Constructing a scene should be simple enough. You get a visual of what you want to happen like a little movie, and you write it down.
Well, it’s not always that easy. If it were that easy, we’d all be published authors, and publishing parties would be attended by millions, everyone wanting to compare our book to yours.
Very often, you know where you need to end at… you need to deliver the ring of power, kill the great white shark and find the buried treasure.
And you’re on chapter 4.
Um.
If you’ve used the spark sheet idea I’ve talked about, then you get into the idea of writing out 50-60 plot points, and you know now what you need to accomplish in this scene.
Point One – you have to get into the scene. Now, not every scene is like a Reader’s Digest peril in real life kind of thing – “It was 6 PM in Urbana Illinois when…”. What I write just to get me into the scene is “(name) (action)…” Carpenter walked into the room. Lynch was standing in a field. The Great White Shark was driving the 18-wheeler in 3rd gear when…
The point is, get into the scene somehow! Learning how to do this is simple, you pull a novel off your bookshelf, and read the beginning sentence of 10 different chapters. How does so-and-so start a chapter? How does this guy or that start his chapters? Some authors prefer Readers Digest (it was 6 AM the next day when…) and some prefer a name. Grabbing a Jerry Jenkins book off my shelf, I see that in five separate chapters, it’s a name. The last one I looked at was “readers digest”. Don’t worry too much about how you get into it.
Point Two – start late, finish early. You don’t need to write “Buck parked the car, putting the keys into his pocket as he opened the door. He looked around to see where he parked, noticing he was as usual parked in front of a sign so he could easily find his car.” It’s not bad, but soon the reader’s going to wonder if Buck remembered where the car is parked, did he trip on the way into the building, was there an elevator or did he take the stairs… The problem for writers is not having too few words, but too many.
Point Three – The David Gerrold Rule. David Gerrold, who wrote the infamous “trouble with tribbles” episode of Star Trek, has a theory that essentially every scene is a confrontation. Buck confronts Rayford. Rayford confronts the Antichrist. Etc.
Point Four – conclude the scene. The confrontation has to end somehow. Some authors have very specific rules they follow on how a scene has to end. The “Echo”, the “Sequel”, the “buildup”. To me, it essentially must follow the rule of the screenwriter. If you enter the scene on a minus (disadvantage to the Protagonist), you must build up to a plus (advantage to the protagonist). If you start on a plus, you have to end on a minus. Minus faces pluses, pluses face minuses. If you plotted your book on a graph, it should look like a roller coaster ride.
Point Five – get out on a hint, or promise something. Did you hint at what’s coming in the next chapter? End on a question? You should be able to see if your book needs that. Point’s 4 and 5 will probably occur on your re-write, not your vomit draft. The idea is either to hint at a coming problem, or to put a promise to be rewarded in another scene. I suppose the biggest example of that, since I looked in a Left Behind book, was the relationship of Buck and Chloe. Or the resolution of “Was Rayford’s wife a spy?” Jenkins dragged the latter story out over several chapters – which is why everyone read “Left Behind” twice – once to get through the series, the second time to see what they missed from turning pages.
Last Point – Stay on schedule. You need to plot out your novel. You should have probably 30 chapters, two scenes each, so you’ve got about 800 words to play with. If your scene – like my scene in yesterday’s opening to Gojira – went over the mark, you’re down to one scene in that chapter. And you’ve got to remove the 166 words you went over the budget from other chapters on down the line. Easiest way is count your scenes, and figure the average to remove – perhaps you’ll have to remove one word each. Or you can put it in a spreadsheet. Keep on top of this, or you’re going to find yourself with a 195,000 word book, and struggling to cut out 45,000 words.
