First sentence in the scene -- Starting the experience

  First sentence in the scene 

 Starting the experience   

 

I’m having some fun creating a big Building Bolder Scenes course, and now I’m focusing on the mechanics of creating the scene experience with the sentences and paragraphs. Scenes are EXPERIENCES, not just recountings. So getting the experience started early—the first sentence!—can set the reader up to FEEL all the way through.

  Just keep in mind that your reader is apprehending the scene holistically-- she's incorporating every detail, not just your character's thoughts and feelings, into her experience. So you can imbed emotion subtly in the description and action. Just remember not to overdo. But yes, you can use adjectives and adverbs here. Just don't use them when you don't need them ("shouted loudly, bright scarlet"), and then when you DO use them, they'll have more effect.

You can set the stage early, hint at that "beginning emotion" of the emotional arc of the scene, by anchoring the setting in the first paragraph or so... but meaningfully. Here are some examples of how to sneak in emotion with physical/setting detail in the first paragraph of the scene:

LIGHT
His bulky body filled the entrance and blocked most of the afternoon light.

She shielded her eyes against the harsh noon light and squinted at the broken window.

He parked in the pool of yellow light from the streetlamp and slowly got out of the car.

She woke when the dawn light sliced through the curtains. Nothing had changed.

He squinted to see through the dimness in the barroom, searching the dark booths for the woman he had lost.

The car brakes skidded on the gravel, and when they finally stopped, the moonlit lake was only a few feet from their front bumper.

TIME OF DAY
The Angelus bells were ringing when she started across the muddy field towards the church.

She woke suddenly. The red glowing numbers on the bedside clock read 2:04. It took her a moment before she realized she had missed her flight.

He was going to be late for work again. Again.

All she wanted to do was rush home and be halfway through a quart of Java Chip ice cream before American Idol came on.

INSIDE/OUTSIDE
She pushed the porch door open and stood there a moment, drinking in the view and the crisp mountain air.

Jamie woke up cold and damp on the bare open ground.

I knew this place—the kitchen looked familiar and unpleasant.

Patty rubbed the condensation off the passenger-side window and looked  out at the snowdrift. "How stuck are we?" she asked.

He put his fork down on the dining room table and grimly called the family to order.

The old barn stood alone on the hill.

The road gravel infiltrated her sandals, and she was limping and lost by the time he found her.

It was a lady's parlor, all dainty and tidy, and he didn't think he better sit down on any of the little chairs.


AIR
The barroom smelled of ground-out cigarettes and spilled beer.

She zipped up her parka and pulled on her gloves, took a deep breath, and stepped out the door into the howling Chicago winter.

From the lantern-lit park pavilion across the river drifted the lazy strains of a dance band.

The library was so overheated every breath felt like she was sucking in a blanket.

It was going to snow. She could taste it with every crystalline breath.

Not a breeze stirred the evening air, and she hesitated with her hand on the gate.

 

When You Have Too Many Words....

I was just asked for a few tips on cutting big bunches of words. You know, you were aiming for a nice 75K novel, only this ended up at 95K words.  And from your perspective, it works! But it's too long for the line or the editor or the type of story, right? So how can you trim words without deleting meaning? 

It's hard. It can be done. I had to cut 35K from one of my books once, and it was hard, but I don't think afterwards the reader could tell what was missing. (Okay, okay. Theresa did most of the cutting. I did most of the whining and whimpering.)

While the plan here is not to go back, it can really help to think that nothing you're doing is permanent, that if you realize you cut something important, you can restore it. So be sure to 

 save the original version first, then save the version-to-be-cut under another filename. Just in case you want to UNcut later!

But here are some tips if you want to cut 20K words:

1) The first option is to cut a whole scene. That's a broadsword rather than a scalpel approach, but let's say you wrote this book in a white heat during Nanowrimo. There are probably scenes you wrote or started to write which ended up as unimportant or irrelevant, or you later did a better version and both versions are still in there. 

A whole scene might well be 5,000 words. That's a pretty good cut! And cutting it might make for a stronger, tighter plot. Then again, you might accidentally cut out something essential like a clue, or an important step on your character's journey, or the satisfying "reunion" scene the reader has been waiting for. 

To do this, however, you have to look at scenes not as groups of words but as part of the action of the plot. So try this: Outline the book as you have it. Yep, a scene outline. List -- in order they occur, every chapter, and every scene or scenelet or passage (complete or not) within each chapter. 

Then you can evaluate if there are scenes that can be deleted without causing plot/emotion problems.  

2. Look also for adjacent scenes that can be combined.  That will let you delete some of the set up and transition between scenes. Be watching for "single-purpose" scenes, especially several in a row-- a scene where he argues with his brother, and then a scene were he discovers a clue to the mystery, and then a scene where he travels to where the robbery took place. You could combine those into one scene where he argues with his brother, leaves and discovers the clue, and ends with him deciding to go to the robbery site. Really, once you start looking at what happens from scene to scene, you might find several which can be combined.

3.  If you can't cut a whole scene, look for passages (especially at the beginning) which are mostly set-up. That's where I found the most opportunities to trim, at the start of scenes, where I might have spent a couple pages describing the setting and establishing what the characters are doing there. 

Here are some other "cutting" options:

4) Look for mini-scenes (I call them "scenelets"-- 1-2 page bridges usually from one important event to the next) that don't much matter. Often these involve a main character interacting with a minor character or a "walk-ons" like a waiter who will never be seen again in the book. An example might be a cab ride to the convention hotel. There might be good character interplay with the cabdriver and give a good sense of the main character's mood, but if you want to cut, that's an example of a good 'non-essential' scenelet. Usually these aren't full scenes but intros to more important scene passages. You can always argue how this bit is important or clever or enlightening, but you know, you have to trim something, and a scene without an event to change the plot is usually trimmable.

5) Try the Jane Austen tactic-- in dialogue, if there's no conflict, do narrative summary. (They reminisced for a few minutes, then she remembered, and said insultingly, " ". :) There are going to be parts of scenes the reader needs that might have no conflict (like a moment of grace where two characters share a cigarette), but those are best kept fairly short and fairly rare. 

6) Look for those passages where there's nothing-dialogue-- often when there's some movement from one setting to another. ("Let's go into the den and watch TV/What do you want to watch?/ I thought this season of The Voice was starting. Did you record that?/No, the last one was so annoying, I didn't bother. But we can probably get it on-demand." :) No, I never actually wrote that passage, but that's the sort of "transition conversation" that's usually easy to cut away.

7) Also look for long passages of introspection where a character is thinking. Sometimes these are important, and the way they think is important to show, but the deeper we get into the story, the less long introspection is needed. (The reader knows more about the character by the middle of the book, and probably just needs a hint of what they're thinking, or only introspection when something unexpected is felt and needs explanation.)

8) Try my ruthless technique: Decide on a page goal, like "cut 50 words out of this page". This takes awhile, but it's usually easy to find at least 20 words to cut. Or "cut one sentence or sentence part out of each paragraph". Or "trim two sentences and combine them into one shorter sentence". This is actually my favorite thing. :)

9) Even more ruthless: If you know there are words you over-use (for me, it's "then" and "just"), do a "find" for them and for each one, decide whether it's needed. Delete if not. A friend of mine cut two pages out just by getting rid of justs. :)

Because all this is so "voice-centric," it's probably best to do it yourself first and see how much you can cut. That way you'll still have control of the scenes and the interactions between characters and how that's presented. 

Then again, an outsider might be able to be more objective, as Theresa was with my over-long book.

I can tell you from experience, trimming is hard to get started, and painful, but after awhile, it's easier to see where something can be discarded, or  how scenes or sentences can be combined.

Broadsword/scalpel experiences you can share? 

Alicia

Inconvenient Research Information= Opportunity!

Inconvenient Research Information= Opportunity!

For some reason I decided I had to have a story where my sleuthing couple are at a cricket match and the batter gets "beaned" by the ball. Only it's not a ball, it's a meteorite.

