12 Examples of Body Language Descriptions by Great Authors

To write great descriptions of body language, you must study the masters. Looking to examples set by great authors can help inspire you and provide direction for your writing.

Deliberate Practice is also critical in developing your skills. Take the time to analyze the way authors depict and describe body language, paying close attention to the words they use and the techniques they employ. Then, practice writing your own body language descriptions, honing your craft with each attempt. 

In this article we'll first summarize how to describe body language in fiction, then take a look at what we can learn from reading examples of body language descriptions by great authors, before giving you 12 examples of body language descriptions by great authors.

Before we start ...
do you want to write fiction faster,
while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? 

Check out this link to the FREE "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook,
which comes with a FREE companion course
with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.

How To Describe Body Language in Fiction

 The building blocks of body language are the following elements:

1. Facial expressions –  eyes and eyebrows, nose, mouth, skin, the face as a whole
2. Head movement and positioning – head tilting, nodding, shaking head, bowing head, head thrown back
3. Hands and arms – open palms, palms together, fidgeting, drumming fingers, making a fist, pointing finger, shaking finger, waving hands, crossing arms, arms on hips
4. Body movement and positioning – shoulders hunched, open stance, closed stance, leaning in, leaning back, standing tall, slumping, crossing legs, bouncing legs/feet/knees 
5. Use of space – invading personal space, maintaining distance, claiming space, minimizing presence
6. Touch – handshake, touch arm, hug, hand on shoulder, patting head, kiss
7. Tone of voice – soft spoken, loud voice, monotone, fluctuations in pitch, whisper, shout, rapid-fire speech, slow deliberate speech, abrupt silence, drawn-out silence

Check out this article to delver deeper into writing body language in fiction:

How To Describe Body Language in Fiction 

What We Learn From Reading Examples of Body Language Descriptions by Great Authors

There is a wealth of wisdom to be gained from studying the works of seasoned authors, especially when it comes to the art of describing body language.

You will notice is how these authors make their characters more relatable and real. They don't just tell us a character is nervous or excited; they show it through the subtle twitching of a hand, the tapping of a foot, or the rapid blinking of eyes. This approach immerses readers more deeply into your narrative and cultivates a more intimate connection with your characters.

Studying these examples can help you understand the economy of language. Great authors often convey a wealth of information in just a few well-chosen words or actions. A simple action, like the way a character holds a teacup or avoids eye contact, can reveal volumes about their personality, mood, or mental state.

These examples also illustrate how body language can enhance dialogue. Rather than relying solely on the words spoken, the incorporation of character actions and reactions can add depth to conversations, making them more dynamic and realistic.

As you, the author, delve into your writing craft, remember to use body language as a tool for implicit character exposition. It's not just about what your characters say or do, but also how they carry themselves while doing so. By paying attention to these nuances, you'll be able to create more rounded and believable characters, captivating your readers in the process.

Now, on to the examples. 

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1. Gillian Flynn: Drunk and drugged (from "Sharp Objects")

Gillian Flynn writes delicious dark prose. In this scene from "Sharp Objects" (her debut! — it's amazing what a sure-footed writer she was right from the start), the protagonist, Camille Preaker, and her stepsister, Amma Crellin, are high on ecstasy ("X"), spinning each other around ("... we swung each other in circles ...") in drugged exuberance. Notice the body language interspersed with Camille's narration, illustrating two drugged-out characters, out of control, injuring themselves, and laughing about it:

