my take on creating a scene

[Caged Maiden]

Hey scribes! Hope you're cruising along on writing you've got planned for the cold months, I wanted to talk about scenes in hope that it may help people struggling to make scenes easier to tackle. I've mentioned before, the book Make a Scene is really good for exploring what makes a scene and how to use different scenes (action, contemplative, dramatic, etc.) for the right impact.

I'm writing a new first chapter into an old novel I'm rewriting. When I began several weeks ago, I had an inkling of what I wanted to do, but no clue where to start. I landed on something I really wanted to share, so here goes:

First, I did a brainstorm, jotting down all the major points I wanted to make, and not fleshing anything out. It went something like this:

1. Raisa wants to win the big a poker game, but also to have a private conversation with her friend, a loan shark who recently acquired a young girl as payment for a debt.

2 Raisa sees the girl is destined for a tragic life in a brothel, and wants to save her in a way.

3. During the game, Raisa is doing well, but at the final table, a bard she hired to entertain for the evening wallops her and she's embarrassed and takes a hit to her status when she loses magnificently.

4. After the game, Raisa is broke. Her money was on herself to win, and when she loses, she not only didn't win the pot, but she lost her buy-in, and also lost the money she'd bet on herself. Plus, she has to pay for the girl (who costs way too much), and to top it off, she bribed the servants to do special jobs that should have made her win easier. it's all gone, and she's scrambling for cash to pay everything she promised.

5. She hires someone to follow the bard because she feels the loss was personal and some of the things the bard said makes her feel she's been threatened. So she wants to investigate it.

6. She has to collect the girl, and is shocked to find out the girl is feisty and displeased that she is considered a commodity to be purchased or traded. She's disrespectful, and Raisa has a powerful position in the crime network and is used to people being humble around her, not mouthy.

7. The man she hired to follow the bard returns and tells her to keep the rest of her coins, that the bard is Raisa's problem now, because he's too weirded out to follow him anymore.

Since I already know my characters, I didn't have to focus on creating them, but I had to keep in mind that this is now the first chapter of a book that began after this point. That meant I had to introduce the character and immediate situation NOW instead of writing in something that felt too familiar, because the reader will now be getting introduced to the world at a poker game, rather than in the scenes I'd originally planned as the first scenes. I had to make sure I had the balance of details to not only introduce the MC, but also the people around her and the setting.

First, I wrote the game. I made a chart of where people were sitting, decided on the order people would be knocked out, and how the game would be played. I noted an accusation of cheating, a few hands I would show, and a few exits from people who weren't important enough to describe except in the most basic way.

I broke the chapter into four scenes. The first was Raisa with four players, two of which would progress to the final table. I decided the private conversation and the deal for the girl would happen during a break from this first table's game. It felt right to establish her motivation right up front, for the reader to get to know Raisa and Strange, the loan shark who owns the girl. I wrote their dialogues, established what would happen during the deal, and wrote the rest of the scene, where the two return to the table and keep playing, after they'd strategized how to play as a team during the final table. Which means, the two of them have to make sure they are the two players who reach the final table. They goad another player (who is dead set on winning) into calling when he should fold. I did that by having Raisa coolly carry on a conversation with Strange while this other character is deciding whether to call her all-in raise. Once he's gone, the scene ends.

Scene two begins with everyone taking their seat at the final table. The bard is a focal point in that scene, to set up his new relationship with Raisa. They haven't really ever spoken before, except to contract his services as an entertainer. So, I brought him into a conversation with Strange, and let Raisa work in her own head a little while, where the reader can form more of an opinion of her and who she is as a character. She calculates her odds and looks for tells in the other players, and basically is a lens for the game.

During scene two, I add a few prominent characters to the story, characters Raisa interacts with in another upcoming big scene (because the rest of the book is written, this was an easy choice). One person accuses some of the other players of cheating, and Raisa (who is working a strategy with Strange) is surprised the accuser thinks she's in league with a woman next to her. It's easy to laugh off and turn into a bit of humor, and the scene goes on to eliminate all but four of the players. It ends with Strange calling a bluff when he's low on coins, and Raisa then is committed to paying him more for the girl (tying back into their private conversation).