No prob! Of course, I know nothing about cricket or meteors either! But that's what Google is for. And when Google fails, someone within my husband's wide acquaintance can always step up. (He knows all sorts of interesting people because he's been the program chair of Scientech, a lifelong-education organization composed muchly of retired engineers and physicians.

Okay, I'll be honest here. It wasn't that Google FAILED, precisely, but it gave me information that seemed to make my scene impossible. To wit: Many meteorites fall to earth every year, but almost none (like two in the history of the world, as far as we know) have hit humans. Also, a meteorite falling on someone's head would pretty much obliterate him, because it's fallen a very long way and very fast. Shoot! I can't kill off a kid in a cricket game with his parents watching! And anyway, this is supposed to be a romantic novella, and Natasha and Matt are unlikely to be feeling much like cuddling if they just saw a death. 

But I persevere. It's not a problem, it's an opportunity! I realized I needed to write around these inconvenient research facts. First, of course, I turned to the higher source, Jeff's buddy the astronomer. He gave more inconvenient information, but the facts were more nuanced, a lot of "it depends." And I could work around by manipulating the options "it depends" gave me.
So while it will cause some adjustments in the sequence, it's still all feasible. Of course, plausibility is still an issue, but really, this would be a one-in-a-billion event in the best of situations. People really don't get hit by meteors very often! But they COULD be-- if it's ever happened, it can happen again, right? And fiction is about the unusual, right? That's why we get to make it up. So my cricket-playing youth turns out to be the THIRD person ever to be hit by a meteorite. Talk about wrong place/wrong time.

So anyway, Kurt said that they are usually 2-3 inches in diameter (which is fine), would come down almost perpendicular to the ground (a bit of a problem, given that kid-obliteration issue), and would probably be 800 degrees hot or so (but could be much hotter). However, my meteorite (yes, it's MINE! :) could be touchable in an hour depending on the material. (I love "depending on" because that means I have some leeway and it's still legal.)

What's fun is to work the scene around those requirements. I don't want the meteorite to hit the kid on the top of the head (perpendicular descent), but I could have it hit something else first and ricochet. So I can have that something be a tree, which it splits or breaks. That impact would diminish the velocity to a less lethal level and could also change the trajectory, so it's now moving horizontally and could just glance off the youth's temple rather than, you know, obliterating him.

As for the super-heatedness, also a obstacle/opportunity! I'd planned to have Natasha send the children to look for the object that hit the tree and kid, and her niece was going to bring it back. But now I'm going to have Dorie try to pick it up and cry out because it's still hot (I can make it be about 20 minutes after the impact), and Natasha will then have to join her and pick it up with her glove and maybe some leaves from the broken tree. That makes for more character interaction with each other and the object, and also that little minor bit of conflict that makes a scene more fun to read.

Research Obstacle = Plot Opportunity.

Anyway, I wanted to report back on this momentous issue! And seriously, everyone, watch out. 18,000 to 84,000 meteorites hit Earth every year, and your head could be in the way! (Source is here.) One more thing we have to worry about! (NOT.)

Hey, sign up here and you can get instant access to my new e-book, 13 Prime Principles of Plot.

Get Plot book.

Get free book here!

Reinventing your book. 4: Reinventing the Length

Reinventing the Length

The most effective length of books varies, of course, and you should write the book to the length you think the story needs. But if later you decide for whatever reason that the book would be more effective longer or shorter, here are some tips to make that easier.

Longer: Today's new adult readers read 700-page books (okay, all starring Harry Potter) when they were 10 years old. So they won't be intimidated by length. Whether a long book would be more marketable as one volume or two or three is a discussion for another time. And you never want to stretch a short plot into a long book—the threads get pretty frayed then!

However, you might be looking at an older category book (written for a line like Harlequin Intrigue or Berkley Prime Crime), and considering expanding it to single title length, which is generally between 75K and 100K words. You don't want to just add more words—that's like drinking milkshakes to bulk up your muscles. Add length by adding complexity.

One way to do that is to add an additional major plot. Shorter books naturally tend to have a single central plot (a romance will have a central romantic plot, a mystery a central crime plot), and any other storyline is generally reduced to subplot level, starting further into the book and being resolved earlier than the main plot. Rather than adding more subplots—a lot of subplots often leads to confusion—beef up the subplot that is most connected to the main character's emotional or psychological journey and make it clearly support the main plot.

For example:

Character journey: In this romance, the heroine's father died when she was a child, and her mother married again and moved her far away from dad's family. The subplot might be about reconnecting with the family—phone calls, setting up a visit—but it's resolved quickly because the original purpose was just to get her back to dad's hometown where she meets the hero.

What's her emotional journey? She's moving perhaps from a fear of abandonment to trust? That's a good journey for a romance, as learning to trust is a major step on the way to love. To lengthen the book, consider having that subplot of reconciling with the family take place over most of the time of the book. That will mean adding conflict—that is, to make it a full plot, you can't resolve it in Chapter 3 when she starts interacting with the hero.

If you want to have her start with fear of abandonment, you could have her—instead of reconnecting –before- she comes to town—keep quiet about her identity, come to town, and scope out the family before revealing herself. After all, if she's afraid of abandonment, she might think the family kind of abandoned her by losing contact. So she could come to town, planning to observe her relatives in secret before deciding whether to approach them. This would add a motif of disguise that could complicate the budding romance (is she open with him about her real identity and connection to the town?), and if you make him have some issue with the family (business or political rivalry, maybe), this would add a further conflict to the romantic plot.

That is, add conflict, not words. This will affect the entire story, of course, and require changes in most existing scenes and additions of new scenes, so this isn't a task to take on lightly. But it's a choice we witness a lot these days as authors go back to perfectly good category books that didn't sell back when category was king. Now they have a real option—keep it short and try to sell it as is, or add 10-30K words and sell it as a single-title.

Just as common these days is the decision to shorten a book. This is more the norm for me as I always write too much and have to cut on the order of 35K words just to get it down from "epic" length to "single-title" length. So I know there are different kinds of "too long." Take a few days and read over the book as it is. Is the plot too long and complex for the length you want? Or (as always in my case) are there the right number of scenes, but the scenes themselves are too long?

Diagnose the problem before you start cutting! You don't want to end up just cutting words when you really would do better to cut out a subplot or combine several scenes. It can really help just to boil the plot down to an outline with a line or two of summary for each scene.

See if there are some scenes where only one plot-important thing happens, or none at all. For example, I've edited books where the only really essential event is that the sleuth finds a clue. In that case, could that paragraph or page about finding the clue be moved into the previous or subsequent scene, so that one scene can be eliminated? What I like to do then is find whatever in that scene is important (either to the plot or to the author—you know what I mean, the perfect sentence of description, a great interchange of dialogue) and start stripping away everything else in the scene. What's essential and/or worth keeping? Move that into an adjacent scene.

Also look for scenes that basically do the same thing (like the hero twice encounters his prime suspect downtown) without any escalation of conflict. You might not need both those scenes. Another place you might find extraneous scenes is in the beginning. We often write long openings because we're trying to get to know the story and the world, but that might mean that we start a couple scenes before the story really begins. Leisurely openings can be interesting, but if you're trying to trim your book, you probably can't afford extraneous scenes.

Now if you're like me, you might have just the right number of scenes, but spend too much time on each. When I decide to cut the length of scenes, I start at the beginning. Often I can cut a couple paragraphs right from the first page of the scene. I also replace long explanations of motivation or action with a "narrative bridge" of a few words, like "She gave up, too exhausted to continue." I also look for redundancy, where I show something in the action, and then explain it again in introspection—I cut out the introspection unless there's no way for the reader to get the point of the action.

Trimming like this can really improve the pacing as there aren't pages of narration between important events. (By the way, it's always painful for me to delete my passages, so I just cut them and paste them into a "cut file," just so I'll have them if I need them. That makes it easier!)