• "Amma spun until she clattered to the pavement ..."
• "... one of her silver bangle bracelets dislodging and rolling down the street drunkenly." – notice how you can use clothing and accessories as extensions of body language, and also the nice touch that the bracelet is "rolling down the street drunkenly" (we can picture it wobbling like a drunk, and it also of course reflects back to the two girls that are both drunk and drugged)
• "I grabbed her from the street (laughing, her elbow split open and bleeding)"
• "Her face was split in two with her smile, her teeth wet and long..."
• " We were spinning so fast my cheeks were flapping, tickling me. I was laughing like a kid. I have never been happier than right now, I thought."
• "The streetlight was almost rosy, and Amma’s long hair was feathering my shoulders, her high cheekbones jutted out like scoops of butter in her tanned skin. I reached out to touch one, releasing my hand from hers, and the unlinking of our circle caused us to spin wildly to the ground."
• "I felt my ankle bone crack against the curb—pop!—blood exploding, splattering up my leg. "
• "Red bubbles began sprouting onto Amma’s chest from her own skid across the pavement." 
• "She looked down, looked at me, all glowing blue husky eyes, ran her fingers across the bloody web on her chest and shrieked once, long, then lay her head on my lap laughing."
   

 2. Kazuo Ishiguro: The naïve observer (from "Klara and the Sun") 

In Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro's "Klara and the Sun", the narrator, Klara, is a robot, an "AF" (Artificial Friend). Notice how the body language of the couple meeting after many years is described from the perspective of a naïve observer, who doesn't realize what she is seeing:

• "I saw the man raise a fist to one of his eyes, in the way I’d seen some children do in the store when they got upset."
• "... she and the man were holding each other so tightly they were like one large person ...."
• "... the man had his eyes tightly shut, and I wasn’t sure if he was very happy or very upset."

3. Zadie Smith: Internal conflict (from "White Teeth")

In Zadie Smith's "White Teeth", we get this scene that uses body language to illustrate the internal conflict between Clara Bowden Jones and her husband, Archie Jones, as they "struggle" over moving a table. Notice how there are few words used by Archie to express the conflict ("It's a man's work" and "I'm quite capable" and "just get out of my way) — the tension is mostly through body language:

• "Archie battled to push through the narrow frame ..."
• "Clara lifted a large armchair with enviable ease and brought it over to where Archie had collapsed, gasping for breath on the hall steps."

• "She brushed her hand softly across his forehead." — Clara's attempt to diffuse the conflict and show caring results in the opposite emotion from Archie:

• "He shook her off in irritation, as if batting a fly."
• "Clara watched him roll up his sleeves with some determination, and tackle the coffee table once more."

4. Dashiell Hammett: External conflict (from "Red Harvest") 

Dashiell Hammett is a master of the "hardboiled" style of writing. In "Red Harvest", the unnamed narrator (the "Continental Op") is a private investigator ("Operative") for the "Continental" detective agency. He is a man of action, external conflict, as illustrated in this scene:

• "The latch clicked. I plunged in with the door."
• "I tumbled down, twisting around to face the door. My gun was in my hand by the time I hit the floor."
• "I steadied my gun-arm on the floor. Nick’s body showed over the front sight. I squeezed the gun. Nick stopped shooting. He crossed his guns on his chest and went down in a pile on the sidewalk."
• "Hands on my ankles dragged me back. The floor scraped pieces off my chin." 

5. Megan Abbott: Contrasts (from "Queenpin")

Continuing in the hardboiled style: Megan Abbott is a student of the form — in fact, she has a Ph.D in Literature, where her thesis was about hardboiled fiction, which she later used as the basis for her non-fiction book "The Street Was Mine".

"Queenpin" is an Edgar Award-winning novel set in the traditional hardboiled era (not specified, but probably 1940s or 1950s), told by an unnamed narrator, and focused on the central character of the (fictional) mob Queenpin, Gloria Denton. 

In this scene, which is mostly focused on Gloria, who is glamorous, mature, and self-assured, we also get the contrast with the unnamed narrator who is young, naive, and eager, hungering to to be like Gloria:

• "She was walking across the Tee Hee parking lot, taking short steps in her fitted suit, her pointy-toe heels—snakeskin, I was sure."
• "She was looking straight at me as I stood by the bus stop, shivering in my rayon coat, tapping my feet to keep warm." 
• "... a sharp green rock balancing on one long finger, a sleek charm bracelet swaying from one wrist, dangling like a promise."

