Influence, manipulate, control?

[Devor]

I think I agree with everything that's been said so far..... but I also think, perhaps, that there's some over-thinking happening, too. At least, if I sit down to write a scene, there's only so many steps and procedures and principles I want in my head or it's too much to keep track of.

First, I've got the important thing that happens, the thing that makes this scene necessary. Perhaps it's the same as the arc, or the change, or whatever else. I'm not sure - that's not how I think about it. I've got something that I'm building up to, and there's a piece that needs to happen to get there, and that's why I need this scene. It's possible that there's more than one important things. If I've got different plots - if I have something I want to do for character development - I might have two or three things that could be separate scenes, but if there's a good opportunity, I want to mash them into one.

Second, I've got kind of the game that's happening in the scene. That phrase actually comes from improv and usually refers to comedy, and it means that you've found the thing that's funny about the scene and that you can keep building on for laughs. That's what I'm looking for - but with tension, or other micro-reactions. The game is my ongoing source of micro-reactions that I can build on and play with throughout the scene, my trick to kind of building up all the tension. It's like an emotional tug of war.

Here's a great example of a game - it's the opening passage to my Ladybug fanfic.

It didn’t matter that her camera was shaking when a moving car shot up into the air on a torrent of sewage from an open manhole cover. It didn’t matter that she missed Chat Noir pull the driver out in time or that she didn’t get the lucky shot of the lucky charm dropping into Ladybug’s hand. Helicopters and high tech camera equipment would catch the action better than she could. News reporters would get all the details on Pipeline and her gross sewage powers without any help from the Ladyblog.

Alya needed to use her connection with the superhero team to get an answer to one good question. A deep question. A real question. Her exclusive interview with Ladybug had been labeled nothing but a fluff piece. If Alya wanted to secure a partnership between TVi and the Ladyblog, and snatch a huge jumpstart on her career as a reporter, she needed to get a response from the heroes of Paris about something poignant.

Poignant. That’s what the exec told her, and it felt like TVi code for mean.

There's all this awesome visual action happening around this character, but none of it matters to the character. To me, that's a great game because it opens up a bajillion avenues for micro-reactions (or tension? Or the Rhuhk beneath that tension?) that can happen in the prose. Of course, the game develops and changes a little as she gets closer to asking her question.

Now, you might be thinking, "Wait, people have been talking about goals, and your game here is just the character's goals." But it's not. The goal is to ask the question. The game is the notion that all these awesome events that normally are awesome don't matter. The game is a step or two beyond that basic goal. It's a way of reshaping the scene in a way that I can pull drama from it in every line for as long as it goes on.

I mean, there's only so much pre-planning that I can put into a scene. There's only so much thinking you can do before it starts to cripple the fun out of it. And no amount of pre-planned steps is going to get you comfortably, line by line, through scene after scene. So I think about what I need to do, I look for the game, and I take it from there.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

...there's only so much pre-planning that I can put into a scene. There's only so much thinking you can do before it starts to cripple the fun out of it. [/

I don’t find that to be true. The creative aspects of planning are quite fun.

And no amount of pre-planned steps is going to get you comfortably, line by line, through scene after scene.

You’re right about that, but for me, it helps to craft scenes that are written better, with more unique qualities because I’ve given greater attention to planning and detail.

It’s still early, but the comments from readers regarding the rewrite using this process (the worksheets I’ve detailed here) are far superior to the original, or for that matter, things I’ve written before. That leads me to think I’m headed in the right direction.

I accept, of course, that it’s not for everyone.

 

[Devor]

T.Allen.Smith, I didn't intend for my remarks against pre-planning a scene to come across very strongly, and I wouldn't want to debate against something that's working for you right now. I don't preplan my scenes, but I do other planning that I also find fun, so I feel that I know what you mean - in particular, I typically know the "necessary thing that has to happen" long before I write, but then figure out the "game in the scene" when I sit down to draft it. I feel that it's been working well for me.

That said, the Upright Citizens Brigade has literally published textbooks on finding the game in the scene, and while improv is totally different than a novel, I do feel the basic principle is the same. I have a prompt (the thing that has to happen, with all the characters and details that implies), and I have to find an ongoing way to make it funny "tense." Even though it may sound like a simple roundabout statement, I personally consider it the hardest, most complicated, and most important skill to master, at least among those skills that I've been able to recognize.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

It's interesting to read what everyone has had to say on this topic. I can see how T.Allen.Smith's approach could benefit the type of writer who enjoys lots of pre-planning. I enjoy a certain degree of pre-planning, but if I plan too much, it's like Devor said: it cripples the fun out of it for me. Yet if your goal is to influence readers to have specific reactions, then pre-planning seems it could be useful. Maybe that's why I don't care much about trying to influence readers to have certain reactions to my writing: I feel I'd have to pre-plan more than I care to--or revise a lot. I'd prefer to not worry about influencing the readers, and let it happen on a subconscious level. I have my opinions on life, and those opinions will color what I write no matter what I write, unless I focus on not doing so. In that way, I'm going to be influencing my readers by the very act of writing, no matter how much pre-planning or revising I do.

 

[skip.knox]

To me, pre-planning is not an identifiable, unique thing. Rather, there are a bunch of things I do that are not quite writing-the-novel, but sometimes dance pretty close to it.

At the furthest remove is world building. Often this is stuff that is related only tangentially to the story, but builds out the world in ways that feel necessary, important, or just fun.

There is "research," which can look a lot like world building but is more specifically tied to the work in progress. This is where I look at specific settings, a particular historical era, or run down specific trivia. This happens prior to writing Chapter One, but it continue right through, even into the editing stages. The distinction between research and planning gets very hazy.

There's sketching out the plot, of course, and characters. Here again, the process is so iterative, there's not much "pre" to it.

Then there's planning individual scenes. Very often this consists of me writing out ideas, thinking my way through the scene on paper, which at some point, without any break, slides over into actual writing, often of dialog. It's not the entire scene, usually; the length varies greatly.

The point of all this is to say that to me, it's all writing. It's all part of the work of writing, of getting from idea to story to published. I don't find writing to be much fun--playing with my dogs is fun; going to Italy is fun; playing a good video game is fun; writing doesn't belong in the same bucket--so pre-planning (is that the planning that happens prior to planning?) can't really take something out that wasn't there to begin with. But it nothing in what I described above kills creativity or limits me or deadens the story. In fact, when I measure all of that activity and add to it the work of editing and marketing, the so-called "pure writing" part probably takes a minority position.

But that's me. Your mileage will absolutely vary.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

I don't find writing to be much fun

Sure, it's work, but for me, if it wasn't fun, I would find something else to do with the time I spend writing.