To cut radically, as when you are trying to turn a novel into a novella, you probably have to get into the very structure of the plot and simplify, first by cutting out a subplot or two, and second by streamlining the conflict. The main conflict might have to be simplified so that it can plausibly be set up, intensified, and resolved in 150 pages. Think about diminishing the internal conflict. In a longer book, perhaps a man can get over being unjustly imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, but for a shorter book, you could diminish that to an unjust accusation without any imprisonment (maybe he got off because of a hung jury), so that he just has to vindicate himself, not deal with the ramifications of having been in prison.

Reinvention takes re-imagining. But I've found it much easier to do when I am clear about what the book IS and what I want it to be. Just asking the questions about whether I need to change the plot or just the scenes gets me half the way to determining what reinvention will transform this story and make it new.

What reinvention situations have you encountered? What did you do?

Action sentencing

There's a lot of action that isn't really exciting. So I don't mean explosions or running from the aliens or carefully digging a hole for the rose bush. I mean the getting from one place to another type of action, the necessary and maybe even significant action of the character through the scene.

I'd just suggest not to treat this like "something to rush through." Instead, think of how even this can be made meaningful, adding to the reader's experience of the scene. Couple suggestions, both having to do with the action within time-- how long it takes.

1) If it's an activity that takes awhile, like paying the bills, think of interspersing the discrete actions with introspection. That is, this is a good opportunity to put in some of that introspection you've been holding back on. Break the activity down into five or so distinct actions:

• She gathers all the supplies-- bills, checkbook, envelopes, stamps. (This will take at least a minute, remember. and now I'm trying to think of the last time I wrote a check... okay. She turns on the computer and waits for it to boot up.)
• She goes to her bank website and to the "Pay Bills" tab.
• She checks the first bill-- $1000 for the credit card.
• She goes back to the account page to check her balance.
• She pays that bill.
• She pays another bill.
• She pays a third bill.
• She goes back and sees if she has any money left.
• She closes the computer.

Plenty of time for her to be thinking about how much she hates her job (connection to bill-paying? Slide in early that she notices her paycheck has been deposited). By the end of the billpaying, what's changed? Does she decide to quit the job?
That is-- see if you can make the activity somehow reflective of whatever conundrum she's considering. And if you can, have the combined activity and introspection end in a decision.

2.  If you're having to describe a sequence of actions that don't all add up, still think about how long they combined will take. Let's say that he is leaving his office after work. So he's going to what? Altogether, how much time? If it's just a couple minutes, think about having it be a transition between two scenes (one in office, one wherever he's going), and put it in one paragraph at the start of a new scene. But remember, if nothing significant happens, or he doesn't think something fun, it's probably not worth spending a paragraph on... so put in something significant. He walks out of the office building, and what does he see? What happens? He gets splashed by a cab going by? He sees his boss going into a bar across the street?
Just to keep this coherent, group sequential actions together. Don't mix them in a sentence unless you have reason to mix them.
For example, in sentence one, start:
The clock struck five, and Rory looked up from his work. Quittin' time.
Then move to the action, pack up his briefcase--
He rose, and grabbed his briefcase and jammed in his laptop and the Olsen file.
Then move to the next bit of action.
In the elevator, he closed his eyes and tried to remember what he had planned for the evening. 
Finish the paragraph and the action sequence, but remember your purpose isn't just to get him out of the office building, but....?
The crowd on the ground floor bore him out into the dark street. There, across the street, under a streetlamp, was Meredith. Waiting for him.

So don't settle for pedestrian, and while you're at it, make it understandable for the reader. Watch your sentencing and paragraphing. Those are how you tell the reader what actions and/or thought/realizations/perceptions go together.

Most important, though, don't waste the space. If it's not important, don't narrate it. Just bridge the time:
(Office)
New scene (Later in his apartment)
If it is important, if something meaningful occurs, show it.

Also, group steps in the same order they occur in life. For example, if he's leaving the office, and he takes his coffee mug to the sink and rinses it, fine to put all that in one sentence:
He took his mug to the sink and rinsed it.
But don't put that discrete "coffee mug" step into the same sentence as packing his briefcase: NOT
He took his coffee mug to the sink. He rinsed it and packed his briefcase.
See the problem there? There must be some pause (like a PERIOD and SPACE) between the sink and his briefcase, because they are two separate actions, not steps within an action. They're separate, involving different movements (washing/packing), different objects (mug/briefcase), and different places (sink, desk). Two sentences.
Always keep that in mind-- the sentencing should replicate in its imperfect way the way the action takes place. What goes together in a sentence should belong together.

Alicia

Quick scene exercise

I'm finding this helpful when I start a scene, just to jot down preliminary answers (which I can, of course, then disregard if something else comes up):

1. What is going to happen in this scene? (Like "While out with Katya, Matt is going to run into his old Navy friend, and they're going to talk about the past.")

2. What is (his or her-- usually the POV character's) goal for the time of the scene? (This can be really minimal, like "Katya wants to get Matt away from his Navy friend and go to their romantic dinner.")

3. Does (he/she) get the goal during the scene? These are Jack Bickham's "ending answers":

• No (why not, like "Matt's now too depressed to take her out because he realizes he made a mistake leaving the Navy")
• Yes, but something else (what) happens too ("Yes, in my scene, Katya succeeds in getting Matt to go to dinner, but the old friend decides to come along too.")
• No, and furthermore, something even worse happens ("No, and they end up having to drive the friend across town.")

4. What surprise or disaster can happen at the end of the scene which changes things and sends the reader to the next chapter?
(In my scene, the friend is going to be accosted at dinner by someone he and Matt know from the past-- who is in next chapter going to end up murdered.)

I always finds it helps to know what's at the end ahead of time, otherwise I would just end the scene at sunset or when the check came.

What are some devices you use to direct scenes, or do you draft and then revise, or????

Alicia

Make it happen IN the scene

A student had a good example of an opportunity to show-not-tell.

 

Hero was going to argue with heroine, trying to convince her to take a certain action (break off their betrothal).

Heroine was going to almost be convinced, but then have to change her mind to ease her dying father's mind.

 

Now the "almost be convinced" could happen in her mind. She could think, hmm. I don't want to marry this man. He doesn't love me. I don't love him.

 

But if it happens only in her mind-- if she thinks it and we know this because we're in her POV and privy to her thoughts, we do know it... but it has no effect on the scene (or the rest of the book). It has an effect only when it's shown in the scene-- when she says it aloud, or pulls off the engagement ring, or rips up the contract, or... 

 

When it's done, however, out in the scene (by her saying it out loud), it can't be taken back. She can change her mind, but her proclamation will still have consequences, on the way the relationship develops, on how he feels about her, on how she thinks of herself.

 

The WAY she'd say it is important. For example, if she would say in a small voice, "You're right. I'd be a terrible wife," then later she might castigate herself for being such a weakling. And he's set up with the task to prove to her that in fact, she would be a GOOD wife and he'd be lucky to have her.

 

If she said, "I'd sooner die than marry you!" then-- well, she doesn't have to die, but at some point she's probably going to have to do something dramatic to avoid marrying him OR to show that (in the end) she really would rather marry him than die.

 

If she said, "I owe it to myself not to marry someone I don't love," (and of course she's going to marry him in the end) then she's going to have to fall in love with him and accept that she does love him, OR marry him for other reasons and be angry at herself for violating what she said.

 

Point is, though, if she never proclaims it outright in any form, she can change her mind without penalty or conflict. The original decision not to marry him will have no real consequences on the relationship unless he knows about it.

Make It So

 So some opportunities to "make it happen IN the scene":

 

Dialogue. Make them say it, argue it. Have the tension drive them to say intemperate things, make risky vows, whatever. What's said out loud can't be taken back. It can be apologized for, it can be expiated, it can be changed-- and all that requires ACTION. Good. :)

 

Setting. Make use of the setting to -show- something happening inside a character.  Let's say he's the strong silent type that represses his anger and doesn't speak it out. Well, he can use up the repressed energy by cutting down a tree, or building a treehouse. You're the one who decides whether the repressed anger leads him to destroy something or build something.... but anyway, it takes place in the external setting. In fact, interaction with the setting is going to "tell" a lot more than he's able to think/feel internally.

