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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/48282
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/48282
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[This answer](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/46139/averting-real-women-don-t-wear-dresses/48107#48107) to the question _[Averting Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/46139/averting-real-women-don-t-wear-dresses)_ introduces a distinction between _acts of patience_ and _acts of daring_.

> [...] when it comes to telling a story [...] acts of daring are easy to show, and acts of patience are not [...]
> 
> [...] acts of daring [...] make a better story than acts of patience [...]
> 
> It is a common technique [...] to represent qualities and emotions through physical actions. [...]
> 
> But it is hard to translate patience into action. [...]

So, I now want to ask:

**Even though it is difficult to make "acts of patience" the basis of a story, what if that's what we want to do? Indeed, how might we make "acts of patience" _exciting_?**

I want to stress some limits to the scope of the current question:

- The previous question I'm referring to discussed differences between women and men. These are out of scope here. I don't care (here) whether we think daring/patience are correlated to masculinity/femininity or not; I'm only asking about how to deal with "acts of patience".

- This question focuses on "mainstream, commercial" fiction. In this context, I doubt Dostoevsky will offer the most useful examples (rather, I'm thinking of characters such as Malcolm Polstead and Sansa Stark as apt examples). That's also why I've included "exciting" in "how to make acts of patience _exciting_": I'm interested in e.g. fantasy adventures centred on "acts of patience", not in action-free philosophical allegories about the meaning of life (to which "acts of patience" may, admittedly, come much more naturally), although of course we might learn from the latter so as to achieve the former.

- The "basic" or, perhaps, even "cheating" answer seems to be: just show "acts of daring" instead, and use them to represent, symbolise or otherwise stand in for the "acts of patience". Very well, point taken. But this question is about what _else_ we can do.

Original score: 25