Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure

by Jack Bickham

  Writers with such fears must force themselves to develop their conflict in face of the fear. If you are such a one, you will find that boldly going ahead into the "impossibly difficult" conflict portion will stretch your abilities as a writer —and make you better than you thought you could ever be.

  In the writing of a long book, the writer may also simply fall victim to fatigue. Writing a big scene —vicariously experiencing all the strong emotions and then struggling to get them onto paper in the most effective way— is a tiring, draining process. The result of such fatigue, if not recognized, may be the production of scenes later in a manuscript which simply do not have full possible development because the writer was tired — physically, intellectually, emotionally.

  If you ever find yourself feeling such fatigue—and suspect that it might be diluting your scene-writing—there is only one possible solution: a brief rest away from the manuscript. For one writer, sufficient rest might come from an afternoon of golf, while another might need to take a week off while she works on entirely unrelated problems at her accounting firm. Each writer must determine for herself if and when she gets overtired, and how she will rest herself.

  NATURE OF THE DISASTER

  You can see at this point that goals you pick for a scene, and how you handle the conflict portion, have a direct impact on the disaster at the end of the scene. But picking perfect goals and developing all the correct, intense angles of the conflict section do not necessarily guarantee that your scene-ending disaster will be "just right" also. It's possible to make every creative move perfectly up to the moment of the disaster —and then fall flat on your face.

  Suppose you find, somewhere in the development of your plot, that "things have suddenly gone wrong." Don't —as already mentioned — imagine that the characters have taken over, that inspiration has failed you, or that it was all a bad idea to start with. Instead, work backward in the pages you have produced and examine each disaster that has befallen your hero at the end of each scene. At some point you will find a disaster that made the scope of all to follow either too large or too insignificant; made the results of the disaster too immediate or not pressing and immediate enough; caused a result that was too final (or not a significant change at all); or of a type that sent the story line off on a wrong vector that your original plot didn't foresee.

  As implied in everything that has gone before in this chapter, you may at such a point have to go back and examine the kind of goal you set up for that erroneous scene, and if that doesn't show where you went wrong, you may have to analyze the steps you put into the conflict in an attempt to spot where you made a wrong move that foreordained the wrong kind of disaster. If you find any such error, of course you must fix it. But what if these parts of every scene seem fine, and you're still off course?

  In such a case, it's likely that you wrote a good scene, but then slipped at the very end—tacking on the wrong kind of disaster.

  Disaster, you will remember, must follow logically out of the stated goal, and grow logically but unexpectedly out of the conflict which grew out of the stated goal. A common structural problem in devising sceneending disasters is failure by the author to consider the inevitable later plot results if a particular logical, unanticipated and generally acceptable disaster is selected to end the scene.

  To put this another way, errors of scope, immediacy and finality usually come about because something went wrong in the goal or conflict portions of the scene. Errors of direction of result usually happen because something went wrong in precisely how the disaster was presented at the end of the scene.

  Let me provide just one or two outlandish examples, and again — for the last time, I promise—we can use Fred as our illustration.

  Let's say you've had Fred go in to try to get his loan, then have a stirring, just-right tiff with the banker. Now, seeking a good disaster with which to end the scene, you decide to have the banker say, "Fred, yes you can have your loan, but you must first climb Pikes Peak to prove to me that you are capable of this major expedition to Nepal." This is perfectly fine except in terms of story direction; such a disaster is going to send Fred to Colorado, and a climb up Pikes Peak, and you didn t intend that to be in the story at all. Obviously, what you have to do in this case is go back and tinker with the disaster, making Mr. Greenback say something else.

  Or imagine for a moment that you still have a fine goal statement and excellent conflict development in the scene, but for a disaster you decide to have Fred fight so hard —and get so angry —that he has a heart attack. This is a grand disaster, all right—but such a disaster has headed your story in the direction of the hospital.

  Of such thoughtless inspirations are lost stories made. But they can almost always be fixed, once you identify the single disaster-error that sent things reeling off in the wrong direction.

  I had a clear demonstration of this fact some years ago when I wrote a novel centered on a murder mystery. Halfway through the book, my hero met a disaster which forced him to leave town—we'll call it Centerville —and go off to another state in search of new evidence. I thought the book was fine, but when I sent it in, my editor sent it back at once with a curt rejection slip.

  I called him. "What's wrong with it?" I asked.

  "The story is just fine," he told me, "until Richard leaves Centerville. After that, the story never seems quite right again because you've lost all your local color."

  Brooding about this, it dawned on me that my editor was (as usual) quite right about there being something wrong with the book. Looking back through the manuscript, I found a crucial scene just before my hero left town. In that scene, halfway through the book, my hero sought out a friend and struggled through a long conversation with him, trying to get him to give the name of someone previously seen near the murder site. As written, the disaster was, in effect, "The man I saw was George, but he isn't in town anymore, and I don't know where he went."

