Recently I saw a cartoon where someone showed the five steps to draw a reindeer. First was ovals, second was eyes, third was antlers, fourth was crudely drawn legs, and the fifth was a masterpiece that obviously came nine steps later, with steps five through nine omitted.
Writing is kind of like that. Short of writing the novel for you, I can’t teach you one of the most important steps.
How to write the scene.
I can give you the details, the formulas, the structure. I can tell you thematically what must go in there.
I can’t write it for you.
There’s no way for me to give you “Jennifer dropped the book, bending to retrieve it. A slip of paper lay on the floor, jarred loose from its hiding place secreted in the binding. She grasped it, the crinkled feel of the parchment dry and dusty as ages past.”
I can tell you:
- Protagonist must find the key thing that starts the adventure.
- Must know its old.
The rest is up to you.
The best I can do is give you illustrations, like the one above.
What can you learn from that?
The words see, touch, feel, hear, know are all missing.
Deliberately. We’ll go into why later.
You also see how to describe a single, simple action. I don’t dwell on the details too much, only when needed. There’s no description of the room, the book or Jennifer – they really aren’t needed. My latest novel doesn’t give any description of the protagonist until 70% of the way through the book, when you find out he’s left handed, dark haired and blue eyed. By the end of the novel, he has a scar on his cheek and a small one on his eyebrow.
Another of my novels does give a description of the protagonist, but there’s reasons why I’ll do it sometimes. The reasons become obvious in the stories. Most of the time? Nope. No description.
Assignment – 700 word scene, describing someone finding something.
