Scene Dynamics

August 11, 2009

Mary Rosenblum:  Good morning all!  I hope you all had a very nice weekend! I missed you all on Sunday, but I was at the Willamette Writers Conference until the very end. It was a lot of fun, my presentations were very well attended. It's such a good conference. One of my presentations was on pacing, and we dog into scene dynamics quite a bit. Pacing is one of the ways in which you create the scene dynamics you want. But it's only one of the ways. The dynamics of a scene and the dynamics of a chapter are very much the same. So if you're working on a novel, what I have to say is equally applicable to you as to someone working in the short form  And it's also applicable to personal memoir/personal narrative. And is often overlooked completely by novice narrative writers.
So what makes up the essentials of scene dynamics? To start off with -- in the fiction universe at least -- we have the rule of three.
Every scene, every chapter, should do three things:
Deepen the Characterization
Advance the Plot
Enrich the scene.
If your chapter or scene does at least two of these things, it's adequate. If it does only one, it is weak and you really need to rethink it. This is the same issue with personal narrative, too, for that matter, although here, you're dealing with real life and not a made up fiction plot.  But in personal narrative, your scene should deepen the characterization of the narrator (you) and the characters being presented.  It should enrich the setting, so that we get to play, too. And it should advance whatever story you are telling.
So that's the content component of scene dynamics: Deepen character/enrich setting/advance story BUT...that's only the foundation.
So the three apply to all writing?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, but in slightly different forms, Linda. And of course, I'm talking only about the forms of writing that use fictional constructs... But when you tell a personal story, even though it is not made up, it's going to use a lot of the tools of fiction in order to engage readers, bring the characters to life, and keep the (real) story moving. That's where we get into dramatic arc, aided by pacing control. : Ideally, every scene, every chapter, should have a dramatic arc.  The story should ride in intensity to a peak and then drop off, or end. Some scenes, chapters end at the climax point of the peak. Think cliff hangers...  Now it does not have to be a life and death cliff hanger. I am not saying that at all! Often the dramatic climax is very subtle, especially in mainstream, literary mainstream, or personal narrative form.
Yeah but haven't you ever just sat down and wrote what was in your head without think of all that?
Mary Rosenblum:  Of course, Linda. That's called a first draft. :-)  You really do have to keep editing concerns out of the frontal lobe while you're getting the story down on the page or the screen, or you'll drive yourself right into writers block.
Okay, so I have the first draft of a book but I keep going through it to make sure I'm not repeating myself. I tend to do that a lot.
Mary Rosenblum:  Think of the first draft as a sculptor throwing lumps of clay onto a platform. That sculptor gives it more or less the basic form of the object he/she is going to create, but we have no fine details. It's just a roughly shaped form.  Yeah, you're going to have to eliminate the repeats, Linda. Readers notice that and hate it. They want to be told once. So every scene or chapter needs that dramatic high point. : It's not going to be a life or death moment in most stories. Only in those action stories where it’s a continuous chase. It might be a terse exchange of words between two characters that has significance to the main plot. But your scene or chapter will build to that terse exchange.
After that exchange, you might cut to a new scene or maybe the two people will stalk off to their respective tasks, leaving more to follow.  But the peak of tension...the quick exchange of perhaps angry words....has now relaxed.
I have read my first draft so much that I get droned out by it
Mary Rosenblum:  Try putting it away for six months, Linda, and work on other projects. You'll be glad you did. You'll have fresh eyes when you return to it.  You can use pacing tools to help build to that peak of dramatic tension. That’s especially necessary when your peak is subtle...that brief exchange.  If you just stick it in without building to it, it's going to slip right by many readers and they won't realize its significance. Let's use our terse exchange as an example. We want that to be our dramatic peak. The whole scene is two sisters who are on vacation together having breakfast in the kitchen of their rented beachside cottage. The plot significance is that one has found an old letter that suggests that their father might have fathered an illegitimate child and she wants to pursue it. The other sis wants it left alone....let's not open the closet door on old skeletons.
So we have a potentially boring breakfast scene and a brief exchange of 'well I can't stop you if you're going to go ahead. But count me out and you're going to be sorry you did this. The whole family is.'.
That's our dramatic peak.