  This was fine, structurally. Goal: Learn who was near. (Scene question: Will hero learn who was near?) Conflict: Informant doesn't want to tell. Disaster: Yes, hero learns it was George, but now he has to go off elsewhere and search for George.

  It immediately became clear at this point in my analysis that all I had to do was change the nature of the disaster. Simplicity itself: Hero asks friend for information, just as before. But the new disaster: "Yes, Mr. Hero, I know who was near the murder site, but it was the son of the mayor, and you will never be able to pin anything on such a prominent person."

  I called my editor back. "You don't like the last part where he leaves town?" I asked.

  "That's right," the editor said.

  "Okay," I said. "Then I'll fix it so he never leaves town."

  "My God!" my editor said. "Why didn't I think of that?"

  Of course in this case the last half of the novel had to be extensively rewritten. But much of the action that had previously taken place somewhere else transferred very nicely to the new circumstances which logically followed the changing of a single disaster midway in the manuscript.

  Although several later chapters will go into greater detail about the structure and content of scenes, and how they fit into a larger pattern, you have been given quite enough here to allow yourself considerable study of your own work to assure that you are writing basically sound scenes. Let me urge you to go through your work and mark the scene-opening goal statement in red, the conflict portion in blue, and the disaster in black. Then, with other colors, go back through the conflict section and underline in a different color each subtle shift of argument or change in tactics you can identify.

  Having done all this, go back through yet another time and circle in some additional color every time you have allowed your hero to repeat or reiterate his scene goal. If you have kept things on the track, even a complicated scene with many shifts in the argument will find the hero trying doggedly on several occasions to repeat what he's here for. (This keeps him a bit on the track, and it doesn't hurt the reade
r's continuing sense of focus on the scene question, either.)

  There will be more about repetition of the scene goal in chapter 10.

  Finally, whether you work on a story you have on the drafting table or do it strictly as an exercise, please take at least a half dozen 5x7 file cards and plan some scenes.

  At the top of each card, write the word Goal and then fill out in ten words or less what your central character wants in this scene.

  Two lines below, write the word Conflict and write down who the conflict is to be with, where the conflict is to take place, how long in story time the conflict is to last, and at least four twists or turns that the conflict is to take during its playing out.

  Near the bottom of the card, write the word Disaster. Write down what the disaster would be for this scene.

  These working cards do not have to link. They can, in other words, be isolated imagined scenes from as many different possible novels. But if you can make some of them hook together, one behind the other in a cause-and-effect fashion, so much the better. For that's what you do when you plot.

  CHAPTER 6

  PLANNING AND REVISING SCENES FOR MAXIMUM EFFECT

  When I Was A Child, longer ago than I like to admit, there was a children's storybook tale that never ceased to fascinate me. It was the story of the old woman and the pig.

  The old woman, it seemed, went to market one day and bought a fine, live pig. Walking homeward, with the pig on a leash, she came upon a fence across her route. There was a ladder-like contraption—a stile— built to help one climb over the fence. But the pig was too large for the woman to pick up and carry over.

  "Pig, pig," the old woman said. "Jump over the stile or I won't get home tonight." But the pig wouldn't.

  Looking around in search of help, the old woman saw a dog nearby.

  "Dog, dog," she said. "Bite pig. The pig won't jump over the stile, and I won't get home tonight." But the dog wouldn't.

  Looking further, the old woman spied a stick.

  "Stick, stick, beat dog," she implored. "Dog won't bite pig, pig won't jump over the stile, and I won't get home tonight." But the stick wouldn't.

  Still looking for help, the old woman came upon a fire.

  "Fire, fire," she said, "burn stick! Stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, pig won't jump over the stile, and I won't get home tonight." But the fire wouldn't.

  The old woman was not a quitter. She had her story goal —to get home—and I the reader had my story question: Would she get home that night? So she kept moving along intent on her story goal, and soon came to a pool of water.

  "Water, water, quench fire," she urged. "Fire won't burn stick, stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, pig won't jump over the stile, and I won't get home tonight!" But —you guessed it —the water wouldn't.

  So—but you've begun to get the idea, I'm sure.

  As a small child, I was not only fascinated with this story, but can still recall a certain degree of worry and tension in me as my mother read the tale to me over and over again. It was only many years later that it dawned on me that the story worked because all the scenes worked so well, all relating very clearly to the story question, and all ending in a disaster. (The pattern was too predictable for adult fiction —all simple "No!" disasters ending every scene, but it was just fine for a two year old.)

  What does this have to do with planning and revising scenes for maximum effect? Actually, quite a lot. It illustrates several points that you the author must bear in mind when you're planning or revising in terms of scene structure and their linkages:

  1. The goal of each scene must clearly relate to the story question in some way.

  2. The conflict must be about the goal.

  3. The conflict must be with another person or persons, not internally, within oneself.

  4. Once a viewpoint has been established and that viewpoint character's problem and goal have been stated, it's wise to remain with that same, single viewpoint through the disaster.

