by Jack Bickham
1. You can skip one or more parts, or portray a segment in only a word or two.
2. You can amplify any given portion out of all proportion to the others.
3. You can mix up the normal presentation order of the component segments—i.e., emotion, thought, decision, action—if there is reason to do so.
4. You can interrupt a sequel with the unexpected onset of a new
scene.
5. You can insert one or more remembered scenes within the
thought component.
Let's look at each of these in turn.
1. You can skip one or more parts, or portray a segment in only a word or two.
This point was mentioned earlier in the context of how much any given scene should be developed. A sequel, too, may be lengthened or truncated, depending on the type of story you're writing, the kind of viewpoint character you're "in" at the moment, and the general level of immediate pressure on the character will help determine whether you should skip or gloss over a portion of the sequel, and, if so, how much cutting should be done.
A general rule might be stated as follows: The more painful the receding disaster, the more fully developed the resulting sequel should e. But this is a very general rule only. It stands to reason that a character presented with a really devastating disaster will need more time to get through his reactions and on to new action than would a character presented with a disaster of lesser proportions. But sometimes the disaster is not only a grave one, but one which presents such a pressing, immediate problem that the character simply cannot afford the luxury of thinking about things in a developed manner: New action is required now.
How, for example, are you going to write a fully developed sequel to a disaster like the following?
Waist-deep in the freezing water, Bill swung at Simpson and missed. Simpson stepped forward and caught Bill off balance, knocking him over backwards. Simpson instantly was on top of him, holding his head under the water.
The new goal —to get out from under the water—is obvious. There is simply no time to laboriously go through Bill's emotions, thoughts and rationale for a new decision. About the most you will present in a "sequel" to such a disaster will be something like this:
Terrified, Bill clawed at Simpson's hands. There was no time to think. He simply had to get free now or he was a dead man.
And this is not as tightly as you could write this mini-sequel, you will notice. For, as brief as it is, it is a bit more than a simple internalization— which it very closely resembles—because it does include all the classic component parts of a developed sequel, although obviously supercondensed and out of their normal order.
2. You can amplify any given portion out of all proportion to the others.
If, for example, you suspect at some point in your manuscript that you need to work on reader sympathy for a viewpoint character, you may then elect to work extra hard and long on the emotional portion of a sequel; emotions are universal, and if you can get your reader intensely in touch with your character's emotional state, you will make your reader feel much like the character is feeling at the same time. This leads to identification with the character, and sympathy follows.
In a similar way, you may be at a point in the manuscript where you know you need to review story events for the reader. One of the best ways to do this is by having the character review them. He would do this in the thought segment of a sequel, laboriously reviewing, analyzing, and trying to plan ahead. Or the new decision that is reached might be for a complex plan that involves not only specific ideas for the next goal-motivated action, but plans for other possible scenes later down the road. In portraying all this, and showing the character's logical reasons, you might find that what is often a simple statement of goal could become a multipage statement. Would such a development of your structure worry you? It shouldn't —you still know where you are and what you are doing in terms of structure —you have simply varied from the norm for good reason.
3. You can mix up the normal presentation order of the component segments —i.e., emotion, thought, decision, action —if there is reason to do so.
This was already illustrated in the very-brief little sequel about Bill finding himself being held underwater. The usual sequence has been changed, partly to signify swift action and some confusion in Bill's mind.
For another example, let's consider a hypothetical plot situation in which Michael has been having an argument with his friend Chuck, as a result of which Chuck (a sick man) gets angrier and angrier —and finally as a result of the stress of conflict keels over in a dead faint. (This comes perilously close to being an illogical disaster, but bear with me for the purposes of illustration.) In such a case, Michael's sequel might very well go something like this:
(Action) Michael rushed to kneel beside Chuck and press his fingers against his friend's carotid artery. Chuck's pulse fluttered with crazy irregularity.
{Emotion) Suddenly sick with fear,
(Action) Michael ran to the telephone and dialed 911. Waiting for someone to answer,
(Thought) He realized that the argument had brought on this apparent heart attack.
(Decision) Now he had to keep Chuck alive until help could arrive,
(Thought) But he knew he didn't have the knowledge to do so.
(Emotion) His fear intensified.
(And so on.)
But note, please, that in order to write such a sequel, disorganized to some degree to portray the confusion of the situation, it had to be planned first in the classic order, i.e. —
(Emotion) Suddenly sick with fear,
(Thought) Michael realized instantly that it must be a heart attack, brought on by the argument.
(Decision) He had to keep Chuck alive.
(Action) He knelt to check his friend's erratic pulse, then ran to the telephone and dialed 911.
