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Writing Skills: Action and Behavior
Excerpt from "No Country for Old Men"
In this article, I’ll give you a mini passage from a short story or novel. Then, we’ll discuss the writing skills you can learn from it.
Your job is to copy this passage, slowly, by hand or typing. This is called copywork, and it is the best way to learn new writing skills.
Copywork — A Lost Art
For hundreds of years, copywork was how people learned to write.
Benjamin Franklin copied newspaper articles. Jack London copied Rudyard Kipling. Hunter S Thompson copied the entirety of The Great Gatsby.
So please, even if you are skeptical, read and copy this short passage. You might be surprised by what you will learn.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
When he stood up out of the chair he swung the keys off his belt and opened the locked desk drawer to get the keys to the jail. He was slightly bent over when Chigurh squatted and scooted his manacled hands beneath him to the back of his knees. In the same motion he sat and rocked backward and passed the chain under his feet and then stood instantly and effortlessly. If it looked like a thing he’d practiced many times it was. He dropped his cuffed hands over the deputy’s head and leaped into the air and slammed both knees against the back of the deputy’s neck and hauled back on the chain.
They went to the floor. The deputy was trying to get his hands inside the chain but he could not. Chigurh lay there pulling back on the bracelets with his knees between his arms and his face averted. The deputy was flailing wildly and he’d begun to walk sideways over the floor in a circle, kicking over the wastebasket, kicking the chair across the room. He kicked shut the door and he wrapped the throwrug in a wad about them. He was gurgling and bleeding from the mouth. He was strangling on his own blood. Chigurh only hauled the harder. The nickelplated cuffs bit to the bone. The deputy’s right carotid artery burst and a jet of blood shot across the room and hit the wall and ran down it. The deputy’s legs slowed and then stopped. He lay jerking. Then he stopped moving altogether. Chigurh lay breathing quietly, holding him. When he got up he took the keys from the deputy’s belt and released himself and put the deputy’s revolver in the waistband of his trousers and went into the bathroom.
Why this passage?
The quoted passage, found at the beginning of No Country for Old Men, illustrates an important skill for fiction authors: writing unbroken chains of character actions.
To advance your story forward, your characters need to do things.
Sometimes, you need your characters to do many things in a short amount of time. As is the case here, with the deputy and Chigurh, a scene might have nothing but quick bursts of action. Notice how there is sparsely any description, no dialogue, and no narration. This is an unbroken chain of character actions.
Let’s take a closer look.
In the first paragraph, we see a technique called a polysyndeton. The author links multiple actions together with the word “and”, rather than breaking them up with commas or periods.
He dropped his cuffed hands over the deputy’s head and leaped into the air and slammed both knees against the back of the deputy’s neck and hauled back on the chain.
This way, the author can group a character’s set of actions in one sentence, rather than splitting it into three separate actions: “He dropped his cuffed hands over the deputy’s head. He leaped into the air and slammed both knees against the back of the deputy’s neck. Then he hauled back on the chain.”
Note here that multiple sentences that begin with “he” is indeed quite frustrating to read.
In the second paragraph, you see the action alternating between Chigurh and the deputy. This is intentional and it creates a very quick back and forth pace in the reader’s mind. Take a look:
BOTH: They went to the floor.
DEPUTY: The deputy was trying to get his hands inside the chain but he could not.
CHIGURH: Chigurh lay there pulling back on the bracelets with his knees between his arms and his face averted.
DEPUTY: The deputy was flailing wildly and he’d begun to walk sideways over the floor in a circle, kicking over the wastebasket, kicking the chair across the room.
One last highlight:
Notice how, even in the bloodiest scenes, this passage is delivered matter-of-factly. There is zero emotional content in this passage. It’s just one action after another. This type of description serves an important purpose in showing Chigurh’s coldness.
After all, Anton Chigurh was voted the best depiction of a psychopath by a group of psychologists in Journal of Forensic Sciences. Check it out:
He was gurgling and bleeding from the mouth. He was strangling on his own blood. Chigurh only hauled the harder. The nickelplated cuffs bit to the bone.
Remember, copy the passage!
Type it out — or write it by hand on a piece of paper. It only takes 5 minutes. It will help you learn.
How to Write Great Fiction (by Copying):
For centuries, people learned to write by copying great fiction. This is called copywork. It’s how Jack London and Ben Franklin learned to write.
How? It's simple: you type out great fiction, word for word, to learn all the hidden skills and techniques.
In the 12-Day Copywork Masterclass, you'll study and copy 19 world-class authors. This is exactly how I learned to write an award-winning novel that sold over 13,900 copies.
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