V. Moody's Blog, page 94

2013 For Book Lovers

Sometimes I’m reading an ebook
and I’d like to flip forward and see how many more pages till the end of the
chapter. But I can’t.





Or I might be on a train and see someone
reading their Kindle or Nook, and I wonder what book they’re reading. Bu there’s
no way to tell.





Then I pull out  up my own Kindle from the inside pocket of my
jacket, with over a hundred books on it, and a bunch of comics, and even a
couple of WIPs, and I think, it’s probably a fair
exchange.











I think you have to accept at
this point that the old squeeze the wood pulp and tattoo it with ink book is
pretty much on its way out. Not that it will disappear altogether. And it still
has its advantages (not much advance on the Braille ebook as far as I can tell),
but when it comes to reading a story, the electronic book’s pros far outweigh
the cons.





Certainly, as far as students
will be concerned, a bag full of heavy textbooks or a single tablet? Not really
any room for argument there.



Of course books are a brilliant
delivery system for stories. Portable, no power source, long lasting. And
people enjoy them as objects, their feel, their smell, their presence on a
shelf. But what people think of as a love for books is actually more a fetish.
It’s not the function, it’s the aesthetic people go for. Like getting turned on
by the rubber outfit rather than the person inside the costume. 





That’s not to say books won’t be
around. People still listen to vinyl, ride horses and believe in Communism. But
those things no longer occupy the same role in society that they used to. It’s
a preference rather than a necessity.





Still, e-readers have a way to go.
Tablets in particular are horrible to read. All the eye irritation of a
computer screen plus the bonus of being useless in the presence of sunshine. If
someone could fix that this coming year, that’d be great.





Analysts predict sales for
e-readers and tablets will fall this coming year. The novelty value is starting
to wear off and lots of people have one they’ve never even used. They aren’t
going to upgrade just because a new version in pink’s been released. But that’s
good. Maybe it will push the manufacturers to come up with real innovation.  2013 could be the year ebooks come into their
own.



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***
In other news:



I won this over at Write To Done. Congrats to the other winners (check them out by clicking here) and big, big thanks to all of you who nominated this site.

Let Characters Be Wrong

Nobody likes a perfect character.
Someone who is super good at everything and gets everything right is annoying. 




Even the most suave secret agents
of indestructible superheroes need to make mistakes in order to make the story
interesting.  




There are two parts to using
wrongness in a story. There’s the actual mistake (which sometimes isn’t known
to be a mistake at the time), and there’s the consequences of the mistake,
usually forcing the character to deal with powerful feeling of guilt or regret.






The mistake the character makes
is more impactful on the reader if we see it happen. In some stories a
character may be dealing with something that happened a long time a go. A cop
who shot the wrong guy is now a washed up private eye. That sort of backstory
is fine, but it won't have real meaning for readers if they don't see
it happen.




A mistake in and of itself won’t
automatically be fascinating. Like any element of a story, it needs to be
interesting. If the guy mentioned above was chasing a thief and shot and
missed, killing an innocent bystander, that’s perfectly plausible, but it’s
also perfectly dull.




There are many reasons for a
mistake beyond an accident, and the more intentional and purposeful it is, i.e.
the more the character is responsible for his own actions, the better.




Stupidity

Some characters are just dumb.
The useless guy in a gang of robbers or in an army unit. The girl who’s dancing
with headphones on while a killer runs round the house stabbing everyone. The
kid who never knows what’s going on. These sorts of characters can be very
annoying, which is probably why they don’t make for good lead characters (and
usually end up dying first).




It can often feel reasonable to
attribute a character’s actions to their dumbness, certainly it happens in real
life all the time, but you have to be careful not to use it as a convenient
excuse for unlikely events. Characters like this are okay in small doses or for
comic relief, but nobody wants to follow an idiot around for 300 pages.




Wrong Belief

Sometimes a character can have
strongly held but completely mistaken beliefs. It can be a belief in someone or
something. The thing about belief is you don’t need proof. Whether it’s a
religion or a best friend, you take it for granted that what you believe is
true. 




While it’s hard to show that,
what you can show is how the character acts because of his or her beliefs.  Showing that belief being tested and how the
character stands up for their beliefs establishes their position so that when
they do make their mistake later on, we can see their reasons.