4. You can interrupt a sequel with the unexpected onset of a new scene.
This variation does not require much elaboration this far into our discussion. Why would you rudely interrupt a sequel in this manner?
• To speed up the pace of the manuscript.
• To prevent the character from having time right now to figure something out that you want him puzzling about a while longer yet.
• To show an intensification of pressure on the character via interruption by outside influence.
• To vary from the usual structure just to keep your reader off balance.
If you employ such an interruption in your story, however, please remember what was said before about deviations of this nature. Your reader may not know a scene from a turnip, but he has learned to have a strong sense of structure whether he knows it or not. By interrupting a sequel, you may gain one of the advantages just listed. You may also temporarily increase the reader's "pleasant discomfort" as he fidgets, wondering (consciously or unconsciously) how this sequel is going to turn out when we can get back to it. But to keep Mr. Reader happy, and satisfy his yearning for structural completion, you must show the rest of this sequel at some point, or at the very least have your character think about how it concluded, or tell someone else in the story how it concluded.
5. You can insert one or more remembered scenes within the thought component.
Such remembered scenes can be either from background that took place before the present story began on page 1, or from events that this particular character witnessed while offstage in the present story. Appendix 5 provides a good example of this technique, along with further discussion.
Your readers sense structure, and expect their stories to adhere to structural principles. However much you choose to vary, you will be wise to see to it that the reader's vaguely realized expectations will somehow finally be met, and that strings will not be left hanging. So even if things come out of order, scene will be shown eventually to end in disaster, for example, sequel will show character emotion and thought, and so on.
As an exercise, if you want to study variations further, co
nsider writing a few interlocking scenes and sequels in the classic order of parts, with nothing left out or misplaced in any way. (You may already have some such scenes from work suggested earlier.) Study some of these structural units and try to figure ways you might vary from the norm. Perhaps you will want to go so far as to rewrite a few as variants.
Having done this work, ask yourself which version you like best. Why? Which was easier to write? Why?
See Appendix 5.
CHAPTER 10
COMMON ERRORS IN SCENES AND HOW TO FIX THEM
Its Possible To Think You Understand scene structure, yet fall prey now and again to any of a number of common errors. Here is a partial list of things that can go wrong:
1. Too many people in the scene.
2. Circularity of argument.
3. Unwanted interruptions.
4. Getting off the track.
5. Inadvertent summary.
6. Loss of viewpoint.
7. Forgotten scene goal.
8. Unmotivated opposition.
9. Illogical disagreement.
10. Unfair odds.
11. Overblown internalizations.
12. Not enough at stake.
13. Inadvertent red herrings.
14. Phony, contrived disasters.
Whew! A list of horrors if I ever saw one. But luckily you seldom make more than one of them in any given scene, and once you've been warned to watch out for them, you can avoid them all. So let's look.
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
As I thought about No. 1, "Too many people in the scene," an old Henny Youngman gag ran through my mind. Man holds his arm over his head and tells his doctor, "It hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Then don't do that." The advice for fixing some of the scene errors listed above might be made to look almost that stupid:
You: "I've got too many characters in my scene. How do I fix it?"
Me: "Take some of them out."
Fortunately, we can make both the nature of the problem and the way to fix it a bit clearer than that.
How many characters are too many in a scene? In the usual scene of confrontation between story people, the fight is best understood if it's head to head—meaning just two people, the viewpoint character and his antagonist. Sometimes a story situation will demand that others be present—that your hero must confront the board of directors and fight all of them, for example—but the wise writer will set up her story scenes oneon-one whenever possible.
Why? Because if you put in more characters, you split the reader's focus on the two principal antagonists, thus confusing him. Also, other people standing around in the scene always seem to want to butt in, making it infinitely harder for you to continue with straightforward stimulusresponse dialogue or action because your viewpoint character is being sent stimuli from more than one source. And there are all sorts of lesser nagging problems. If you have other characters in the scene, you have to keep shifting the focus a bit to describe how they're standing or how their expression may change or something equally bothersome from the creative standpoint.
If you check some of your own scenes and find mobs (any more than two people!) in a lot of them, try figuring out ways to get the extras off the set and playing the same scene mano a mano. If you can't figure out any credible way to cut the cast of your scene to just the two fighters, then consider other ways to render them dramatically invisible: Get all the bit players talking amongst themselves at the far end of the room during the party scene, for example, or have that irritating third person called to talk on the telephone across the hall — or even have your viewpoint character or his antagonist tell the rest of the people nearby to shut up and not interrupt again. Be ready to do almost anything to narrow the focus to just the two main people in the conflict.
Having done so, you'll find the scene not only easier to write, but probably a lot more intense and dramatic, too.
