Nita, the Pop Song
I’m in the middle of rewriting Nita, breaking the scene down into beats and looking at the motifs and repetition, and I’m delighted to see that the scene has fallen into one of my favorite scene structures, the AABA structure, which is the basis of most pop songs. Then it occured to me that I’d never mentioned this before on Argh because it’s not a theory or a rule and because I’m complete idiot about music, so I’m reluctant to pontificate there. But the AABA structure can be so useful (for some scenes, not all, not a rule) that it’s a just good thing to know.
I use art theory all the time in my work, but my musical background is nil. Then one day, I was struggling with a scene and Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time” came on the radio, and for the first time, I heard verse-chorus-bridge as structure, the same kind of structure the scene I was working on was shadowing, and I realized that a lot of my big scenes had that basic AABA structure.
What is AABA structure? Here, watch this:
Now here’s the breakdown of the scene in the version you all read:
Beat 1: Nita evaluates the scene and tries to go help her brother. Button says, “Wait.”
Beat 2: Nita tries to relieve Button’s fears and be a good partner, but she’s still gonna help her brother. Button says, “Wait.”
Beat 3: Frank shows up and then Mort and then Clint. The Clown car beat.
Beat 4: Nita finds out that the victim is Joey and focuses. Button says, “Wait,” and Nita gets out of the car.
Okay, at first glance, it would seem that Beat 3 is a problem, but it isn’t because that’s a classic bridge.
A. Nita tries to get out of the car (verse) and Button says “Wait” (chorus).
A. Nita tries to get out of the car (verse) and Button says “Wait” (chorus).
B. Frank and Mort and Clint show up with various opinions about whether Nita should get out of the car (bridge).
A. Nita finds out about Joey and gets out of the car (verse) as Button says “Wait” (chorus).
How does this help me?
First, I have to divide the scene into its four parts/beats and look at three of them as verses. That’s easy, just divide the scene into four docs. And I have to make sure that each verse increases in intensity for Nita (see “Let It Go” in the video).
Then, I have to strength the chorus with repetition. If Button says “Wait” exactly the same way each time, I have repetition but I don’t have escalation. And she doesn’t say it on the page in the last beat/verse, it’s just implied. So strengthen and escalate the chorus.
And then there’s the bridge: “New lyrics, new background music, new melody.” So the clown car shows up and keeps the repetition of the verse from getting boring. BUT the verse carries the juice of the scene, and the reader wants to get back to it to find out what Nita is going to do. So the bridge links the first two verses which set up the repetition of Nita trying to get out of the car and Button’s “Wait,” to the last verse where Nita gets out of the car, ignoring Button’s “Wait” and forcing Button to join her. I was just having fun with the whole clown car thing, so that bridge beat is all over the place when it needs to be a solid shift AND a link.
There are other things going on here. I have to cut the hell out of the bridge because even with some revision from the version you read, the word count is breaking at 730/673/1077/662. I’m fine with the first verse being slightly longer than the other two, but the last verse should probably be shorter for pacing. I’m even good with the bridge being the longest. Just not that long.
No, I don’t do this kind of analysis for every scene. No, I don’t use this kind of structure for every scene. But the first scene is a crucial one, and it fell naturally into this structure, and breaking it down into AABA and seeing that B beat as a bridge is hugely helpful as I pull this all together.
Tomorrow I’ll be back with the critique discussion as promised, and possibly with a rewrite. I should be going to laundromat now, but I really want to fix that bridge . . .
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