That there is one of the reasons why I love your posts. Thank you.

Interesting - it only works that way because the verb is "shiver". If it were "think" or "fume" or "shout" you could have stuck with the first version. And if it were "retch" you'd need the second. Apparently it depends on if the action is voluntary or involuntary.

Yes, "began" only works for me if it's an action that, once commenced, could be ongoing (Like shivering) or an action which is curtailed before it's finished.

Yet it sneaks in in the darnedest places.

oooh, good one. *nodnod* Thanks for sharing!

Brilliant! And of course the first form is of use in situations where the character is reacting to the situation, rather than controlling it.

And it's not just that she's protagging -- her narration is also consistent.

Katie put her back against the door beside the wall and began to shiver, while not incorrect, feels slightly "off" to the unconscious mind of the reader, because it sounds as though she deliberately, actively began to shiver. Like, here's what she did! She put her back against the door! She began to shiver! Then she chopped some firewood...

The "crossed her arms" isn't just more active, it's consistent with the active first half of the sentence.

Cool insight. And as you said, so simple. Sublime even. Thanks for sharing.

Nice. Very nice. Awesomely nice. :-)

Yes!

My manuscripts will now reflect the fact that I knew that all along.

*glances around furtively*

Oo, this one's going into the "theory" memories...

>Katie put her back against the door beside the wall and crossed her arms over her chest to confine her shivering.

The door is beside the wall?? ;)


I kid. Very good, EB. And I've been meaning to thank you for days and days about a post from days and days ago re learning to write each new book and allowing one's self to do so.

Right. Duh. I'm learning to write a whole new book with #2. Old lessons may not (er, *don't*) apply, so no wonder it's so damn hard.

Can't tell you what a volt of light that was for me.

Oooh. Thank you!

I must be a cretin. I like the first line better.

How cool. Love that explanation!

It's interesting. To me, it's not a simple good-sentence-bad-sentence kind of thing, although the point made above about consistency of expression I think is a good one. (That 'began to shiver' isn't the same kind of action as 'put her back.') Aside from that, there seems to be two things that happen when you change from the first sentence to the second.

The first is that the reader gets a hell of a lot more information. We're told a little more in terms of action - she starts to shiver, yes (although we don't know when she started - the interesting possibility exists that she's been shivering for a while and needed to get where she was in order to contain it, or only just now felt a desire to contain it, or something else altogether), and she also crosses her arms. Much more importantly, we get told a lot about Katie:

- She wants to contain her shivering.

- She's willing to take physical action to achieve that end.

- She believes that she *can* contain her shivering by crossing her arms over her chest, or at least that it's worth trying.

- To Katie, the word 'contain' means something and is the best choice in this context - she isn't necessarily trying to /stop/ the shivering, nor to /hide/ the shivering, though either or both may also be factors. But the word is 'contain.' When your own body does things that bother you, you may not be able to control them, but you can contain them.

- Implication: Katie is distressed by shivering.

- Another implication: Katie not only crossed her arms across her chest to contain the shivers, by extension, she came to this place and leaned against the wall as a part of the effort to contain the shivers.

I like anything that tells me more about the character's personality. And when you prefer a sentence that lets Katie remain in control of the action, she also appears to be someone who desires and works to achieve some degree of control over her body.

And that's the second thing that happens, is that you-the-author have allowed Katie to have more control over her body/reactions. The second sentence gives her a clearly active role, the first gave a less clear passive one.

And so, actually, I remain somewhat intrigued by the /lack/ of control over the story of the first sentence, because it makes this character who (I'm *wildly* inferring, and am quite ready to believe I've deduced everything hopelessly wrong) seems to want to be in control, helpless, and that's always interesting. It's probably not the right time for that, though, or the best way of doing it.

So to me, the second sentence is better not so much because it keeps Katie the protagonist - because the protagonist can be very much the protagonist and (as you, of course, know) be forced by her body, or circumstance, or other characters, or who knows what into a position of passivity - but because it provides many times as much information about Katie as a character than the first, in layers of fact and implication. I'm all about the character, and richer is better. (Although, of course, sometimes simpler is richer.)

In acting, it's called playing the adjustment rather than the condition. In other words, a good actor never thinks "I'm cold" and then tries to "act cold." Instead, they think "I want to not be cold," and then they figure out what actions to take to warm themselves up. And of course it follows that the choice of actions taken -- even for an action as simple as trying to get warm -- is what reveals character.

I took a ton of acting tools from my acting toolbag and dropped them into my writer toolbag and they fit there quite nicely. :-)

Yup. Sometimes, I have to whack myself over the head with a dead trout as a reminder of that, but yup. :-)