Scene three isn't finished, but it'll be the final round, Raisa and the bard are heads-up trying to outplay each other. The dialogue is going to reflect how little they know of each other, sort of "guess you don't know me very well". That's an important theme, because as they end up in a greater story together later in the book, that same theme comes back to haunt them, multiple times. The main focus of this scene then is in the game and the banter, but it ends after Raisa loses. Ashamed by her loss and with no winnings to collect, she pulls an associate aside, pays him to watch the bard, and then leaves the social event of the season like a sore loser.

Scene four will be fetching the girl from Strange's house, and the brattiness of the girl she felt she "saved' from a horrible life. She learns the girl caused a ruckus in her friend's house when she stole and ruined drugs the brothel workers use. Raisa has an idea of what a handful the girl will be, and she has to come up with some way to reach her, to communicate past the feelings the girl has for being sold like property. I'm going to put in more of Raisa's background, as they go home and the girl gets her first look at where she'll be living, and realizes she's now a personal maid for a rich woman of great influence--not a bad job for a girl who was sold by her addict father. The scene ends with the return of the investigator, who tells Raisa to keep her coins, he's not having anything else to do with the bard who threatened him or whatever. Gotta still plan that, but I want it to develop organically and be a cliffhanger into the next chapter.

With this as a new first chapter, I wanted to get the bones in there first, the details of what happens and the basic understanding of who the characters are and who is important and who isn't.

Now that i have all that done, I've gone back and decided which dialogues do the most work, and which were confusing, inconsistent, or detracted from the action of the scenes (1 & 2).

After I had those things sorted, I wanted to look at my setting. Today, I read through what I accomplished, to analyze it for hitting all those important points. Then, I put in details about the setting where they felt natural. I had the character muse about how she wished her employer had just let her order the flowers for the party, because the smoky ballroom would have been nicer with flowers. I also had the most basic description of the room added to, so it feels like more of a place, but only in a paragraph. I also put in a few details about the background between Raisa and Strange, deciding they developed a really honest relationship years earlier when they were addicts and went through withdrawal together. I feel that experience would give them a connection that explained why a middle-aged gay man and a 30-ish straight woman were really comfortable with each other but had no romantic relationship. I found the perfect break in their private conversation to explain that little background without it becoming a big focus of the scene.

Today, I got a lot done, not huge in the way of word count, but the work stepped up the story and the scenes in a way that an editing pass might. Since I've already got the next two chapters edited, I needed to make sure this first chapter felt like the next two in "readiness" so when I pass this off to my waiting betas, I don't show them something so rough it needs a complete overhaul again, but tweaks to reorder information or add in details I as a writer don't assume to put in because I'm not a reader meeting these folks for the first time.

Thanks for reading my post, I hope it helps you to craft a scene you're stuck on or feel might not be accomplishing all the goals. It's a process, and it's just so darn hard to make it right form the beginning. You have to sometimes do a few passes even on a rough draft, because as you write the action, it's hard to make sure the descriptions are where they need to be. Or that while writing description, you aren't neglecting dialogues that feel bland. Or while your dialogue is cruising along, merrily and humorously, you aren't neglecting the character traits the reader needs to connect. hope this helps someone out today!

If anyone wants to talk about their own recipe for creating scenes, please comment!

 

[TWErvin2]

I don't break it down and dissect it like you, Caged Maiden.

I work from a rough outline, and each scene advances the plot, moving toward one of the major plot points or events that I have planned, advancing (marching, striding, climbing, racing, etc.) toward the climax and then resolution. If it (the scene) doesn't advance the plot, the content must develop the world or character(s) or something along those lines...it has to be more than just 'interesting.' Normally plot advancement includes characterization, world building and more--all are involved in the scene.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Oh yeah, of course I assumed that the scene is already one that is advancing plot, world, and character, and therefore intended to stay as part of the final draft. I guess I just meant to show a sort of checklist of how to do editing passes on a single scene being added to a more complete novel. Sometimes you find yourself in the same position I'm in, where I'm editing a novel that is written but undergoing reconstructive surgery in a way, and I've already done major editing to the first two chapters, so they're complete except for nit-picking. And then someone said I might have started the story a bit late, because the inciting incident happened off screen. So I considered that and decided it was totally right, that I should back up. So I have to find a way to quickly polish a scene from first draft to "I've read it a hundred times and done ten passes on it" draft.

I tried to just write down my process for working out a tricky scene that isn't working 100%, hoping that it might help anyone else who has a work that's either somewhat polished or mostly edited, or maybe just mostly written. It's hard when you have a story that's mostly good, but one or two scenes that aren't working and no betas respond positively to them, but you just know they're important to include in the manuscript.