Wrong Conclusion

Unlike beliefs, some character
have facts at their disposal that lead them to do terrible things. Taking clear,
incontrovertible information and then logically coming to a mistaken conclusion
is something that happens all the time. However, in order for the reader to be
able to follow why the character does what he does, the writer needs to show
that logical progression. 




This can lead to long, boring
exposition, or it can become very convoluted and hard to follow. But when done
properly (and hopefully concisely), it can be very effective. 




Misled

Sometimes a character can
intentionally be given misleading information. Being manipulated by others is a
powerful narrative device because it gives the character a definite next step
and somewhere for them to focus their anger.




You do have to be careful that
you give the misleaders a proper reason for wanting to mislead our hero.  Just because they’re the bad guys isn’t going
to be enough, they have to have a goal of their own.




Discovery

Once the mistake has been made,
at some point the character will need to realise their error. The way they find out can obviously be many and
varied, but the important thing is for it to happen in front of the reader. It
also helps if other characters are there to witness it, or maybe even profit by it.




The realisation that they were
wrong really needs to be the focus. How a character reacts emotionally to this
knowledge, whether guilt, remorse , anger or even denial, will set you up for
the next stage of the story.




It can be difficult for a writer
to put a favourite character through that kind of experience, but it’s the
ideal time to really get the boot in. As long as you keep in mind that they
will emerge from the ashes stronger than before, you should be able to convince
yourself it’s worth the agony you’re putting them through.   




Reaction

It’s not enough to realise the
error of your ways, you have to then decide what to do about it. Whatever
mistakes the character made, there should be consequences and repercussions,
and the character responsible shouldn't shy away from dealing with them. 




Running away and hiding from the
world may seem like a reasonable reaction, and it may even suit the personality
of your character, but it rarely serves the story. The whole point of putting a
character in this position is to show what they do about it and how it changes
them. 




A change of heart where we can
see the process from beginning to end, why the character thinks one way and
what makes them change their mind, is an incredibly powerful narrative device
in fiction, and one that requires things to get worse before they get better. But the character that emerges after facing the mistakes they made will be all the more interesting for it.



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Most Popular Posts Of The Year

Well, the world didn't end so I guess we'll be doing it all again next year. Thanks to everyone who dropped by over the last twelve months, and especially those who left comments. 




To round off the year, here are Moody Writing's top ten most popular posts of 2012 (based on page views):




1. How To Start A Story The Stephen King Way

March: A look at how Mr King starts his stories.




2. Chapter One: The Casual Vacancy

October: J.K. Rowling's first attempt at adult fiction.




3. Cliffhangers For Unscrupulous Writers

September: A look at the most evil of all narrative devices.




4. How To Find Your Writing Muse

March: When inspiration won't visit, it's time to go hunting.




5. The 5 Best Pieces of Writing Advice

July: My personal top five tips.




6. How To Write Better Fiction

April: Sometimes there's nothing obviously wrong but something's missing.




7. Inside A Story Part 2: The Hunger Games

January: How a story is made up of lots of little stories, using everyone's famous YA book as an example.




8. Video Games Vs Books

April: Short attention spans? Not the kids I know. 




9. Chapter One: The Night Circus

February: Another in my series of first chapters dissections. 




10. Draft Zero: Where Writing Begins

April: The first draft is just the warm up.

~*~

Quick reminder:

Nominations for the Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers will close soon. If you'd like to nominate a writing blog then send an email to writersdigest@fwmedia.com (with the subject line: 101 Websites). Include the blog name, URL and reason for nominating.




It's a bit of an involved process so I guess only bother if it's a site you think really deserves it.

Dialogue Tags Are Annoying

Most people
know how to add dialogue tags at the end of dialogue to identify who’s
speaking.



"Look at me,” said Malcolm.







And sometimes
instead of using dialogue tags, we use action tags.




“Look at me.”
Malcolm waved his hands over his head.




Both indicate
who’s speaking, but the difference, although small, is important. The dialogue
ends with a comma in one and a full stop (period) in the other.




Not so hard to
figure out. But sometimes we don’t want to put the tag at the end of the
dialogue, we want to put it somewhere in the middle. And that’s where the fun
starts.





