I’ve been watching the Olympics every two years since I was a kid—which is strange, given that I was never a big fan of televised sports. I never got into soccer or baseball, and I detest watching any football team that isn’t fictional. I used to enjoy a bit of hockey now and then with my mom—I would steal her Florida Panthers jersey, pick up a stick, and knock one of the dog’s tennis balls down the hall and pretend I was Wayne Gretzky, cheering along with her whenever my “teammates” scored a goal on-screen. But somewhere along the way, that interest waned, too.

Even the Olympics give rise to some sort of instinctual resistance in me whenever the hype starts up again. Every game year, someone will ask, “You gonna watch the Olympics?” And every time, I shrug and tell them the same lie I tell myself: “I don’t know. I’m not that worried about it.” And then, like clockwork, I’ll find myself scrambling for the remote minutes before the opening ceremony starts, panicked that I might miss it and regretful that I didn’t plan for this ahead of time—and that’s when the madness takes hold.

But this year, I couldn’t help asking myself, why? I don’t play sports. I don’t watch sports. I’m not particularly patriotic, either, at least not in the flashy, stereotypical, flag-wearing American kind of way that many big Olympics fans here are. So what’s the draw?

Finally, it hit me. The heart of the Olympic games isn’t sports for the sake of sports. It’s not even athletic prowess. It’s storytelling. For the athletes, it’s a chance to turn an everyday story into an epic one, to become a rising star or a king or queen returned to their rightful throne. For the audience, it’s a chance to watch it happen, to be one of the ones who gets to say, “I remember, I was there.”

And of all the winter sports, none do storytelling quite as well as ice dancing.

Storytelling in Ice Dancing

I could watch figure skating all day (in fact, I have), but ice dancing is easily my favorite. Of all the disciplines, it is far and away the most focused on telling a kinetic narrative. The best routines are the ones that convey full stories, complete with characterization, plot, and a stunning conclusion—all without a single line of dialogue, a voice-over, or a narrator.

Instead of words, the athletes use their bodies to paint vivid portraits of who they are and what they feel, inviting us onlookers to imagine a whole world building itself around them as they sail and swivel across the ice. A single gesture might convey compassion, curiosity, or cruelty; one look might be all it takes to tell the difference between lovers and enemies. It’s interpretive dance, but bolder, more fluid. It’s a story within a story—the one the dancers are telling us and the one they’re living, which could end in either a medal or misfortune.

Take a few of the highlights from this year, for instance.  Moulin Rouge, as performed by Canadian athletes Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, had everyone falling in love with the couple—and just about everyone convinced that Virtue and Moir are a couple, despite their claims otherwise. As Twitter user Earpnado put it, “They melted all of the ice. Everyone is pregnant. We’re all Canadian now.” They told a love story with such passion and skill that everyone kept believing in their fictional love, even after the routine was done.

Then there were their fellow Canadians, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who somehow managed to turn finger-guns and twizzles into an elegant and sexy tribute to James Bond. And, of course, the Russian skaters Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev, who twisted themes of love, blindness, and loss into one heart-wrenching routine to the tunes of “Oblivion” and “Beethoven’s Five Secrets.” And let’s not forget the beautiful frozen ballet that France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron performed using the haunting “Moonlight Sonata.”

Writing Without Dialogue

As a starry-eyed fan, I got lost in the routines, swept off my feet by the grace and poise of these talented skaters and the stories they told without uttering a single word. As a writer, I wondered how they did it, and what I could learn from it.

Storytelling without dialogue—external or internal—is a priceless skill for any author, whether you’re writing a mute character, a silent scene, or merely navigating the quiet places between your characters’ spoken words. It can also be incredibly difficult, particularly if you’ve grown up watching movies and TV shows that often rely extremely heavily on conversations and narration in order to establish characters, background information, and even important plot twists. After all, where would Game of Thrones be without quotes like, “The night is dark and full of terrors,” or, “My watch has ended”? What would the conclusion of Casablanca be without, “Here’s looking at you, kid?”