It's not life and death, no punches get thrown.
yet
Mary Rosenblum:  We're going to have to MAKE it important, make it a dramatic peak, for it to work as one. If you write a breakfast scene where Miriam and Ethel (to give them names) go about basic breakfast tasks, pour coffee, sit down with a plate of eggs and bacon, and eat and suddenly Miriam mentions going to the courthouse to look at birth records, Ethel tells her that everybody is going to be sorry, they rinse their plates, put them in the dishwasher, and head out for their daily beach walk, we have a flat-line scene.  But if we 'show' the readers rising tension....let's say that this is a continuation of a discussion last night....then that exchange becomes a dramatic peak. We'll make our POV Ethel. She's still angry at Miriam, who seems utterly serene this morning (which we’ll show  the readers through Ethel's internal narrative and Miriam's cheerful demeanor). As she makes the eggs and bacon and Miriam pours coffee and sets the table, Miriam pauses to look up an address in the phone book. Ethel asks her what she is searching for. The courthouse, Miriam replies. Ethel nearly smashes the eggs, she bangs them so hard on the pan to break them (revealing her rising irritation)
[She dumps the food onto the plates, catches Miriam smiling at her with amusement and presses her lips tightly together, banging the dirty pan into the sink. We are watching her temperature rise! Then Miriam makes some cheerful comment about their walk. And afterwards...she gives Ethel a particularly sweet smile...I think I'll wander over to the courthouse. Want to come? Here, Ethel unleashes her comment -- I can't stop you, we're all going to be sorry. Maybe she gets up, dumps her uneaten breakfast into the garbage disposal. Maybe the plate cracks as she bangs it down on the counter.
That's our dramatic peak.
We can end the scene here, pick the story up later in time in the next scene or chapter. : Or we can let the dramatic climax taper off and end at a lower level of dramatic intensity.
One thing I noticed was that I got really interested when you presented the situation without going into details, so I'm wondering how much a bit of judicious foreshadowing at the beginning can help with the process.
Mary Rosenblum:  Miriam might come over and put her hands on Ethel's shoulders. Don't be angry, she says. I'm not going to rub everybody’s nose in it. I just need to know. And Ethel might take a deep breath, force a smile, and answer. Foreshadowing is always a critical element, Gary.  If you don't foreshadow events, then you have to cram a LOT of explaining into a scene.  If we didn't know anything, not only would you have to show us the exchange between the women, but their conversation would have to reveal enough backstory that we understood the relevance of the exchange. All that extra info is going to weaken any scene.
So the trick is to keep the foreshadowing from stealing the thunder?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep, exactly. You don't want to ruin the 'surprise' of your dramatic peaks, but you don't want to be explaining them at the same time your characters are living them.  Here, for example, I certainly would have had Miriam show Ethel the letter or at least tell her about it. Maybe the night before, after the sisters arrived and unpacked. And maybe Miriam mentioned that as long as they were in town, maybe she'd look into it. And Ethel heatedly told her 'forget it'. That sets up our morning scene.
A lot of pacing is just that...manipulation of words, sentence length, hard and soft sounds. And as you revise each scene, you can use those tools to accentuate your dramatic peak and fine tune the characterization.  Think of scene dynamics in terms of 'passes'. Ideally, on your first draft, you'll include a strong dramatic element in your scene or chapter. Here, it's our breakfast conversation that sets the scene for later conflict.  So that's all you need worry about in draft one. Something does need to happen in each chapter and scene.
Now, you're beginning to revise.
As you read this scene, you evaluate the 'feel' of that scene. Do things build to that exchange? Or does it just stick up like a single blueberry in a pancake?  A bump on a flat line? If so, you use your tools of sentence length, body language, word choice to build a sense of increasing tension into the scene, so that the dramatic rise is more hill than bump.  Sometimes you do have to rewrite a scene in order to make the dramatic arc work.  But don't neglect that word and sentence level work of building to the dramatic peak. I see a lot of novice stories with a perfectly strong dramatic climax moment where the chapter or scene seems utterly flat and without 'punch' because that element just gets stuck into a scene that has no dramatic arc otherwise.
One of the benefits of writing short fiction is that you become very skilled at creating short, strong dramatic arcs. It makes it easy to create strong dramatic arcs in scenes or chapters in novel length work. You increase the engagement factor of the book enormously if your chapters have strong arcs. They keep the readers continuously engaged, those readers don't have time to get bored and let their minds wander.
For our kitchen scene, my inner pacing sense tells me it would be too abrupt to end the scene right after the angry exchange between the two women.  That makes it seem more powerful than it really is.  And it will also feel chopped off.  So I'd add that 'kiss and make up' action, letting the readers know that Ethel is still unhappy, but not willing to ruin the vacation with Miriam. That 'still unhappy' element, lets readers know that more is coming, stay tuned. Readers are all pretty expert at interpreting these cues.