In Service to Story

The tales we tell are broken down into chunks. A novel. Chapters. Scenes. This, presumably, is done to make the whole of the story easier to consume.

It's also useful for working through a narrative line. None of which should be construed as support on my part for any kind of extensive story plotting. I, too, am a totally character driven writer. As such, I require something slightly different of my scenes that my plot-driven counterparts.

To survive in a book a scene has to:

• Touch on the external conflict - preferably via action and/or dialogue
• If no external, then it must hit the internal conflict - also via action or dialogue
• Challenge the protagonist and make things MUCH worse unless we're in the last few pages of the book
• Advance the over progression in the overall story arc

But above all things, the scene must serve the protagonist. Note I didn't say 'serve the story'. For a character driven writer - or at least, for me, it's the same thing. Everything rises from character - the conflict, the motivation, the goals, the arc, all of it.

My secret weapon for figuring all of this out is a book/workshop called Break Into Fiction. It's heavy with templates asking you questions about your protagonist and what drives him or her. It's invaluable. The book (with all the templates) is available, too. Taking a few days to work through the templates gives me enough information that I know what my characters MUST face in order for them to change - to morph into the people they need to be to face the antagonist.

From that point, I have a vague notion of what scenes need to happen where. I say 'vague' because inevitably scenes I think happen near the climax of the book are actually necessary within the first third of a book. And then everything thereafter has to shuffle to adjust.

That said, I want scenes to work as hard as possible. I really want them doing at least three things at once (see list above). During rewrites, that's what I shoot for - taking two lazy scenes that only do one thing each and finding a way to merge them so they DO more. Cherry Adair likes to say 'what the fuck's the point of the scene'? She also advises getting into scenes late and then leaving them early - meaning, I think, that you want to keep your scenes packed with action. I like to keep those comments in mind - both while writing scenes and editing them. I *want* my scenes tight and filled with tension. Of one kind or another. That doesn't happen if I'm allowed to meander. It's alarming to me how someone who claims to be a writer (me) so instinctively wanders away from conflict rather than headlong into it when she's allowed to putter about in her scenes. Thus - short, tight, and jammed full of stuff that has to happen.

All of that said, it's fascinating to me how other people approach their work. So more please. Has there been something left unsaid about scenes this week? What do YOU require of your scenes?

Scenes From...

by Allison Pang

Okay - first off, I get to mention that the Carniepunk anthology dropped this week, so huzzah! Yours truly has a short Abby Sinclair story included ,entitled "A Duet with Darkness" - so if you've ever wanted to know how Melanie ended up with that magic violin and a soul that quite possibly belongs to the Devil, this is where you'll find out. :) Check it out here. (Note that it's also available on Audible.com if you'd prefer that version instead. I've got a copy, but I haven't quite managed to get myself to listen to it yet - I have a really hard time listening to my own words... >_<)

Anyway,  I'm afraid I probably won't be much help on this week's subject. Judging by a lot of what I've read as to what you should or shouldn't do (e.g. "never put your characters to bed at the end of the chapter because your readers will go to bed too!")  - I'm probably a complete failure.

I put my characters to bed at the end of chapters all the time. (At least in the first drafts. I can always tell when I was tired when I was writing because there's usually a sudden influx in blankets somewhere in the scene.)

But really, I am not good at dissecting paragraphs. I took a workshop several years ago dealing with "Scenes and Sequels" and it was all about using beats and that sort of thing...and I bailed out of it about three lessons in. It's not that it wasn't interesting - it was. I just couldn't wrap my head around it for my own writing - it became far too much work and sucked all the joy out of creating.

So, I guess I just do scenes by instinct these days. I mostly write in 1st, so cutting up scenes for different pov isn't as big of a deal. It's more about making sure the story moves forward at the pace it needs to be told.

That being said, because I panster my way through things, it can become fairly evident when my scenes aren't going where they need to. I know it because my characters end up becoming "fidgety." Lots of head cocking and fingers thrusting through hair or random small talk dialogue that goes no-where. Fine for a first draft, but that sort of excess can really bog a scene down, so I tend to strip most of that out when I go back for revisions.

(Funny, too - those extra bits become a slog to write as well, usually because the scene is floundering. Once I get back on the right track - presto! Everyone suddenly gets far more interested in what's supposed to be happening.)