There are many
reasons why it might be preferable to not have the tag at the end. To make it
clear who’s speaking. To provide a pause in the reader’s mind. To add physical
action exactly when it happens. Or just because you feel like it.




If it’s a
large block of dialogue it might not be clear who’s speaking if you wait until
the end to reveal the speaker. Of course, you could put the tag up front.




Malcolm said, “Look at me.”




That is
definitely an acceptable option. One of many.




You can also
put the tag in the middle.




“When I’m at home,” said Malcolm, “I wear my
slippers.”




But what you
can’t do is this:




“When I’m at home,” said Malcolm. “I wear my
slippers.”




The reason you
can’t do this is because if you were to take the tag away you would be left
with:




“When I’m at home. I wear my slippers.”
Doesn’t make sense. ‘When I’m at home’ isn’t a complete sentence, so you can’t
stick a full stop (period) at the end.




However, if
the dialogue has a natural break in it, then you can.




“I’m at home,” said Malcom. “I’m going to
wear my slippers.”




If you remove
the tag this time, you get:




“I’m at home. I’m going to wear my slippers.”




Which does
make sense. That’s the rule you can’t break. If the dialogue is continuous
without the tag, you use commas with the tag. If the dialogue has a break in
it, then you use a full stop (period).




The tricky
part is when you now use an action tag instead of a dialogue tag. If Malcolm raises
his hands after saying a particular word (whether it's relevant to the story or just how you see it), then you have no choice but to put
the tag in the middle of the dialogue.




“Please don’t,” Malcolm raised his hands, “shoot
me.”




The above is
correct. It isn’t the only way, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Some people
don’t like the way it looks and prefer:




“Please don’t” —Malcolm raised his hands—
“shoot me.”




That is also
correct, if a little ungainly looking. But this is wrong:




“Please don’t.” Malcolm raised his hands.
“Shoot me.”




It’s always
wrong. Because if you remove the tag you’ll get nonsensical phrasing, or, as in
this case, a completely different meaning from the one intended:




“Please don’t. Shoot me.”




There are some
people who just don’t like it. They see the action tag next to dialogue,
separated by only a comma and it doesn’t look right to them. And that’s okay.
You don’t need to break up dialogue, you can rewrite/restructure it so there
are natural breaks where you can slip in your action tags. Or you can change
the tag to something like: Malcolm said,
raising his hands.




There are lots
of ways to do it, some more fashionable than others. One will suit you. But
there are also ways not to do it and you need to be aware of that. The best resource
is to keep an eye out for how good authors do it in the books you read
(although you probably want to avoid using self-published books for this
purpose or anything by Cormac McCarthy).









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Different Characters, Different Beliefs

In order to make a scene between
two characters feel interesting it needs some degree of conflict. That’s fine
if one character happens to be a cop and the other a robber, but the story
isn’t always going to present you with directly oppositional characters like
that.








But even if the characters in a
scene don’t have anything to fight over and the scene isn’t highly charged or
full of high stakes, you can still give characters something to clash over.








All you need to do is give each
character a different script to work from. From a writer’s perspective you know
who’s right and who’s wrong in a situation, but the characters don’t know that.
As in real life, people are predisposed to think they are in the right, no
matter how wrong they might be.








It is an old director’s trick to
tell the actor playing the mother that her boy has been the victim of bullying
and that the teachers have done nothing to protect him so he’s had to defend
himself, and then to tell the actor playing the Headmaster that the boy is the
worst bully in the school and enough is enough.








Now, no matter what the
conversation will be about, the tone will be combative. How far you take it
depends on why they’re meeting, but having those opposing views of the
situation guarantees you’ll avoid the doldrums of meaningless pleasantries.








In a scene where you just need
some information to be revealed or some dialogue exchanged, it can feel like
there’s no point in getting into an argument, and indeed having people at each
other’s throats scene after scene will get tiring. But conflict comes in many
shapes and sizes.








Mother 1: Charlie’s improved no
end since Mr Trumble’s been giving him private lessons.



Mother 2: Really? Do you think
he’d take on Billy?



Mother 1: I’m sure he would.








And so little Billy starts
getting tutored after school. But the manner in which I showed Mother 2 finding
out about Mr Trumble’s after school activities contains no dramatic content
whatsoever.