Absolutely, I'm not advocating leaving in anything that's merely amusing or weakly written, I guess I was skipping those bits of advice we hear all too often, and talking about more advanced parts of the process, where you already clearly know what you're trying to do, but you need to organize it a little in your mind before it'll fit seamlessly with the rest of the edited manuscript?

Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. I had to trim over a thousand words off my post because it was too long, so I basically had to stop writing and start deleting.

Here, let me try again, a simplified version:

1. Brainstorm the information that MUST be in the scene. Here I jot down anything that is really critical to plot, character, world that must be in the scene (especially if it's a first scene).

2. Character motivation comes next. I think about what my characters want and how they intend to get it, and what they'll do if the get it or don't. Also, what they're willing to risk. (raisa wants to buy the girl. She'll make a deal for any amount Strange demands. She also wants to win the game. She'll risk cheating and confrontation to get it.)

3. Challenges are the things that stand in the way of the characters realizing their goals. I plan minor challenges and larger ones. (Strange doesn't agree on a price for the girl, he makes another wager, one that means if Raisa doesn't win the big prize, the girl will cost her more than she really wants to pay, but she's resolved to pay anything. When the bard outplays here, her money is gone, she's flat broke, and all her well-laid plans to pave her way to victory have failed. She feels like a loser, and still has to shell out cash for everything she promised to people, leaving her very desperate for money)

4. I try to pick some idea of where scenes will end, but it's almost impossible for me to be precise about that until I've seen where the writing is going. I keep a sort of eye on word count, prospective word count after cutting or adding, and also pacing. If it looks like a section is getting boring (like after one player is knocked out of Raisa's table and before they all meet at the final table, nothing would happen, so I chose to do a section break there so I didn't have to show nothing happening).

5. Next, I write it. I do a typical rough draft to begin and it's weak and horrible. I give myself some leeway to explore things I hadn't considered (like changing some character traits or maybe introducing some smaller conflicts, like someone playing in bad form and it causes banter, or whatever.)

6. Once I have a rough draft of one scene, I read it a couple times and look for specific things on each read. I look for character on one, and dialogue on the next. Those are my two most important passes. In the first, I want to make sure all my character internal thoughts are consistent (which I wouldn't be so focused on if it didn't have to be consistent with the next two edited chapters and the character's personality throughout the rest of the book), and make sure that she doesn't appear schizophrenic or manic, changing her personality and energy level on a whim. I also look at the MCs interactions with other characters, to analyze whether they feel like old friends, tense rivals, etc. Body language, actions...then words on the next pass. I guess I could do all this on one read-through, and on a first draft I would, but since this is a special case, I'm taking more time to read and check for consistency, because it's not just a new chapter added, it's the FIRST, and therefore, this is the one all my betas will read first now, and so will agents. It needs to shine. I know this probably sounds obsessive, but each pass takes an hour, so it's not like I'm spending a huge amount of time on each individual look. However, sometimes the decisions take me an hour as well, because I'm bad at making decisions.

7. After the scene is pretty tight, I move on to the next. I do the same process in that scene, then I go back and read them both together, just to make sure the nit-picky details are congruent. I don't want to have a player knocked out by full houses both times, because that's repetitive, so I change one. I look at the small details of the setting, analyze the mental imagery i'm try to convey and what I think the reader is getting from my words.

All of this is to make sure that whatever I'm trying to accomplish, it comes across as clear as possible. I'm about to hand this to betas in a few days, and this was totally written to appear a final draft to a beta, not a first draft, or even a sort of polished attempt. I want this chapter to feel just like the other edited chapters they've read, and to give some feedback on whether this works better as a new first chapter. Basically, if I handed over a first draft that felt rough, I'd be expecting it to need a lot of work, and maybe people would just report back that no, it doesn't work as a new first chapter. But if I can polish it like a completed manuscript, like it's been there all along, I'm hoping I can get a clear sense of whether this is a better introduction for my character and world.

Hope that clarifies my previous post. I'm absolutely assuming for the purpose of this post, that a writer has a scene that is being written or edited, that they feel is substandard and they intend to bring it up to the standard of the rest of the manuscript. In hindsight, I should have titled the original post something like that: "Have one weak scene that needs help?" Yeah, that would have been better.