For example, I had a very controlled character who had finally worked up to asking something from the half-brother who acknowledged him as a friend but not a brother (illegitimacy, see). During this time they're discussing this, they are on a newly built pier, and Michael works off his nervousness (and irritates his brother) by "fixing" all the problems the carpenter had left (nails need to be hammered fully in, etc). That is, he was fixing mistakes left by someone else. This got him into interaction with the setting, but also echoed that long after their father's death, Michael was still trying to fix the problems Dad left.

 

Objects. What objects can you put in the scene which can be used to "show" what's going on? Objects really do have symbolic significance, and you don't have to get too obvious about it-- the reader will see the character doing something with that object and figure out what it means emotionally and practically in the scene.

Like in my scene above, John refuses what is asked, and Michael stays pretty cool, but he takes off their father's signet ring (which he has) and throws it into the ocean. Afterward, he says, "That hurt," but then walked away (meaning that the brother has to take the next step to reunite them). The object is a symbol, of course, of their bond and the father who abandoned them both.

 

Actions. Obviously all the above require character action (which is why they're especially useful!). Have the character -act out- instead of just sittin' and thinkin' or stewing silently. This can be a useful action that furthers his/her goal, like if he wants to give his daughter a birthday present (goal), building the treehouse helps achieve that. Or it could be a relatively useless action that doesn't seem to have much effect, but shows her emotion at that moment. For example, if she's feeling really agitated, she could calm herself by programming her cell phone as she should have done when she bought it.  Or she could count the change at the bottom of her purse. Whatever-- the action will show the emotion.

 

Anyway, always challenge yourself to make it (whatever IT is) happen in the scene. Remember Alicia's Maxim:

Popular fiction is the art of making the internal manifest on the external plane.

 

Emotion becomes action.

Thought becomes dialogue.

Conflict becomes scene.

 

Remember what Kate Moore said a scene was: We are somewhere. Doing something.

 

Example from a famous Dickens story:

MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.

Notice that there is an action there that SHOWS that Marley is dead, and also forces Scrooge into doing something-- he has to sign the register. Little tiny action, but see how it sets up something essential about Scrooge, his credibility. (There's a whole lot else set up in that paragraph-- it's a marvel of setting up-- but most important, by Scrooge committing this action, it sets up something about him and his identity: A man who is good for his word.)

 

Anyone have an example of a static passage in the scene that could use a jolt of the concrete/real/active?

 

Alicia

Focus

Imagine you've labored over this scene, and you know it's lovely, but you know something is off. Your beta readers talk about how funny this part is, and how surprising that part is, yet they seem somehow unenthusiastic. Contest feedback is positive, but the final judges never ask to see more. You don't know what's wrong, and you find yourself adding paragraphs of description or witty dialogue exchanges to try to improve the scene. You think long and hard about the worst possible thing that could happen, and you write that in. You keep adding pieces, and yet somehow, the scene does not get better.

We run into this periodically, a manuscript with scenes that do convey key information, but there's so much noise packed in around that key information that the scene doesn't work. This is a problem of focus. Imagine, for example, a scene in which an amateur sleuth in an historical romance is trying to determine which man in a ballroom might be the one who has been sending her secret notes. And let's say that during this scene, another secret note somehow finds its way into a potted plant. The key fact or event is the discover of the new secret note. Our sleuth is probably spending a good bit of time observing the men in the ballroom and looking for clues, so that kind of information might be relevant enough to be considered key.

But the scene also contains great, funny dialogue with the sleuth's bff about the terrible lemonade, a lengthy discussion about the merits of the orchestra, a witnessed conversation between the bff and a matron about whether it's appropriate for a particular couple to dance, a chunk of backstory explaining the sleuth's relationship to the matron, and so on. Each of these bits might be well-written, even entertaining. But that doesn't mean they belong in the text.

So what do you do with a scene like this? The best fix requires three ingredients: a printed copy of the scene, highlighter markers in at least three colors, and an attitude mixed with equal parts boldness and objectivity.

First, decide what the scene is ABOUT. What is the reason for its existence? This will be a key moment -- usually a bit of action or dialogue, but sometimes a moment of mental clarity -- which cannot be cut if the reader is going to be able to make sense of subsequent scenes. It's the most important detail in the scene. If you were to write a five-word summary of this scene in a plot summary,  all five words would be about this detail. Sometimes, there will be more than one key moment, but usually, it's just the one.

Now find that key moment in the printout, and highlight it with one color (say, yellow). If it's a sex scene, for example, the key moment is the moment in which consent to sex is granted. If the scene is about the discovery of a mystery clue, highlight the sentence or sentences in which the clue is found. Highlight it, and then put that highlighter away. You should only use this color for the true key moment.

Next, take another color (say, blue) and highlight every detail that directly relates to that key moment. If the key moment involves finding a mystery clue, then here you will highlight the details which are directly related to the clue. If she finds the clue behind a potted plant, then this will include the moment the pov character notices the plant, the decision to examine it more closely, maybe a bit of description of the pot and foliage. But this will not include the conversation the character has with her brother while standing next to the pot.

Why not? Because it is the clue itself that matters, not the circumstances which lead to the discovery of the clue behind the potted plant. A good writer, given this scenario -- crowded ballroom, clue in a potted plant -- will be able to come up with ten ways to get the pov character to look at that plant more closely and discover the clue. Maybe her prissy brother will drag her to the side of the room to scold her for drinking too much. Or maybe not. Maybe her lover will try to steal a kiss from her behind the fern. Or maybe not.

That doesn't mean the scold from the prissy brother or the lover's kiss is unimportant. But what you have to do now is decide just how important it is. Think of it in these terms: Something will lead the character to the supporting details (blue highlights) of the key moment (yellow highlights). These are also supporting details of a sort. Perhaps the action leading up to the blue and yellow moments will be so important that the scene might be hard to follow without them. These might include details like time, place, and other characters who are essential -- not every dancer in the ballroom, not every matron or friend our sleuth speaks to, but the ones whose existence is meaningful to the plot. You can highlight these, too, to make it easier. Let's say these will be orange.

Now, everything that is not highlighted can come out. Yep. You heard that right. Cut the lemonade, no matter how funny the jokes. Cut the analysis of the orchestra, the critique of the dancers, the backstory about the matron -- none of this is about the clue in the potted plant. Remember when I said you would need boldness? This is why. You are going to be bold here, and look at this scene without any of the frippery you created to try to make it "better."

This might make you feel a little panicky, but this is why you're doing it on a printout. None of these changes are saved -- yet. But after this next step, you will probably run to your computer and make the changes permanent. Read just the pieces you've highlighted. Just those pieces, nothing more. Remember when I said you would need objectivity? This is where you need it. Not because you're trying to objectively figure out how to restore everything you've cut, but because you're trying to objectively analyze the flow of the highlighted parts. Do you need a new transition somewhere? A new dialogue beat to clarify where they are standing in relation to the potted plant? If so, add them, but challenge yourself to do it in as few words as possible. A sentence rather than a paragraph. A phrase rather than a sentence.

After you've added the smoothing bits, read it again. What you have now is a tightly focused scene without any extra bits, and chances are, the pace is very fast. Readers might no longer praise your clever lemonade joke, but they'll be so busy turning pages that you won't care. Save the lemonade joke for a PR blog post, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Theresa

Scene endings and sub-genres

We've talked before about Jack Bickham's brilliant exploration of scene-ending "answers"-- that is:

Does she get her scene goal?
No.
Yes, but (something unexpected also happens)
No, and furthermore (something even worse than failure happens)
(Notice that "yes, she gets her goal for the scene and that's all" isn't one of the answers... why not?)

So I mentioned this to a student (Lindsey), and she took off running with it, pulling out some of her favorite books in her subgenre and analyzing the ending. She writes romantic comedy/chick lit, and she found that the successful books in that subgenre she examined tended to have most scenes end with "yes, but." Yes, she got her goal, but something unexpected happened!

