JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #45
March 25, 2021
This week I thought I’d write about scenes. In some ways, we can consider the scene to be the basic fictive unit. Inasmuch as good fiction relies on creating an engrossing experience for the reader, this experience will almost always be most vivid within a scene, where we get to watch characters do things. An easy way to think about scenes is that these are the events you show to the reader.
A scene within a story has a purpose, and that is to advance the story. I’ve written before that story arises from the interaction of character and plot, and it is usually at the level of the scene that this happens. The basic function of a scene, then, is to show the character pursuing her goals and how that works out. Thus, in order for the reader to be fully immersed within a scene, they must to some degree and in some way become aware of the character’s goal or purpose. This is almost like a thesis statement for the scene: Lisa needed to find out if Justin was going to be at the party tonight. Everything that the character does can then be explained by that goal.
A reader’s investment in a scene is also linked to the scene’s "energy," it’s driving force. This energy is usually generated by conflict. The character doesn’t quite get what they want, can’t quite achieve their goal, and every obstacle along the way is a conflict that generates profluence, a forward-pressing energy, for the scene as the character reacts and adjusts to each obstacle. Obstacles can be features of the setting, can be other characters, and, especially in a "literary" genre, are often a result of the character’s own personality.
So, when Lisa calls her friend Kari to find out if Justin is going to be at the party, when she awkwardly keeps Kari on the line even as Kari tries to say goodbye, when, frustrated by Kari’s inattentiveness, she blurts out the secret she’s been keeping from Kari to force Kari to focus on the conversation, we as readers understand she does all of these things because she is motivated by her goal. It’s also important that each action Lisa takes has a causative link to a prior action: Lisa wouldn’t need to awkwardly extend the conversation if Kari had already told her what she wanted to know, just as she never would have grown so desperate to possibly hurt their friendship by revealing the secret. That revelation must also be caused by some aspect of her personality that we understand. And, as the conflict heightens, as the stakes of each action rise, the energy of the scene grows as well.
Scene-setting details should serve to flesh out the character’s actions and the conflicts that arise. We only need to know what’s significant to the basic dynamics of the scene, including considerations of the point of view through which we are seeing this scene. Sometimes the primary dynamic of a scene is a character changing their goal, often in reaction to something that just happened. This should be clearly developed and shown to the reader so that they can follow the causative chain of events into the next scene. When the energy runs out, the scene should end. In fact, the scene should end before the energy runs out.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the interstices between scenes, how to go from one scene to the next, and maybe I should have organized these Ruminations better so that this one came first. Oh well. If I ever get to put them into a book I can rearrange them then.
Next: On Telling