What is needed

[skip.knox]

In working on a scene yesterday, in my notes I said something like, what I need to do here is to establish the setting.

And then I stopped. I rephrased it. What the story needs here is .... and that felt like an important shift in perspective.

Very often I'll say or think about what I want to have happen or how to approach what happens in a story. I hear it from others frequently. To write about X, they'll say, I need to tell them about Y.

That's a warning signal of an impending infodump, but it's really more significant than that. Writing the story, especially in its later stages as it nears completion, shouldn't be about what I want. It should be about what the story needs, what the scene needs, what a character wants or needs.

Now, maybe this seems painfully obvious to some folks, but I'm finding it helpful to take myself out. Or, more accurately, to move the focus to the scene, character, story. When I'm thinking about what *I* believe is needed or even what is interesting, I'm more likely to include the superfluous, more likely to slow things down or create distractions. When I focus on what a scene needs, I'm more economical. It also makes clearer that whether or not it's interesting is up to me as the writer. The scene itself--or the character, setting, plot twist, whatever--isn't intrinsically interesting or dull. If it needs to be there, then it's up to me to make the presentation of that interesting.

I realize the separation is somewhat artificial, a contrivance. But I still find it helpful, so I'll contrive away. When I catch myself (can't always do that; I'm a slippery devil) talking about what I need to do here, I shall stop dead and ask instead what the scene needs. FWIW, this seems to be a bit more useful when revising than when plotting or writing a first draft.

 

[pmmg]

One of my repeated phrases is, give the story what it needs, which oddly, is not always what I would want for my own story. Sometimes, I am just holding on to the runaway train, sometimes I am at the controls. I dont have infodumps, just not in my style, but man I would like some

 

[ThinkerX]

I had to deal with something similar in 'Empire: Judgment,' book six of my 'Empire' series. Towards the end of the book, the bind the characters are in grows ever tighter. Tia spends multiple chapters either going over past events or learning new things about what happened in the past - suppressed bits of history, if you will. Her figuring out what *really* happened and what the bad guys motivations really are plays a key role in the resolution.

 

[Prince of Spires]

It's a nice way of looking at it. I've had a similar experience with the ending of one of my stories. It changed (both in outcome and in tone) because I realized that the story required a different ending than what I had originally thought of. Leaving yourself out of the discussion keeps you honest towards the story.

The challenge was making it satisfying for the reader, but that's a different discussion.

 

[CrystalD]

I've found in th 1st draft I'm writing right now that I've doubled back on character moments plenty of times saying wait aminute, this is what the characters need to do, or need for their development. None of it is what I planned, so it seems the more you write, the more they take on a life of their own, which is always an interesting part of the process. But good musings, definitely something to take to heart.

 

[FifthView]

I recently viewed a YT critique of the direction Marvel and Disney are headed, the various recent failures, that isolated the problem to a lack of producers. So-called "creatives" have been placed in charge of things, but what is needed is a producer, someone who looks after the property and not some personal vision or personal path. Actors, directors, and so forth sometimes get lost in their own vision and forget to view the project as a whole as it relates to the prospective audience.

This is similar to what you are describing, except most authors work quite alone in the early stages. An internal editor is needed to check the impulses of the creative, heh.

 

[Penpilot]

I think you're understating the importance of your discovery. How we frame things matters. It helps us understand what we're trying to accomplish, and that's really important. The more sure of what you're doing, the better the initial results will be, at least that's what I've found.

For me, I like to frame things as questions.

What does X want? Why?
X does this. Why? How?
What's the purpose of this?
How does this fit with the story as a whole?

These are some of the questions I'm constantly asking scene to scene and finding good answers, for me, is key in developing a good scene.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm not sure what you mean by discovery here. It's all acts of creation, and I ask those questions more or less constantly all through the project. I'm not sure what I'm understating. I'm not disagreeing here, just asking for clarification.

 

[Penpilot]

I'm not sure what you mean by discovery here. It's all acts of creation, and I ask those questions more or less constantly all through the project. I'm not sure what I'm understating. I'm not disagreeing here, just asking for clarification.

Maybe I'm not understanding your post, but what I mean is figuring out that a shift in perspective was more helpful in this instance is not an obvious thing. I found that doing things like that are tremendously helpful. It can help put us in the right mindset as we approach scenes. It's like rephrasing a problem statement. For me, sometimes it's not about being able to find the right answer that's the problem, but rather not asking the right questions. Not framing something in a way that's most useful.

The initial statement about "need to establish the setting" wasn't a concrete direction. It was vague. But when you say "what the story needs here is..." it's something more tangible to work with and towards and helps to filter out the noise.

 

[Mad Swede]

I don't think I've ever had that problem, but that might be because I write the bare bones of the key secenes first and then go back and add the rest. That might make it easier, because it's then more apparent what the run-in to the various scenes needs to set things up. My editor still accuses me of being too bare bones though, so maybe you've got it right?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I don't doubt this could be a small part of the issue, but it sounds more like excuses or scapegoating to me. No matter what, movies are a massive group effort. One or two people can muck it up, but only if others allow it to happen. The Director, not the Producer, is in charge of movie-making. The Producer is just part of the money tree and doesn't have much authority in film. In a television series, the so-called showrunner is at the top of the heap, and they try to maintain the artistic vision of the project. I'm sure the Marvel Universe and Star Wars have their version of showrunnrs, I think Kennedy was atop of Star Wars for a long time, and I guarantee you, any failure is going to be chucked like a molten-hot potato. Star Wars is in decline as well as Marvel, and the people responsible for failure or decline are (almost) never held accountable even if they accept blame on some superficial level.

A couple of rather famous screenwriters once described H'wood as having—oh hell, not sure of the exact phrase anymore—but I'll roll with Brain Cloud or Stupidity Cloud hovering over the city that made people think stupid ideas were great. (See Monty Python's Splunge sketch, heh heh) But what that is essentially saying in a humorous fashion is that they exist in an echo chamber, and when you get down to the studio levels, those studios exist with an echo chamber within an echo chamber, and on the set, another layer of echo chamber. Conflicting echos do exist, but they tend to result in chaos or firings or both, and ends with a new echo in the chamber having to deal with all the old echoes.

And even when you do have a powerful, talented showrunner, they can go off the rails.

In this environment, it might be more surprising that they manage to create a streak of hits rather than when they create a streak of failures, heh heh.

And part of this goes for novelists too. A series of anything is difficult to maintain. Rothfuss appears to have gone off the rails... Maybe Martin too. We can't tell 100% because neither has released anything new in a long time, LOL, but Rothfuss' book 2 kinda went squish on landing. 2.5? More so. Third? Many hold out little hope. Martin, so many expect him to die before his next release, and that's way off the rails, heh heh.

I recently viewed a YT critique of the direction Marvel and Disney are headed, the various recent failures, that isolated the problem to a lack of producers. So-called "creatives" have been placed in charge of things, but what is needed is a producer, someone who looks after the property and not some personal vision or personal path. Actors, directors, and so forth sometimes get lost in their own vision and forget to view the project as a whole as it relates to the prospective audience.

This is similar to what you are describing, except most authors work quite alone in the early stages. An internal editor is needed to check the impulses of the creative, heh.