Lindsey thought this scene ending might especially be useful in a comedy (so "yes," that is, it's light and generally the characters are going to get what they want, but also "but" to disorient the character and create conflict and additional plot events).

I notice that "danger" books, like adventure, suspense, and thriller, might have mostly "no, and furthermore" scene endings as they take the character (and reader) into progressively greater risk and disorientation.

What do you think? "Disorientation" is key to both of those, notice.  Why? To keep the character (and reader) on her toes.

That's something to keep in mind if the book seems static or the pacing is slow. Maybe we have too many scenes ending "yes" or "no," without the additional thrust added by the unpredicted "but/furthermore."

What about your type of book? Do you see anything notable about scene endings?

Off to check scene endings in fave books....
Alicia

Action and dialogue replacing deep POV

Sometimes I work with writers who write cryptically, refusing to reveal something in the "text"-- the words, the emotion, the thought. That is not, in itself, a problem, especially when the character is shut down and focused entirely on what he's doing or what's going on around her. You don't have to be in deep POV, deep in the character's body, heart, and brain, after all.  And you might have a great reason for pulling back and rendering this passage or scene in a constrained manner.

But it is a problem when it's not a deliberate evocation of the character-in-the-moment but rather a lapse in fleshing out the author thought ("He's going to the bank," "She's telling her story") into a scene. A scene is more than just dialogue, more than just movement.  Usually a scene has setting, action, dialogue, thought and feeling (from the POV character), or some combination thereof.

Not to say that we can't strip a scene down to a Hemingwayesque quick-fire dialogue without even any tags... but that will be all the more impressive in contrast to more fully fleshed out scenes. And of course, there ought to be a reader-experience reason. It's kind of like walking down the street in your underwear -- that might be a statement, but not if the reason is just "I forgot to finish dressing."

What do you want the reader to get out of this passage or scene? Most scenes probably will have a couple layers at least. At least we will know enough setting to have a sense of inside/outside, day/night; enough POV that we know who the POV character is, or if this is omniscient or objective POV; enough exposition that we are aware that Linda is Joey's mother, not his girlfriend. What does the reader need to know?

There can be no subtext without text. So we need to supply the text. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean the reader needs to be told everything. Here's an example. You might know the play Trifles-- brilliant 1-act kind of proto-feminist by Susan Glaspell. What I found, researching this play, was that Glaspell had later adapted this as a short story, A Jury of Her Peers (note the significantly more "explanatory" title).

I loved the play, even just in text without the actor interpretation and the staging. I was not so blown away by the short story. Why? I think it's because the playscript (which has dialogue and action but no internalization or "POV") gives just enough information, particularly in the actions of the characters, to let the reader figure out what has happened. (It's sort of a little murder mystery-- why did the wife kill the husband? The male sheriff thinks it must be insanity, therefore no trial, because after all, a woman would have to be crazy to kill her husband! But the women in the play find something that explains the motivation, and .... well, read it. It's good.) But the short story explains a bit too much. (Now I don't know if I might have liked it better if I hadn't first read the playscript.)

Anyway, it's hard to get the ingredients in some Goldilocks proportion, not too much, not too little. But I would suggest that most (not all) scenes, if they don't have internalization that reveals the thoughts and/or feelings of the character, then maybe the action should compensate in supplying the additional layer of meaning that could allow for subtext, theme, symbol, all that deep stuff.  That would assume that we choose meaningful action, which adds to or contrasts with the dialogue in some way that reveals more or another meaning.  Like here from Trifles:

SHERIFF We'll be right out, Mr. Hale.

[Hale goes outside. The Sheriff follows the County Attorney into the other room. Then Mrs. Hale rises, hands tight together, looking intensely at Mrs. Peters, whose eyes make a slow turn, finally meeting Mrs. Hale's. A moment Mrs. Hale holds her, then her own eyes point the way to where the box is concealed. Suddenly Mrs. Peters throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the bag she is wearing. It is too big. She opens box, starts to take bird out, cannot touch it, goes to pieces, stands there helpless. Sound of a knob turning in the other room. Mrs. Hale snatches the box and puts it in the pocket of her big coat. Enter County Attorney and Sheriff.

COUNTY ATTORNEY [Facetiously.] Well, Henry, at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to--what is it you call it, ladies?

MRS. HALE [Her hand against her pocket.] We call it--knot it, Mr. Henderson.
While the dialogue is all compliance, all women being obedient, the action (hiding the bird is hiding the evidence that would convict Mrs. Wright) shows what's really going on. That's good writing, juxtaposing two conflicting "accounts" really and letting the reader figure out what it means, that the women are protecting another woman from the misunderstanding by the law.

Here is part 1 of Trifles performed by a college troupe. (Part 2 and 3 will be linked on the left.)

Anyway, a scene might be flat if there isn't another element supplying amplication or conflict with whatever is on the surface of the scene (often it's dialogue mostly). If there's a reason you're not in the POV of the character, so you're not showing the thoughts and feelings (and I think there are good reasons occasionally to stay more distant in POV), then consider not just going with dialogue, or an objective narration, but adding in one or two more narrative elements, especially if the action can contrast in some way to add more meaning.
Alicia

The Pacing Triad

There are more paces than just "fast".  Let's start there. When authors talk about pacing, they often mean, "How can I make this book go as fast as possible?" The first question, however, should be, "What pace will help me give my readers a better experience?"

After all, readers who like a Henry-James-like contemplative approach don't actually WANT your book paced like The DaVinci Code.

So what pace is right for your book? More on that in another post, but right now I want to talk a bit about a technique that can help create a different pace. That's what I call the "BAR" method.

Build up.
Action (or event).
Reaction (or emotion/aftermath).

This is a typical sequence for a pacing/event unit. (Pacing is all about how many events you have and in what period of time/pages.)  We will, of course, have a bunch of these in a book, maybe 15 in a fast-paced book, or 5 in a leisurely-paced book.

First you do the buildup, whatever decisionmaking, investigation, exposition, and/or consideration has to happen before the action or event.  Like if Sadie is (in the coming action) going to find a clue, the buildup might be where she figures out what she needs to know, and decides to risk arrest to get it. This is about anticipation, preparation, consideration.

Second, there's the action or event-- what happens. This is the most essential part of pacing as it's how we calibrate pacing. A thriller is "fast-paced" because it has a lot of actions and events coming quickly. A more contemplative or leisurely paced novel will have fewer actions in the same amount of time. The action or event is something that a character does (or happens to the character) that changes the course of the story. So this would be where Sadie breaks into the office and steals the old typewriter and finds the letter on the old typewriter ribbon. (Typewriter ribbons were really cool clue-locations.)

Third, there's the reaction or aftermath. That's where the character (and/or the world of the story) reacts to the event, shows the emotional or actual change because of this event. So Sadie gets back to her apartment and reads the typewriter ribbon and realizes it implicates her own mentor, and she is plunged into doubt and despair and can't decide whether to turn this over to the police, or protect her mentor.

Now those three elements can be each in a separate scene of more or less equal length, or separate scenes of different lengths, or just passages within a scene. But I think -- just speculating here- that if we want to make the pace of a book something or other, we can do this by manipulating the relative length of these elements.

Let's say we want a more methodical pace that's suitable for a police procedural. We might amplify the Build up section to show the careful consideration Sadie goes through figuring out what she needs to, why she needs this clue, whether she ought to commit a crime to get it. Or conversely, for a suspense thriller, we might want to expand this passage to build up the suspense, the danger involved, the threat to her life and career, the looming darkness that is the villain-- before she does what she has to do. Fear, suspense, threat have to be created in the reader by the build up to an event. But of course, that creates a slower pace.

