’t stand not being in charge of everything. You want to be the general, fine. I don’t care.” He gave her a mock salute. “But you have to lead us somewhere, and right now you don’t have nowhere to go. We work together and everybody gets what they want—our Tricks gone, the missing people found…Isn’t that what you’re after?”
The scrutiny was unbearable, and she had no words. She pressed her lips tighter, feeling mulish. Israel’s gaze was palpable, crossing her skin and seeking a way inside her mind.
“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “We work together.”
Analysis
As I said, this is a small sample size. I’ve also chosen short passages to keep this from being a whole tome of a newsletter. But I think I can say some things about how these authors describe and convey emotion.
First, I think pre-modern authors are often stereotyped as ignoring emotion, but the Augustine and Chrétien examples show they did not. Augustine’s narration follows his “characters” closely, like where he and his brother stand over his mother’s bed and she looks up at them, and where he describes himself trying to hold back tears, in a way I would associate with modern writers, although I’m more used to medieval narratives than ancient ones. Also, Confessions is something like a memoire, not a romance or epic.
The Chrétien example is closer to what I’m used to from pre-modern authors. In this passage, Chrétien conveys Erec and Gawain’s joy at being reunited and Enide and Gawain’s concern over Erec mostly through what characters do and say, rather than describing them as “holding back tears,” for example.
I chose a passage from Austen because she’s strongly associated with the free indirect speech technique; if I remember correctly, her novels helped popularize it in English-language fiction. At least in the passage I’ve chosen, she uses it as much or more than externalized or internalized emotional descriptions. The Brontë passage combines internal and external emotional description, but you could also analyze the first paragraph as free indirect speech. Forster’s passage uses both free indirect speech and externalized emotion.
The O’Connor and Baldwin passages from the 1950s and ‘70s respectively are interesting to me because they prioritize descriptions of character’s facial expressions, gestures, movements, and actions to convey their internal emotional states. The serial killer known as The Misfit makes a little hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe; the investigator Hayward looks at Tish from behind his cigar. In these passages, at least, the authors don’t describe emotional responses that would be invisible to a hypothetical camera (something like “I felt my legs shake as I stood”) or free indirect speech (the narrator making a statement like “what a nasty little man he was!”). I can’t imagine Austen or Chrétien writing this way, and I wouldn’t expect Augustine, Brontë, or Forster to. To me, these descriptions feel like close-up camera shots. I wonder if there’s anything worth looking at here with regards to how literary writing may have been influenced by film.
The 21st-century passages—from Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and Leslye Penelope’s The Monsters We Defy—show how contemporary genre fiction often makes extensive use of “reaction shot” descriptions alongside internalized emotions and free indirect speech. Both authors are very skilled at merging these three types of description, and it seems to resonate with many modern readers. I enjoy this style and write this way myself, more often than not.
What Am I Doing?
Writing. I’m drafting the first chapter of a project that definitely isn’t fan fiction. This project has been tougher to get through than I’ve anything I’ve written in a while. I’ve probably cut at least 6,000 words which is far from usual for me. Blegh. I’m finally getting to the tail end of it.
I still need to edit the Climate Change Wizard Story. But I’ve had a pitch accepted for an essay that might be my first published work, yay! which will take priority for the next few months.
Reading. I just finished Pre-Industrial Societies by Patricia Crone. I liked the chapters on the pre-modern period. They make a lot of generalizations (and the author warns you they’re generalizations) but for the most part, I found the generalizations useful. I didn’t care as much for the two chapters on modernity. They felt a bit Guns, Germs, and Steel-y with how the author attributed Europe’s current wealth to things other than colonialism.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Hild by Nicola Griffith, a historical fiction novel based on the life of a 7th-century saint, and enjoying the author’s detailed descriptions of the early medieval setting. I got about 60 percent of the way through the audiobook before the Libby app reposessed it, so I’ll finish it when I get it back in a few weeks.
Watching. The neurodivergent department in my brain is finally allowing me to watch The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. I’m enjoying it. It’s not everything I’d hope an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would be, but then nothing is, including the Jackson films.
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