Now, as far as resources go for this type of writing, I've heard a number of people swear by "Save the

Cat" - there are several books and workshops based off this series. It's actually more for writing screenplays, but when it comes to scenes and beats, the concept is very similar.

Yes, I own it.

No, I haven't been able to read past the first chapter. (I did try, though. Someone else is going to have to save the kitties.)

Scenes and How They Do and Don't Work in Novels

That picture is a bit blurry, but that's Nora Roberts rocking it out on the dance floor at the Harlequin party a the RWA National Conference. She is so wonderful in so many ways.

So this week's topic is Scene Goal: Why YOU Should Have One (Pantsers Beware!). No doubt it was KAK, calendar Nazi and avowed pre-plotter who added that snide addendum for Pantsers to beware. No doubt directed at me.

Ha ha.

But it's interesting, having just come back from the convention, and hearing so many amazing workshops on craft and business. So many writers talked about various approaches to writing that involve blending of plotting and pantsing that it makes me think there are very few of us - if anyone - who does all of one thing or the other.

The whole idea behind making sure that you, as the author, have a goal for every scene is to keep the writing tight, focused and moving forward. The primary definition of a scene comes from theater, as so many of our writing craft concepts do.

Thank you ancient Greeks, yet again!

So a scene is, first and foremost:

1: one of the subdivisions of a play: as

a : a division of an act presenting continuous action in one place

b : a single situation or unit of dialogue in a play <the love scene>

c : a motion-picture or television episode or sequence 

In theater they are usually delimited by the entrance and exit of characters, because that dynamic movement is such a driving force for a stage play. Many movies have adopted the sense of a scene break - moving fast from one visual to another - to drive action forward. In network TV, scenes are broken up by commercials. 

 

This can be less clear in a novel, because characters don't necessarily physically come and go, conversations and actions may flow more seamlessly from one point to another, and there are no commercial breaks. (We hope!)

People who use screenwriting models to structure their novels tend to move scene by scene. However, though I use the Three-Act structure and find it very useful, I rarely think in terms of scenes, or scene goals. This is not because I write for discovery, pants, mist or whatever you want to call it.

It's because I'm a character-driven writer. 

See, the common wisdom - and it's generally good information - is to follow the Goal-Motivation-Conflict model. This largely comes from Debra Dixon's book on the topic, which many writers, especially new ones, seem to like very much.

It does nothing at all for me. 

To me, characters are real people. They're complex, which means they're muddled. It makes a clean story for a character to have a single goal for every scene, to be driven by their motivation to overcome the conflict. We used this in theater all the time. But that's only the most fundamental level. Do any of us have only one goal or motivation at a time? 

Think about yourself, right at this moment. You're reading this post. What's your goal? Your motivation? Is there a conflict? Maybe not and you reading this wouldn't make a very good scene or story. But, placed in the larger context, reading this might be part of the goal to be a better writer, motivated by your deep-seated dream and the desire to overcome that last rejection. 

But, if I'm writing your story, I want to show how you're feeling, whether you think this makes sense or not, and then throw in a symbol of whatever is truly holding you back - that maybe you don't even realize. You start thinking about maybe playing Solitaire instead or your crying child comes in saying you don't pay enough attention to her, or your spouse grumbles about wanting you to cook something. 

What's my goal for your scene?

Not a neat tick on the outline. Not an easily encapsulated 1, 2, 3. Instead I'm painting one piece of a puzzle. Hopefully by the end, it will make for a complete image. 

I suspect this is the heart of pantsing. Not that we don't pre-plot, but that we don't always have a trajectory that can be mapped like a vector equation. Maybe we're the impressionists of the writing world. The rules matter less to us than the FEEL. 

In fact, one of the best workshops I went to at the conference was about intensifying emotion. Tanya Michaels gave us many great examples of how some great books do this. Most valuable to me, she said "if you can make your reader feel one emotion, you can make them feel all the emotions." Loved that. 

I suppose what I'm getting at is, not every emotion has a goal. Sometimes a scene is there just to create a mood. Perhaps one could argue with me that creating a mood IS my goal, but I don't always know that.

And I don't think I have to know. 

But then, I'm happy in the misty worlds.