Or maybe we want a fast pace for an adventure book. In this case, the build up might be pretty short, just enough to set the stage for the action. Then the action scene might be long, exciting, and richly detailed, very physical to give the reader a visceral experience. So in this case, there wouldn't be a lot of Sadie debating the morality of breaking in-- She decides to do it and just does it, but we get a full account of all the obstacles she encounters and the last-minute interruptions and the near-miss security guard patrol, and the slippery feel of the folder in her fingers.... Expanding the action passage to a greater length than the other two elements will lead to a more adventurous pace.

But then, what if we want the reader to feel emotion, to identify with the angst and triumph and despair of the character? Then we might spend the most time on the reaction or aftermath, where the character deals with the impact of what she's done or learned or experienced. Romances particularly I think often need long aftermaths to create the depth of feeling and the potential for interaction that deepens the love story. So in this case, Sadie might be rocked by her sense of betrayal by the mentor, remember all the times Mentor helped her do her math homework, and plunge into a despair because he is the only person she trusts, and now she might have to betray him. (And she has to call that hunky but arrogant police detective.... Romance!)

Anyway, no rules here, but if our story doesn't have the appropriate pace, it might not be a problem with the plot or characters, but rather just a matter of manipulating this BAR sequence so that the most important element to our pacing choice is emphasized by being longer than the other two. I don't mean making the action scene 15 pages long in a fast-paced book (long scenes will slow down the pace), but rather making it the longest of the three, so maybe we have a paragraph or two of build up, five pages of action, and two paragraphs of reaction.

What do you think? Look at your own stories. What sort of pace are you hoping for, and what kinds of passages or scenes go on longer?
Alicia

Question About New Scene Transitions

In the comments, Michelle asks,

Great post! I have a question, though. It doesn't really relate to your topic, but the topic reminded me of this.

What do you do when you have long passages of time you're skipping over? Do you summarize it? Make a note that so much time has passed? Or do you just jump right into the action and slip clues into the text that tell the reader time has passed?

Actually, Michelle, this is on topic if we define our current topic as, "Theresa rambles about exposition, etc." The start of scenes is a common place to rely on exposition to transition a reader to a new time and space. This can be done with a subheader at the top of the scene, such as--

January, Okanagan Lake

This tends to work best when it's already been established that the protagonist will be located at this spot for some reason. Maybe he's searching for Ogopogo, the famous sea monster of Okanagan Lake, so the reader has been prepared for him to reach the shores. This kind of quick, non-narrative transition allows the text to zoom forward without a lot of set-up at the start of the scene.

There are other times this type of transition will work. Maybe you have a multi-thread plot and keep shifting the reader between the pieces. Then the subheaders can help the reader track which plot thread is which. The current scene is Larry searching for Ogopogo on Okanagan Lake, and the next scene is Jessica searching for Nessie at Loch Ness, and the next scene is Bonita in a secret science lab trying to hatch a lake monster egg. The three of them are racing to produce a live lake monster, and the plot shifts freely between the three  threads, and the subheaders help the reader track it all.

In any case, some authors avoid these kinds of headings because they don't want to clutter the page, and there might be some good arguments against using these kinds of subheaders. Much like chapter headings and title/author headings, these pieces contain words that help identify something in the story but are not really part of the story. So they might serve as a distraction to the reader. If you think this isn't an issue, consider the reason we put last name/page number headings on the upper RIGHT corner of a manuscript. This keeps us from turning the sheet and processing the heading as the first line of text on a new page, which can break the flow of the narrative. Scene headers are not quite as disruptive, given that they're inserted in breaks in the story action, but they are still external intrusions of a sort.

So that takes us to narrative transitions at the start of new scenes. How much is too much? Can you ever skip it all together? I have a rule of thumb for this, but it's one of those things that can be hard to apply. But here's the basic idea. At several points over the course of most manuscripts, we will have to effectively press a reset button for the reader. The protagonist or another character will have changed enough, or the plot or setting will have changed enough, that we will need to create something like a touchstone for the arc within the text. Those touchstones can serve like transitions in to the next big piece of the plot. The bigger the changes, the greater the need to press the reset button. The greater the need, the more text you might need to re-orient the reader. But that's by no means hard and fast. Sometimes it's possible to re-orient the reader with a very quick transition. That's why I say this general rule of thumb is hard to apply. It can be difficult to gauge just how large a touchstone you need to create.

But as with all exposition, you will usually be better off minimizing the length as much as possible. Let's say, for example, that our monster-hunting friend Larry has been searching for Nessie for years and only just learned about the existence of Ogopogo. His goal has always been to find Nessie, so traveling to Canada would be a big change that might not support his original goal. Why would he do it, then?

Maybe there are scenes in Scotland with his band of Nessie hunters in which they debate the matter. Maybe Larry is opposed to going, but the group votes that one of them must go. Maybe he wants to go, but the group scorns him and tries to prevent his departure. In any case, the moment when Larry arrives on the shores of Okanagan Lake will be the moment when his quest has changed. Depending on what came before and what follows, you might need a small touchstone or a large touchstone. But, unless the change has been adequately prepped in preceding scenes, you will probably need a touchstone. (This is also partly dependent on how much has happened since the last touchstone. As I said, this analysis is very book-specific.)

But let's say you're not worried about pressing the reset button and reorienting the reader. Let's say everybody already knows why Larry abandoned Nessie for Ogopogo. In that case, a simple clause indicating time and space might be all you need.

Larry shielded his eyes against the bright spring sunshine glinting off the surface of Okanagan Lake.

Boom. One sentence, all action, no exposition, and yet we know the time and place after reading it. Or maybe you're a traditionalist and prefer an adverb clause.

When Larry reached the daffodil-covered shores of Okanagan Lake, ...

This is an expositional transition, and it's brief enough that it won't drag on the pacing. In ten words, we get the new time and space. It might be enough information.

What you probably want to avoid, unless it's strictly necessary for reader comprehension, is a long run of exposition like this.

Okanagan Lake was a deep lake with two islands. Because of the temperate but rainy climate, Larry knew he would need a different equipment and clothing. He shopped for two days to gather waterproof fleece pullovers and windbreakers, new rubber boots, waterproof matches, and a supply of his favorite Scottish tea, which he was pretty sure would be rare in rural British Columbia. The hardest part was deciding which camera equipment to pack. He only wanted to have one suitcase and one carry-on, but the equipment took a lot of space. But he would only be there a few days. He did pack some extra socks in case it rained on the boat and tossed in his favorite copy of a Douglas Adams book to read on the plane. Maybe this trip would be a complete waste of time, but at least he arrived in Vernon with everything he needed.

These kinds of blocks at the beginnings of scenes are almost always worth cutting or trimming. Notice how much of the text summarizes things that happen in the moments between the last scene's ending and this scene's beginning. Shopping and packing are usually dull events, so we wouldn't want to convert this passage into actual scenes if nothing dramatic happens. But if they're dull, guess what's also going to be dull? This info dump of a transition. If for some reason we need to plant the notion that Larry packed specially for this trip and bought new gear, we can reference it in an adverb clause transition.

After two days of shopping and packing, Larry arrived at Okanagan Lake with more than he probably needed.

And then, if the extra pair of socks is necessary to the action of a future scene, you can probably just have him change his socks then and there without a lot of explanation. If it's relevant to character or theme, maybe you would have Larry think about the cautious packing when he changes his socks.

He stripped off his sodden footwear with silent gratitude that he had remembered to pack extra socks.

But this depends on whether the detail is the kind of detail that needs to be set up in advance. Packing extra socks for outdoor adventures in a wet climate is probably not remarkable enough to require set-up. But again, this is one of those things that is highly book-specific.

So, to answer your question: Depends on the book, depends on the scene, and depends on the author's goals. But it's usually best to keep start-of-scene transitions brief.

Theresa

Switching senses

When you're in a character's point of view, you're probably observing the world through those "spectacles". What Joan experiences in the scene is what we narrate, right?  So her sensory perceptions provide the details of the description you make of the setting and the experience of the events. We feel with her body; we see through her eyes.

