She Sat He Stood: What Do Your Characters Do While They Talk? by Ginger Hanson

Author:Ginger Hanson [Hanson, Ginger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Writing Skiills/Reference
Publisher: Saderra Publishing
Published: 2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Tells or Giveaway Gestures

The movie Maverick demonstrates how poker players use body language to tell whether their opponent is bluffing or not. During one scene, Maverick explains how he reads his opponents’ body language and defines "tells," the distinctive body gestures his opponents use when they have a good or poor hand of cards.

Most people have little tells or gestures they use when they’re nervous. They may rub an ear for reassurance or plaster on a fake smile to boost their confidence. These are great tags for writers to use to telegraph to the readers and other characters when a certain character is nervous, lying, etc.

Recent research helps today's poker players because it’s been documented that when humans see something pleasant, their pupils widen. Since this is an unconscious reaction, a poker player may not even be aware that he is telegraphing his own luck. Although, I’m sure a good poker player like Maverick could have told body language researchers he already knew about this tell.

Tells have become an important component of psychological research. In his book, The Tell, child psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, describes research on a group of infants that led to a degree of predictability about personality traits. For example, certain tells exhibited in infancy that correlate with shyness remain evident as the child matures into an adult who exhibits the personality traits of shyness.

Telegraphing an emotion brings us to another facet of body language. For every situation there are two elements to body language, the delivery of the message and the reception of the message. The person who transmits a message to the other person is called the sender, and a person who receives the message is call the receiver. Communication is a two way traffic. The receiver is a sender as well, because the receiver always reacts to the sender. Even when you say nothing at all, you still show something through your body language.

For example, you either look at the other person while they speak, or you don't. You are either standing close to the person, or you are far away. Your immediate answer conveys a message to the other person as strong as your silence does.

Can you tell that our bodies talk all the time?

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