Mother 1: Charlie’s improved no
end since Mr Trumble’s been giving him private lessons.



Mother 2: Isn’t that against
school rules.



Mother 1: Oh, he doesn’t charge
me anything.



Mother 2: He does it for free?



Mother 1: Well, I cook him a
meal.



Mother 2: ...



Mother 1: It’s just a meal.



Mother 2: Of course. So when’s Bill
coming home on leave?








I don’t know where that scene’s
going (death by Marine?) but one woman thinks the teacher is being helpful, and
the other thinks he’s after a bit of how’s your father. They’re not arguing
about it, but they don’t see eye to eye either and that creates tension.








Of course, you may feel that
stretching out the scene takes up to much space and isn’t worth it just to
introduce Mr Trumble who is only a bit-part player. But if it isn’t worth making
the scene interesting, it isn’t really worth having the scene at all. You can
easily slip in information anywhere. If you want to build it into a scene then you
should make sure the scene is worth 
reading .



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Assume Reader Resistance

There’s always the feeling when
you write something that maybe no one else will want to read it. And that’s
exactly how you should think.



Sure, there are going to
be one or two people who are into exactly what you’re into, but for the most
part people won’t be. Just because you came up with a story won’t automatically
make them want to read it.



Realising this is
half the battle to avoiding it (although admittedly it is the easy half).







There are those people in life
whose exploits are interesting to you because you know them. When a friend or a
family member has something to tell you it has a different effect than if a guy
on a bus started telling you about his day.



Similarly, we are more forgiving
towards characters we already know or authors who we are familiar with. Our
expectations are secure enough for us to assume their story will be of interest
(although that may not turn out to be the case). We’re willing to give them the
benefit of the doubt.



But characters that are new to us
are treated with a degree of scepticism. As a writer trying to win over readers
you can’t rely on the audience being generous with their time, especially in
the current climate where there are a zillion other people vying for their
attention.



And while someone saying they
have an interesting story to tell may be true, if you’re in a room full of
people telling you that, which one are you going to choose to listen to?



Because that’s how things are at
the moment. A lot of writers surrounding each reader, making hyperbolic claims
and offering unbeatable prices.



So, if you were at  a party where everyone has some story to tell,
who would catch your eye?



Obviously I can’t give you any
definitive answers, but I have been thinking about it and the following things
occurred to me.



There’s the guy who has a large
group gathered around him, holding court. We’d all love to be that guy, but
he’s already made it. I think we have to look a little lower on the totem pole for inspiration. 



There’s the guy who’ll talk to
anyone he can corner. He doesn’t make much sense, but he talks non-stop and
seems to always pop up. I think we’d all love not to be that guy.



There’s the guy acting weird and
a bit crazy. He’s standing on a chair and flapping his arms like a chicken. Is
he having some kind of manic episode or just looking for attention? Either way,
when people try too hard to be noticed it rarely leads anywhere interesting.
Properly entertaining eccentricity tends not to be so showy.



Then there’s the guy who seems to
be up to something. He’s looking out of the windows and checking locked doors.
Maybe it’s all innocent, but maybe not. Now I think we’re getting somewhere. I
can tell what he’s doing (making sure the place is secure) but I don’t know
why.  I didn’t know why the chicken guy
was doing what he was doing, but I didn’t know what he was doing either.
Complete mystery is baffling. Partial mystery is intriguing.



But wait, here comes a girl I
don’t know who grabs me by the arm and whispers, “You have to help me. Pretend
we know each other from university and we’ve just bumped into each other.” And
before I can ask her why, a huge oaf come stumbling in with a bloodied lip, and
she turns to you and says, “Oh my god! I can’t believe it’s you!”



The thing about that last example
is that whether or not you’re interested in this story doesn’t matter, you’re
part of it. The story that engages you is the one that involves you.



Now, that may seem fair enough in
theory, but what does that mean in terms of writing? How can you involve the
reader in the story (unless it’s one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure”
books).



The key to that last example
being more engaging than the others is this: What will the character choose to
do?



The woman has asked for help, she
obviously needs it, and there’s no time to think things over. Play along or bail? Choices are what
makes a story compelling. Not whether someone has cheese or tuna in their
sandwich, that’s not a choice it’s a preference. What does the character choose
to do when the outcome matters? What do they choose when there's a personal cost? 