But it’s not impossible. If you watch ice dancing very closely, you’ll pick up on a few hints:

• “Don’t underestimate the importance of body language!” as Ursula from The Little Mermaid would say. Much of ice dancing’s method of storytelling relies on using movement and facial expressions to convey both personality and emotion. You don’t have to strap on a pair of skates to do the same: instead of asking your characters to constantly announce themselves to the world out loud, show it in the way they lean into (or away from) the touch of a friend or lover, the way their brow furrows ever so slightly when a certain topic comes up, or the way they don’t react when something tragic or frightening occurs. Sometimes, a silent, subtle reaction can be worth a thousand words.

 

• Consider their choice of threads. In ice dancing, skaters use costumes to help define their characters as well as to set the mood of their program. Virtue and Moir chose somewhat revealing burgundy and black outfits to match both the color scheme of the movie and the passion of the love story they portrayed, while Bobrova and Soloviev chose delicate, flowing material that added to the ethereal quality of their performance. Similarly, what your character wears on the page can say a heck of a lot about them. A threadbare dress can indicate limited funds or a thrifty nature, while a pair of bright red sunglasses can be a sign of confidence or a clue in a murder mystery novel. Even how your character wears their clothes can be telling—a shy girl in a skimpy outfit would likely be itching to change as soon as possible, while a thief who’s used to wearing stranger’s clothes might be able to look natural in any outfit, no matter how strange or unfamiliar.

 

• Explore their relationship with their environment. An ice dancer doesn’t just skate across the ice—they glide, twirl and leap, and some even seem to fly. Some skaters, like Bobrova and Soloviev, dance like they’re in a world of their own, seeming to share something intense and private even as millions of viewers look on. Others, like the entertaining Shibutani “Shib Sibs,” draw the audience into the joy of their performances with brilliant smiles that directly acknowledge their viewers and even welcome their company. Likewise, how your characters react to, and interact with, their environment can play a major role in how your readers—and, often, other characters—perceive them. Imposters often give themselves away by their lack of familiarity with certain objects, people, or locations. A seasoned sailor may dislike the rigid stability of solid ground, while a landlubber may grow seasick the moment they set foot on a rocking boat. And of course, whether a character chooses to let their environment impact them or try to change it to fit their own needs instead says a lot about their priorities.

More Than Words: Writing Like an Ice Dancer

Stories are everywhere, but you don’t have to squint hard to see how thoroughly narrative the Olympic experience truly is—especially when it comes to ice dancing. And the thrill of it is, you never quite know how it’s going to end. Unlike a Hollywood rom-com you just know has to conclude with a kiss (or one of Joss Whedon’s works, in which you have to assume that at least one of your favorite characters is going to die a tragic death), Olympic performances are unscripted, and thus always carry with them a sense of perilous uncertainty. Will he make the comeback he’s been anticipating for the past four years? Will she break a world record? Or will they falter, fumble, fall? It makes victory that much sweeter—and defeat that much more bitter.

Writing a story is often a similar experience. Perhaps you think you know where it’s going. Perhaps you’ve got the outline, complete with detailed bullet points, all laid out nice and neat in a Google doc or in your favorite notebook. But when you’re in the thick of it, there’s no guarantee that you’ll end up where you planned. One minute, your fingers might be gliding over the keyboard, racing toward the finish line—and the next, you might find yourself grinding to a shuddering halt, blindsided by a plot twist you never saw coming or a character revelation you weren’t emotionally prepared for.

It’s another story within a story—the story you’re telling the world, and the story that happens in your office, on your couch, or in the coffee shop down the street. This secret framing narrative, the one that rarely gets told, is the one in which you get to experience your story as it comes to life on the page, one word at a time. You may laugh at your own jokes on the good writing days, cry in despair or frustration on the bad ones, and you may even consider giving up. But if you finish it, if you get it done and out there in the world, you’ll get to be one of the lucky ones who gets to look back on the act of creating that world one day and say, “I remember, I was there.”