But as we all know from our own lives, the experience of a new place/time isn't always coherent and understandable. Some sensory input leads to overload immediately (smell, sound, and pain-- notice how when we are overwhelmed with one of these, we close our eyes). Sometimes the different senses come in sequence-- we might be more audial and so figure out what we're hearing before we figure out what we're seeing.

Anyway, in a scene, we have to narrate the experience in a reader-comprehensible way.  That might mean going back and forth between an inward experience ("she was overwhelmed by the din of the band,") and a more sequential and more mechanical chronological ("when she could hear again, she looked around and..."). But something that will help this feel more natural to the reader is to take care in switching between senses, with an action bridge easing the transit so that the experience is more than just an explosion of synesthesia (a confusion of the senses, so that the input doesn't result in the expected output, so you "feel" color and "smell" sound).

 Here's an example of how -not- to do this, with several sensory experiences jammed in together without a transition--

His nose was assaulted by the garlic fragrance while a Joy Formidable song played loudly in the background. In the corner a black-and-white Snoopy dog lay chewing on a toy.  Sunbeams streamed in through the open window.

There's no focus there, no connection, no experience. Whoever "he" is stops mattering as the sensory details just occur as if they are not being experienced by anyone, as if they're merely discrete occurrences. The reader is going to have a hard time assembling this into a place or experience. This is, btw, the sort of description that readers skip. They probably sense that it's just a pro forma description, dutifully put in there because scenes are supposed to have description.

So as you edit, consider rewriting such passages to actually create an experience. Some suggestions:

1. Think of this as a moment, a special moment. And choose it well. You don't have to describe the sensory experience of every moment-- that would be way boring-- so choose the moments you want the sensory to, if only momentarily, dominate. Have a purpose then for bringing in the sensory now, describing this moment.

2. The most important moment for the senses is at a shift in setting (when she leaves the hallway and enters the office, say, or goes outside), and when something in the setting changes, like another person enters it, or the tea kettle catches on fire. So whenever there's some change, particularly when the character moves from one setting into another, take a bit of time to describe the new experience. Many scenes will probably start then with a short unified paragraph about the new place. That sets the context for the reader, shows that there's been a change, and provides a way for the reader to experience the scene as if she's there. Describe the change, not just the setting.

3. Put it in someone's point of view. Really. This doesn't mean just sticking in the character name or pronoun (his nose). It means showing this character experiencing this.  That means considering who this character is and describe what he'd notice-- as he notices it.  If in fact he notices in a sort of scattershot way, all sorts of sensory input arriving at about the same moment, say so-- but make it important. Make it signify something about him or the moment he's in: The room was chaos. He couldn't breathe because of the garlic fumes; he couldn't hear anything over the pounding of the CD player. ... Most important, think of how he would experience it. Most of us have a dominant sense, and most experiences have a dominant "feel". What is that? If it's too loud for him to hear, that's likely to be predominant, so say that first maybe. If he's a musician, or loves or hates this band, he's going to have a different reaction than a tone-deaf Sinatra fan. Describe this person's experience, not a sort of generic set of sensory inputs.

4. Link the description to some danger or threat or awareness or emotion. The primary evolutionary reason we have most of our senses (especially smell) is to warn us of danger. Now of course every moment isn't dangerous, but our senses don't know that.  Think of what in the scene needs to be noticed (again, especially when something changes-- we don't usually notice when they stay the same).  If the picture of his mother on the wall is crooked... if a draft is coming in under the door... if the floor is gritty under his feet... those are things he probably couldn't help but notice and mentally remark.

5. You can have one sense dominate. That is, forget that about making sure all five senses are represented. That's mechanical and boring. Go into the experience and think about what it feels like. If she's leaving a dark movie theater and going out into a bright afternoon, for that moment, maybe the visual dominates. Talk about what the experience of dark to bright is like first. You can have her awareness expand as her eyes adjust, but thrusting in the lingering taste of popcorn at this moment will detract from the more primary sense.


6. What do you want it to MEAN? Do you want this to echo some emotion in the character? If she's angry, everything will be objectionable, including the lingering smell of her husband's aftershave. If he's feeling oppressed by a dream he had of his mother's funeral, the crooked portrait of her might amplify his sense of dread. If in fact the crooked painting is a clue that someone's been in the room searching for the papers he's hidden, show that awareness dawning in his head as he sees the painting. You can fill in the blanks around the meaningful bit, like she also angrily notices that the faucet is dripping again.

7. Think cause and effect. The sensory bit causes the character to do something, or he notices it as an effect of something he does. It's not just happening in some static between-worlds moment, but inside a scene where things are happening. Link it to action, maybe-- what he experiences as he moves through the scene or interacts with the setting. He notices that the floor is gritty because/as he walks over to the painting. Not every sensory bit has to be linked to action, but try that first. So he -stops in the doorway- and sees the room. He smells the garlic and waves it away with his hand, or goes to open the window. This will keep the scene moving, and the narrative focused on action.

8. Don't overdo it. Restricting yourself, say, to a paragraph of pure description might seem artificial, and feel free to break any self-set rule when appropriate. But having a guideline in mind will help you be selective about what you choose to describe. Everything isn't equally important, so decide what is important, and that's first and foremost going to be what is meaningful-- what reflects or causes emotion, what shows a change or threat, what he encounters as he moves through the scene.

9. Read writers who do this well and figure out what they're doing right.  Too many writers think of sensory description as a chore-- I know I do-- and so do it perfunctorily to get it over with. But some writers use the sensory moments as a way to convey something in a new and interesting way.  Analyze why you enjoyed this passage, how this writer focused, what the meaning was and how it was conveyed, how the language, sentencing, and paragraphing enhanced the passage.

10. If you're going to shift from one sense to another, try to make it graceful and organic. For example, group like-sensories together.  In the first paragraph or series of sentences, group the visual. In the next, the audial. Find a way to unify. Also, find a way to mark the shift with a transition of some kind. Action here can help as a transition. He stops in the doorway to look at the room (visual). When he notices the crooked painting, he moves towards it and notices the grit under his feet (tactile). Or use a time marker to start the sentence of new input-- "When his ears stopped ringing (audial), he took a deep breath and for the first time noticed the faint tinny smell."  The transition helps unify the different sensory bits, so they don't seem so willy-nilly.
If you're going to describe more than a couple sentences worth, consider a paragraph break when you shift from one sense to another. If that leaves you with a couple one-sentence paragraphs, well, deepen the experience. Say more about what he sees or what it means, so you have more than one sentence in that paragraph! 

The problem, of course, is that we do experience sensory input willy-nilly. In real life, our bodies and brains sort it out immediately. But  when we write, we don't have any way to convey that immediacy and totality. We're bound by the march of words down the page, the temporal limitation that only one word can happen at a time. We have to accept that limitation and make the experience as coherent and meaningful as possible within the restrictions of narrative and prose.  And that does probably mean focusing on the character's experience, but parsing it so the accretion and sequence of input helps create the experience for the reader and adds to the meaning within the scene.

What are some other techniques you use to focus the description and make it understandable?
Alicia

Scene Length

Someone emailed a question seeking guidance for how to determine the best length for scenes. She said her CPs were complaining that her scenes were too long, and she wasn't sure why they were making that comment.

Scene length is tricky because each scene is different. There's no set template for scenes or even for types of scenes. But if people are saying, "Your scenes are too long," that might mean they're literally physically too long, or it might mean there's a pacing issue within a scene that is a more or less appropriate length. These are related problems, of course, because if a scene goes on for 5k words and all they do is check their calendars to see when they're both free for coffee, chances are the length problem stems from a pacing problem.

How do you know when it's a pacing problem? Pacing problems occur when the story elements are not given an appropriate amount or type of attention in the text. To diagnose a pacing problem, start by identifying the important story elements in a scene. The more important an element is, the more space it should occupy on the page. (This assumes you're not trying to hide an important detail in plain sight, as sometimes happens with mystery clues. In that case, minimize the amount of page space granted to that detail.) Less weighty details should occupy less page space.