By putting a character in that
position and not letting them off the hook, the story becomes impossible to put
down (for the next few pages at least).



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Fiction Is About Facing Problems

One of the main tenets of writing
story is to make the reader as the question: What happens next?





But this question shouldn’t be
aimed at the writer, or even the story. The question should be aimed by readers
at themselves.





And they shouldn’t be sure of the
answer









Any question posed in the right
way will offer an unknown to be revealed, that doesn’t make it interesting. I
could ask you to guess what colour socks I put on this morning. Just because
you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean you want to know.





It’s only when characters are
placed in situations where if readers were to ask themselves, If that was me what would I do? And they
don’t know, or even better, if they know the options but they don’t want to
make the decision, then seeing someone else have to make the choice is a
rewarding experience.





That’s true even if the character
ends up making a total hash of things and tragedy ensues. Seeing someone else
deal with difficult situations is what makes fiction better than real life.
Because in real life we can’t afford to take outrageous risks or pursue
outlandish dreams. Gambles rarely pay off and forfeits tend to be severe. But
in stories, the less ordinary paths can be explored.





So while in real life we want
things sorted out in the easiest and quickest way possible, with the police
doing their job, lovers remaining true and illnesses being treated in good
time, in fiction the opposite is true. 





That’s the case whether it’s a
man trapped in a cell about to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, or a
girl in love with a man who ignores her and is in love with his job.









Readers want to see scenarios
they would never want to be in, with characters forced to do things they would
never dream of doing. They want the character to take the more difficult path
and they want to see it handled with insight, creativity, ingenuity, sacrifice
and surprise.





Of course, that requires the
writer to produce those elements. No easy task. So it’s understandable that a lot of aspiring authors write about characters
who get what they want in fairly straightforward fashion.  





Characters face problems they
just happen to be perfectly suited to deal with. Like James Bond finding the
gadget he’s given at the start of the movie is exactly what he needs to defeat the villain
at the end. And those sorts of stories have an audience. People like to be
comforted by the idea that their fantasies might come true, that we might
have a fairy godmother we didn’t know about who will grant our wishes.





But the story where the character
has no easy or obvious way out, where none of the paths available are without
consequences, is a story readers will be affected by and react to with genuine
emotion. They will care about what happens. They may not want to know what
happens next, they may dread what they suspect, but they won’t be able to stop
themselves turning the page to find out.





Don't forget, Alex Appreciation begins today (annual event?). Stop by the many, many people showing a little love to our own Ninja captain, Alex Cavanaugh. You can find the linky list here.



For myself, it's been a pleasure to encounter such a generous spirit on the interweb. Cheers, Alex.

Making Scenes Interesting In The Now

In terms of what’s going on in a scene you can break it down
into three main areas:








1. What happened ‘Before’.



2. What’s happening ‘Now’.



3. What’s going to happen ‘Later’.








The most important for a reader is no.2, the ‘Now’. That's where readers experience the story—what's in front of them.




And it's important to make sure each scene is engaging the reader through what's happening on the page, what characters are doing, as well as the implications for events in the past and future.




‘Before’ and ‘Later’ are certainly going to play a major role in how you construct
and develop a scene, with things like tension and anticipation.








What happened ‘Before’ provides motivation for why we’re here
and what the characters decide to do. Sometimes, ‘Before’ is a long time ago,
beyond the scope of the story, and gets filled in by backstory. Other times,
‘Before’ is kept a mystery and revealed later in the story.








Both those techniques (backstory and revelation) are
standard methods for writing fiction, but both have their drawbacks. It's very easy to get so wrapped up in explaining stuff that the story ends up stalling.








In most stories what a character is doing ‘Now’ has been set
up in the previous scene. In order to make the reader want to find out what
happens in this chapter, the reasons are explained in the one before. You can
raise the stakes, complicate the issue, establish the problem. In doing so the
reader comes to the current chapter full of anticipation.








However, if things are at a high enough anxiety level, you
can sometimes forget to make the current scene interesting in its own right.








If, for example, Susan goes over to Mike’s place for coffee,
but the real reason she’s going is because she suspects he’s the guy that ten
years ago kidnapped and murdered her sister, and she wants to find proof, then
you can see that the date is not what it seems. She’s going to have to play-act
the flirty girl all the while looking for evidence and also, if it turns out
she’s right, get out alive.