  5. Disaster works (moves the story forward) by seeming to move the central figure further back from his goal, leaving him in worse trouble than he was before the scene started.

  6. Readers will put up with a lot if your scenes will only keep making things worse!

  7. You can seldom, if ever plan, write, or revise a scene in isolation of your other plans for your story, because the end of each scene dictates a lot about what can happen later.

  We've earlier discussed points 1, 2 and 3 above. They are listed again for additional emphasis. The moment a reader can't see the relevance to the story question of whatever is stated as a scene goal, the reader almost surely will yawn and lose interest in that upcoming scene. The moment the conflict in the scene turns so far from the stated scene goal that relevance is no longer imaginable, the reader will throw your story against the wall in irritated confusion. The moment the conflict goes "all inside," with nothing happening outside the character's mind, the very essence of scene —onstage conflict —is lost, and the reader will go to sleep.

  Points 4 through 7, above, merit greater discussion. To repeat:

  4. Once a viewpoint has been established and that viewpoint character's problem and goal have been stated, it's wise to remain with that same, single viewpoint through the disaster.

  A thoroughgoing analysis of viewpoint as a fiction technique is beyond the scope of this book. I feel confident you already understand a lot about viewpoint, or my earlier somewhat casual mentions of the technique would have put you off before you got this far. But at the risk of being repetitious, let's just say once again that viewpoint is the technique by which the author picks a character inside the story, then tells the story from that person's view, so that the reader sees, hears, feels, and knows only what that viewpoint character can experience. Of course it's possible to have a so-called omniscient viewpoint, where the reader is made privy to the sense impressions, feelings and thoughts of virtually everyone in the story, but it's a terribly difficult way to write, and not very popular today. After all, each of us lives his or her life in a single viewpoint, so why not tell the story the same way?

  Of course in long stories, especially modern novels, the author may decide to show the reader the viewpoint of several characters. It's not often, however, that you see the author jumping continuously from the head and heart of one character to the head and heart of another. Even novelists who write "multiple viewpoint" stories seldom jump the viewpoint around every paragraph or two. Most choose to limit the viewpoint in any given scene to a single character in that scene — invariably the character with the strongest, clearest goal motivation going in. To say this a different way: The goal that starts a scene ordinarily should be stated by the story person who is to be the viewpoint character in that scene. And once this viewpoint has been established, you will be wise to stay in that viewpoint at least through the disaster ending the scene.

  Why should this be so? For one thing, your reader will tend strongly to identify with, and sympathize with, whatever character you make the viewpoint character. So if you have Bobbie open the scene with a statement of a goal, you should usually establish her as the viewpoint character at the same time because by so doing you will instantly help your reader decide whose side to take in the conflict that lies just ahead.

  Another reason for giving the starting scene goal to the viewpoint character is the fact that you can better keep track of the goal—and how things are going—if you can slip into the viewpoint character's head every once in a while, as the scene goes along, to remind the reader what the scene goal is, and provide the reader with some indication of how the lead character thinks things are going at this point.

  "But," I can almost hear you protesting, "if the conflict is supposed to be external, and not inside the character's head, how can I get into that character's head to show how he thinks things are going?" That's a good question, but if you will reflect, you will realize that you already know the answer, and have the technique.


  Remember how stimulus-response transactions work, with an internalization in the middle? Simply recognize that there will be a number of sharp twists and small setbacks during the conflict portion of the scene, and your viewpoint character will experience each of these turns as a stimulus; before he replies in most cases you the author have the option of going into his brief internalization concerning what was just said or done. It is in these internalizations that you can remind the reader what's at stake, and how things seem to be going in the opinion of the viewpoint character.

  One example of this technique has already been provided for you in the extended example from one of my own novels you read in chapter 3. At that time, it did not seem fitting to make an issue of the role of the character Collie Davis's internalizations, as we were focusing on other aspects of stimulus and response. But now you may wish to review that excerpt again.

  The fact that you may also do things to further characterize the viewpoint character during such periodic brief internalizations is a bonus factor that's discussed at greater length in chapter 9.

  To cast some of what's just been said in a negative way for added clarity, let's put it this way: Anytime you change viewpoint inside an ongoing scene, you risk confusing the reader about the goal, losing reader sympathy for the desired character, putting the spotlight of reader-identification in the wrong place, and muddying the dramatic waters in terms of what is at stake for whom—and even where the reader is to imagine himself "being" and experiencing what's happening.

  The moral: Unless you are an accomplished, published professional with very sound tactical reasons for doing so, avoid those viewpoint changes inside a scene.

  5. Disaster works (moves the story forward) by seeming to move the central figure further back from his goal, leaving him in worse trouble than he was before the scene started.