6. Neil Gaiman: Making faces (from "The Graveyard Book")

Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" is a wonderful reimagining of "The Jungle Book", with a young boy adopted by the ghosts (and an undead and a shapeshifter) in a graveyard (instead of the animals in a jungle). 

In this short scene, we see the boy, Bod (short for "Nobody") Owens meeting a (living) girl, Scarlett Amber Perkins, who has a talent for making faces: 

•  "The face on the other side of the gorse bush crumpled into a gargoyle, tongue sticking out, eyes popping, then returned to girl."
• "She pushed her nose up with one finger, creased her mouth into a huge, satisfied smile, squinted her eyes, puffed out her cheeks." — (and the cute childlike banter: "Do you know what that was?" - "No." - "It was a pig, silly.")

7. Hilary Mantel: Animal body language (from "Wolf Hall")

In Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning "Wolf Hall", in this short scene featuring Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn we get this example of animal body language, and the interaction of humans with animals:

• "A flurry of little dogs — three of them — run away from her skirts, yapping, darting toward him." — the "flurry" of the little dogs is a great image of the three scurrying dogs.
• " ... with practiced and gentle hands he scoops them up ..." — the descriptions of the hands as "practiced" shows that the protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, is well versed with animals, as he is with anything, and that he is also "gentle"
• "By the time he has given them back to her, they have nibbled his fingers and his coat, licked his face and yearned toward him with goggling eyes: as if he were someone they had so much longed to meet."
• "Two of them he sets gently on the floor; the smallest he hands back to Anne."  — the second mention of Cromwell being gentle, which is then emphasized in Anne Boleyn saying in French "Vous êtes gentil,” which literally is translated "You are gentle" (although it really means "You are nice" or "You are kind" or "You are sweet").

8. Walter Mosley: Desperation (from "Down the River and Unto the Sea")

In Walter Mosley's Edgar award-winning "Down the River unto the Sea", former NYPD investigator (now private detective) Joe King Oliver takes a case where a young man, Jacob Storell has been arrested for robbery:

• "That’s when he started crying. He put his head in his chained hands and blubbered."
• "I took the seat across from his side of the detainment table and waited.
• "After a while the crying became fearful and louder.
• "He started yelling and trying to pull himself free from the cuffs that were attached by a chain, threaded through a hole in the table, to a steel eye anchored in the concrete floor."
• "I remained silent, allowing him to vent. I knew the feeling." — We know from earlier in the novel why Joe "knew the feeling" since he was falsely accused, arrested, beaten, and kicked out of the police force.

9. John Steinbeck: It's all in the details (from "The Grapes of Wrath") 

Tom Joad is the main character in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". When we first meet him, he is newly released from prison, where he was convicted of homicide (in self-defense). In this scene, he has hitched a ride and he knows that the driver realizes Tom is a newly released prisoner. Notice the wealth of detail in body language description as Steinbeck zooms in on the smallest aspects of Tom's and the driver's actions:

• "Joad took a quick drink from the flask."
• "He dragged the last smoke from his raveling cigarette and then, with callused thumb and forefinger, crushed out the glowing end."
• "He rubbed the butt to a pulp and put it out the window, letting the breeze suck it from his fingers."
• "The big tires sang a high note on the pavement." — here we get some "body language" from the inanimate object, the truck they are driving in.
• "Joad’s dark quiet eyes became amused as he stared along the road."
• "The driver waited and glanced uneasily over."
• "At last Joad’s long upper lip grinned up from his teeth and he chuckled silently, his chest jerked with the chuckles."
• "The driver did not look over." — an interesting example of "negative body language" where the absence of body language is notable
• "Joad’s lips stretched tight over his long teeth for a moment, and he licked his lips like a dog, two licks, one in each direction from the middle."
• "His voice became harsh."
• "The driver looked straight ahead, gripped the wheel so tightly that the pads of his palms bulged, and the backs of his hands paled."
• "The driver was silent." — another example of "negative body language"