So, high stakes, danger, tension.








But let’s say she goes over there, he goes in the kitchen to
make the coffee and she quickly goes through his drawers and cupboards and
finds nothing.








Even though the entry into the scene was ramped up and full
of all the elements you would want in this kind of scenario, the actual scene
that develops is a let down.








And this is also true of scenes where the set-up isn’t quite
so extreme. You don’t have to have murder, robbery or an asteroid about hit the
Earth to get hearts racing. Whatever the reason from ‘Before’ that’s got your
character to ‘Now’, those motivations need to be built on and extended.






If your character decides to pursue their course in a causal
‘let’s see what happens’ manner, or if things conveniently work out in their
favour, it will read as lacklustre no matter how high the stakes.








In terms of how ‘Later’ affects writing, this can also lead to a flat,
uninteresting ‘Now’ scene. 




In some cases, things happen in the current scene
that don’t seem particularly important, but they pay-off big later on in the
story. But just because there’s a big twist or stunning reveal later, doesn’t
mean you can afford to have a narratively unengaging scene now.








Often the problem is that because the writer knows how
crucial the scene where Jane washes her hands with Dove soap is going to be in
the final chapter (where the poison in the soap is revealed), they consider it full of importance. But the reader
isn't aware of any of that. The reader just gets a page and a half of
soapy hands.








Even though setting things up to be paid-off later is
another perfectly acceptable and useful technique, a scene that’s just that—all set-up—isn’t going to be very interesting to read.








In cases where too much emphasis is put on what’s
gone one before and after, it’s the middle scene that ends up losing out. The
‘Now’ scene is necessary and needs to be there, but it also needs to
have engaging action of its own.








One thing to look out for is a character's emotional state at the beginning and end of each scene. Are they the same at their
outro as they were at their intro? If they are, can you change it so they
experience something that actually affects them? She was up but now she’s down;
she was sure, but now not so much; she was scared, now she’s angry.




If a character's emotions change as we're reading about them, that means something happened. Doesn't matter how big or small it was, that's all you need to make a scene interesting in the 'Now'.



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Dramatic Action Is More Than Doing Stuff

Often the reason a scene doesn’t work, or doesn’t seem to
have any life to it, is because what’s happening in the scene isn’t very interesting.




People may be doing things, moving around, attempting to
reach their goals, but how they’re going about is too straightforward or too
easy.




There are various ways to achieve things in life that are
reasonable and sensible. You want to be a doctor, you go to medical school and
study hard. If you portray that within a story it may feel realistic and true,
but it won’t be very gripping.




There is more to a good story than holding a mirror up to life.







This is true of both big events and small. If I owe money to
a loan shark who’s threatened to break my legs, and I go to my friend and
borrow a grand and pay of the loan, that isn’t much of a story.




Equally, if I wake up late for work and I have an important
meeting so instead of taking the train I call a taxi and pay a little extra to
get to work on time, that isn’t interesting either.




The fact a character has a problem they need to deal with
isn’t the part that makes a story engaging. It’s how the character goes about
solving that problem. Doesn’t matter how high the stakes are, if the solution
is just a matter of doing something obvious, what you end up with is a boring
story.




It can be easy to fool yourself into thinking the more
worked up or concerned a character is the more the reader will feel the same,
and to some degree that is true. There are certain emotional triggers that will
always get a response. A scene of a child being abused in some way will make
most people react on a emotional level. But if you coast on that initial surge
of emotion you will find it peters out pretty quickly.




Dramatic action requires the following:




1. The easy, obvious answers are unavailable. This should be
for legitimate reason, not just because the character doesn’t feel like it.




2. The way forward should be unsmooth. Obstacles, unforeseen
circumstances, foreseen but unavoidable circumstances, opponents,  mistakes, lies, tricks, misunderstandings...
all these can be used to make life difficult.




3. Consequences help raise tension. If what a character does
is going to result in unpleasant after-effects, that helps make it more
dramatically interesting. If every option has some unpleasantness associated
with it, a dilemma, that will engage a reader strongly.