However, there's more to it than just the amount of page space. We also have to look at the type of narrative element being used to reveal the story element. So, let's say the story element is a bit of action -- someone does something in the physical world of the scene. Action is usually faster paced just by its nature, but it's possible to slow it down by revealing the character's physical movement through dialogue or exposition instead of through action.

Right then, Aaron pulled the trigger. (action)


"I am pulling the trigger right this second," Aaron said. (dialogue)
Aaron realized this was the appropriate time to use a pulling motion against the trigger. (exposition)

So, we've said that important story moments require more space on the page in order to carry their own narrative weight, but in this case, the longer the sample sentence gets, the slower the pace gets. What makes it slow down? Instead of directly conveying movement through action, it's being translated into another element, and the reader will have to mentally translate it back from dialogue or exposition to actual physical movement. This creates a drag on the pacing.

So, pacing is a complex issue that requires careful appraisal, and the general principles of pacing and length sometimes work against each other. That said, we can still formulate some very broad ideas about how long a scene should be.

Broad Idea #1:
If a scene is built around action and dialogue, it can be a bit on the long side.

Broad Idea #2:
If a scene is built around description, interior monologue, or exposition, it can be a bit on the short side.

These first two broad ideas work from the equally broad ideas that action and dialogue are faster (so you can have more of them before they feel slow), but description, interior monologue, and exposition are slower (so you should scale back on them to prevent a pacing drag).

Broad Idea #3:
The more the reader's emotions will be engaged, the longer the scene can be.

The reader's emotion can result from sharing the characters' emotions (as in a fight scene or a love scene), or it can occur from scene tension (as in a scene where the reader is on edge about what will happen next).

Broad Idea #4:
Modulate both the pace and the length of scenes.

Unless you're writing something meant for serialization and have strict format requirements, use a mix of lengths and paces to avoid a repetitive tone in the text.

Theresa

Call to action

Working with a friend's ms, and I suggested she pump up the "call to action." That's usually in the first chapters, and is where the protagonist is given the incentive to act. It doesn't have to be a big high-stakes event, or some insistent demand, but I think a good "call to action" (Vogler calls it the "call to adventure," which is maybe more intriguing!) can entice the reader to keep reading and also launch the story into the second act of rising action.

Sometimes the call is rendered a bit too subtly to provide enough motivation for the protagonist to get off her duff and get moving.  However, we don't necessarily need a Wizard of Oz style tornado call to action. It can seem minor and become more important later, or actually be minor but end up dragging the character deeper and deeper into danger. Point is, whatever the incentive is, it should be enough to motivate the character out of her routine and into doing something.


and I came up with a few suggestions that might help power up the call, and give the reader a clue that conflict will be heating up.

1) Make it matter to the protagonist.  The main character is usually our surrogate in the story, so it has to matter to him/her for us to feel that it's important. I was just reading a pretty good book, a police procedural, that could have benefited from a stronger call to action.  The detective saw the central crime as just another murder of the 20 or so he investigates a year. There wasn't anything special about this murder, at least as far as he was concerned, and his "just a job" attitude made it easy not to get really invested in the conflict.

So what's different about this conflict event? Why is it a "call to action" that's more imperative than "get to work on time?" How can you show that either when the event is initiated, or as the character gets more involved?

2) Place it early. Don't make the reader wait too long. The call to action is the signal to the reader that the plot is getting underway. But it's also the event that tells the character to do something, to get started on the goal or overcoming the obstacles. In the classical dramatic schema, it's the end of the setup and the beginning of Act II. It means things are changing.
Even if you want to ease into the conflict-- it seems like just another murder at first-- think of having some little signal that this particular one is just a bit different, like the police commissioner calls right after the body is discovered in Chapter 1, oh so casually, to ask who caught the case. That way, when the victim is revealed in Chapter 3 to be the commissioner's mistress, the reader will experience a certain glee-- aha! I knew something was up!

3) Make it new. The police procedural never really overcame the "just another job" problem you see often in books where the protagonist's job is taking care of this problem. The call to action might SEEM routine-- just another murder for the homicide detective!-- but think about how you can pretty quickly make it more than just another job. Maybe the victim is the mayor's college roommate, or the evidence points to the police chief, or the modus operandi reminds an old-timer in the department of an unsolved murder, or.... What's different about this event? How is it not just routine? How can you show that early enough that the reader's attention doesn't wander off?

4) Make it demand some action. The "call to action" means the protagonist should act or react because of this, and not just the usual or routine (opening a file, stopping at the bank). What does the protagonist have to do in response to this event that's different than usual? Maybe he agrees to call the police commissioner back after the autopsy. Maybe he stays late to wait for a call from the Pacific Time parents about their daughter, and so misses the pickup at his kids' daycare center and gets into trouble with his ex-wife.  Or he has to call her at 5 pm and ask her to do the pick-up, even though it breaks his heart to hear her voice. The call to action should quickly disrupt this person's life and call for some unusual activity.

5) Use scene placement to show that however negligible this might seem, it's actually important. Anything placed at the end or beginning of a scene gains importance just from the position, from the pause that comes before or after, from the sense that all builds up to this event or ripples from it. 

6) Use another character to elicit some notion of "specialness".  The police commissioner is elaborately casual in his inquiry... too casual. The ex-wife remarks that the detective has always picked the kids up-- what's wrong?  The detective's partner passing by the desk picks up the file and mentions that this is the third "Brittany" killed this year-- weird, huh?

7) Don't be too gradual. This is my mistake every time. I think I want to make it entirely plausible, completely logical, and so I spend three scenes carefully setting up the interlocking clues that This Is Special. (I also keep telling myself to "bury" the big clues in the middle of other clues, so I have to create all those other clues, hence more scene detail, more scenes.) In the first scene, maybe the detective notices her charm bracelet. In the second, he has to call her parents to tell them that she's dead, and they weepingly tell him that she had a new boyfriend, someone important. In the third scene... you get the idea.  By the time the reader has carefully picked through the minefield of event, clue, detail, I might have lost her interest.
Stack.  Get more than one big moment into the "call to action" scene.  Start with the charm bracelet, have him call the parents, let the partner notice something-- all in one scene. Let the small event build into the larger revelation or realization that.... "this is different!"

8) Show the change soon. Again, don't be too gradual in the opening. (I think in the middle of the plot, you can probably take things more slowly and meticulously, but in the opening, you want to get underway.)  The call to action changes things not three scenes later, but right now. If you can make the change clearly a result of his taking this unprecedented action, all the better. As soon as he agrees to keep the commissioner informed, he gets caught up-- the commissioner is "casually" calling him the very next morning.

9) Show the character having to change-- that is, how does this skein of events make his actions and/or attitude different?  For example, he might be sort of flattered that the police commissioner is paying attention to him, but he knows that his captain won't approve, so when the commissioner calls, he lowers his voice and takes the phone into the hall so no one, not even his trusted partner, overhears.

10) Let this call to action open to a new world or a new opportunity.  Say the police commissioner is grateful to be kept informed, and invites the detective to his club where the mayor and the judges hang out. Or the trail of clues leads to Los Angeles and he has to board a flight and leave the frozen Midwest for the beach.

11) Notice what you set up in the call to action scene and use that later in the book, to deepen characterization or develop new conflict.  If you want him to get back together with his ex-wife, for example, in the end, how can you let the call to action and aftermath set that up? Like instead of just abandoning the kids at daycare (not conducive to later getting back with ex!), he uses this as an opportunity to call her, get her to do the pickup, and... this is the important thing... promise her in exchange a nice dinner out. That last in the chain of actions will set up the much later "date" that resolves the romantic conflict.


Again, you're in control here. You're the one who determines what the event is, and how it first appears. You can turn up or down the emphasis. You can move the initiating event earlier or later. You can use dramatic or understated prose. You can select detail that adds to the suspense or narrows the focus. You can show the ripples of the event on the character's life and the setting.  Challenge yourself to use the tools you've got to make this event a real call to action, for the reader as well as the character.

Alicia