10. Tony Morrison: Happy dance (from "Beloved")

In "Beloved", Toni Morrison gives us a haunted house as a character: "124" (full name: "124 Bluestone Road") who later in the novel will incarnate as the ghostly "Beloved". In this scene, Beloved is happy, dancing, and this exuberance is contrasted with the body language associated with more quiet pleasures, as well as the body language of a violent incident that happened a short while before:

• "Upstairs Beloved was dancing. A little two-step, two-step, make-a-new-step, slide, slide and strut on down."
• "She had seen her pouty lips open wide with the pleasure of sugar or some piece of news Denver gave her. She had felt warm satisfaction radiating from Beloved’s skin when she listened to her mother talk about the old days. But gaiety she had never seen."
• "Not ten minutes had passed since Beloved had fallen backward to the floor, pop-eyed, thrashing and holding her throat."
• "Beloved put her fists on her hips and commenced to skip on bare feet. Denver laughed." 

11. Raymond Chandler: Living vicariously (from "The Big Sleep")

In Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep", private detective Philip Marlowe has been called to the mansion of General Sternwood who is sickly and spends his time in a hothouse, unable to eat rich food, drink alcohol, or smoke cigarettes:

• "I stood up and peeled off my coat and got a handkerchief out and mopped my face and neck and the backs of my wrists. St. Louis in August had nothing on that place."
• "I sat down again and I felt automatically for a cigarette and then stopped. The old man caught the gesture and smiled faintly." — General Sternwood tells Marlowe to go ahead and smoke, and Marlowe does it demonstratively:

• "I lit the cigarette and blew a lungful at him and he sniffed at it like a terrier at a rathole. The faint smile pulled at the shadowed corners of his mouth." — ... and Sternwood explains that he has to indulge his "vices by proxy" and that he subsists on heat "like a newborn spider"

• "The soft wet heat was like a pall around us. The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head."
• "I sipped the drink. The old man licked his lips watching me, over and over again, drawing one lip slowly across the other with a funeral absorption, like an undertaker dry-washing his hands."

12. Margaret Atwood: Artificial (fake) body language (from "The Handmaid's Tale") 

In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", the narrator, Offred, lives in a world where (most) women are oppressed and have to constantly be conscious of their outward appearances, so every action is done for show (or at least that is what Offred suspects):

• "We walk, sedately."
• "Given our wings, our blinkers, it's hard to look up, hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps."
• "Ofglen's head is bowed, as if she's praying. She does this every time. Maybe, I think, there's someone, someone in particular gone, for her too; a man, a child. But I can't entirely believe it. I think of her as a woman for whom every act is done for show, is acting rather than a real act. She does such things to look good, I think. She's out to make the best of it."
• "I feel a tremor in the woman beside me. Is she crying? In what way could it make her look good?"
• "My own hands are clenched, I note, tight around the handle of my basket. I won't give anything away."

Resources

MY FAVORITE ALL-PURPOSE RESOURCE

The Writer's Treasure Chest - everything in one place, curated, organized, this is a great reference for all things writing craft, with tons of prompts, plot/character generators and other tools to inspire you to write a great story with complex, believable and memorable character, animated by descriptive body language.

RELATED ARTICLES

As you write your (flawed) characters, here are some articles that will be helpful as you work on all the aspects of the writing craft and your writing process: 

• Write Fiction Faster! — How to Speed Up Your Story Writing 
  
  
• Need a Great Idea for Your Next Story? Try the Story IDEA Formula
  
  
• From Idea to Story: 3 Methods to Develop Your Story Idea 
  
  
• How to Write Characters Who Stick in the Reader's Mind 
  
  
• What Makes a Good Story? — Great Scenes! Here's How to Write Them
  
  
• Flash Fiction: How To Use It To Supercharge Your Writing 
  
  
• Blast Through Writer's Block: How to Get Unstuck 
  
  
• Find Your Stagecoach — How to Master the Art of Writing Fiction

FREE COURSE, GUIDE AND WORKBOOK

Do you want to write fiction faster, while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? Check out this link to the "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook, which comes with a companion course with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.