Effort does not count as action, dramatically speaking. If
the path is straightforward but uphill, that doesn’t make it interesting.
Doesn’t matter how much sweat and toil is involved, putting one step in front
of the other is boring no matter how physically demanding.




Physical action on its own is not guarantee of dramatic
action. If two people go to dinner in a nice restaurant and have a pleasant
time, that may reflect a realistic first date, with some funny banter and
romantic looks (and some beautifully described food), but there’s no action in
the narrative,




When you have physical action without any dramatic element
you are basically providing description not action. At the same time, you can
have dramatic action with very little actual physical movement.




If a neighbour knocks on the door and asks for a cup of
sugar and our character and the neighbour chat while he gets it for her, even
though that introduces two characters to each other in a way that is both clear
and pertinent, the writing of them in the kitchen, moving around, making
gestures and looks, is me describing a scene. There is no dramatic action.




If I take the same scenario, but I add an escaped convict in
the house holding a knife to the main character’s daughter’s throat, telling
him to get rid of the neighbour or the kid gets it, then the MC and the
neighbour at the door takes on a whole new complexion.




Even though the whole scene may now occur in the doorway
with neither character showing any physical movement, there’s a lot of dramatic
action going on. The MC has to get rid of the neighbour without making either
the neighbour or the convict suspicious—even the most mundane conversation
could be filled with landmines.




Of course, our MC could just say he has also run out of
sugar and the neighbour could just leave, but you can feel the tension deflate
out of what could be a marvellously fraught scene. So maybe I’ll change it to
the neighbour coming round to invite our MC to a meeting of the neighbourhood
watch, and while she’s here she could do a check of locks and security, she’s
been on a training course and it would be no bother...




The more difficult you make the MC’s predicament, the more
entertaining the scene will become, both for the writer and the reader.



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When A Scene Isn’t Working

There comes a time when you have to face facts. You’ve tried
to convince yourself that scene where your main character goes back to her old
house and stares at it for four pages is a good scene, an important scene where
the reader learns things they need to know, but... it just isn’t a very
interesting scene.




You know this because none of the people who’ve read it have
ever said anything good about it. Quite a few have said bad things about it.
And most have not mentioned it at all. You could take their silence as a sign
they’re okay with it, but do you really want to write a story that’s just okay?




So, something’s got to change.







You basically have two options. You can cut the scene
completely, or you can make the scene better.




With the first option, it’s rare to be able to lift out the
scene and that’s it. Sometimes it is possible, if the scene was unrelated to
the plot and just a fun interlude of some sort, but mostly it will either have
to be replaced with a new scene, or the information contained in the old scene
will have to be worked into the rest of the story somehow.




Personally, I think a brand new scene works best (although
it requires more work). If things happened in the old scene that are pertinent
to later events and you try to squeeze that info into other places, it can end
up feeling like heavy-handed exposition.




You cut the scene where Sandra meets Debra and finds out
about the new shopping mall being built in town, and you go straight to the
scene where she’s having dinner with her husband. But instead of getting
straight into the action, you now have half a page of:




“So where were you this afternoon?”

“I went to see Debra. You’ll never guess what she told
me...”




There’s no point cutting a scene that isn’t working only to
add a summary of the scene that didn’t work. If you cut you have to really cut.





The second option, improving the scene, is usually the best
way to proceed, although writers are resistant to making the kinds of changes
required. A few line edits and introducing a chatty waiter aren’t going to be
enough.




You have to really go back to basics and work out what
you’re trying to do with the scene and come up with a completely new approach
to getting that message across. I’m not saying there aren’t ways to tweak the
current version into working, but once you’ve spent so much time with Version
A, it’s going to be very hard to see it any other way than how it already is.
You’ve been honing and trimming and getting it just so for so long that being
able to see it fresh will be nearly impossible.




Far easier is to go back to the start of the scene and start
again. Take into account where the characters were just prior to the beginning
of the scene. How did that affect them? What mood are they in? What are they hoping
will happen now? And then the first time a choice needs to be made, if you went
left in Version A, go right in Version B. The more different you make it, the
easier it will be to come up with fresh ideas.




And it’s important to remember if Version B ends up being
even worse than the original, that doesn’t make Version A any better. It still
doesn’t work, it’s just that Version B was worse. So, time to start working on
Version C...



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~*~





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