When you read the term "circularity of argument" in the list of common scene errors, it could have rung a bell for you. Very early in our discussion of scene conflict we noted that the participants can't be allowed to fall into one of those childish "Did not! — Did so! — Did not!" arguments that can go on endlessly and never get anywhere. But sometimes we can be aware of a principle, and still find ourselves failing to follow it.
It's hard, sometimes, to avoid circularity, two characters going around and around in conflict over a towering central issue. As a matter of fact, the bigger and more important the issue, the more strongly motivated the opposing sides will tend to be; and the more motivated., the more focused —so that sometimes it's in the biggest and most important scenes that you will most likely fall into fatal circularity.
How do you avoid this and still maintain focus on the scene goal?
1. You draw up a game plan for both opponents going into the scene —arguments they will use, tricks they may try, various responses they will have ready if the opponent does such-and-so. You don't tip off either game plan ahead of time, but in the viewpoint character's brief internalizations, you can take note of it every time one gambit has failed or been stalled, and he moves to another tack. In like fashion, your viewpoint character can take note of it for the reader whenever he notices that the antagonist has subtly switched lines of argument.
2. You make sure that the viewpoint character keeps repeating his scene goal at regular intervals, but having once reminded the reader where the fight's central focus is, you allow the characters to move a bit off the straight line of development and argue about other, related issues.
For example, your hero might walk into a scene intent on selling the schoolteacher a set of encyclopedias. But by page three of the conflict, still remembering his goal, your hero might be defending door-to-door salespeople in general, or arguing that encyclopedias don't really go out of date inside a year, as the antagonist has just insisted. When things like this develop, the issue of the scene seems to broaden, and not become circular, while the reader's focus is kept strong.
The issue of unwanted interruptions was partly covered a moment ago in talking about having too many people onstage during the scene. Another common error made by thoughtless writers, however, is in allowing "fateful" telephone calls or sudden knocks on the closed door to interrupt everything. The intent of all such interruptions is to make the scene "more like real life," or to "confuse the situation." They make the scene more lifelike and confusing, all right—but not to the betterment of the scene. Unless such interruptions are to play some direct, dramatic role in the development of the conflict, they should not be allowed to occur. If you find some in your copy for no really good reason, you should slash them out and let the scene play uninterrupted.
Often it seems to the frustrated writer that handling one technique well only makes her aware of a related problem. That is often the case when you get off the track in developing the conflict portion of your scene. You concentrate so hard on avoiding circularity, introducing new angles in the argument, etc., that you find yourself four or five pages into the scene and off the course you planned for the scene at the outset.
Vigilance to the danger of getting off the track is constant for all of us. And it does sometimes seem that the better we get at introducing new angles, new maneuvers, new side issues, and new trial balloons in the course of a conflict, the more one of them tends to grab center stage and lead us too far afield from the central issue.
Staying on track during the conflict, however, is mandatory even at times when side issues are being argued. How do you make sure that you don't wander too far afield?
First and most important, always make sure that the scene goal has been stated clearly and succinctly. As you already know, this is vital so the reader will follow the struggle with a clear understanding of the scene question and how it relates to the story question. Additionally, however, if you the author keep it clearly in mind —and even have the protagonist restate it every once in a while during the conflict—you are less likely to allow the dialogue or f
ight to get too far off the subject.
How far should one go as a writer to make sure she stays close enough to the scene goal, while still allowing movement around it? Long ago, before I had sold any novels, I trusted myself to remember the goal clearly during every scene. Finally, after still another rejection slip for a novel in which I thought I had the scenes working just right, I adopted a desperation tactic: For every scene to be in the book, I wrote the goal in large letters on a 3 x 5 file card. I pasted these all over the wall in front of my old Underwood standard typewriter, in the sequence I planned to present them. Thus, every time I started a new scene or muddled my way through one, all I had to do to remember the goal was to look up at the wall in front of me.
Pretty silly, right?
The manuscript that resulted from this strategy was the first I ever sold. I continued to mess up my wall with new cards through quite a few more books before again trusting myself to remember. It's a stratagem I often suggest to writers who seem to stray from the track in their scene conflicts.
Another interior story-type device that helps you stay on the track — in addition to having the protagonist insist on repeating it often during the conflict —is to have the antagonist say, on a few occasions, something like:
"I know what you want here, Archie. It's (scene goal). But you can't get it from me."
Still another device to help maintain strong central goal focus through all sorts of twistings and turnings in the conflict is to have the viewpoint character go into a few internalizations and, in effect, evaluate what's happening right now in terms of the scene goal. Sometimes this kind of issueorienting internalization is almost as crudely stated as this example:
We're getting pretty far from the question of my getting a loan, here. But if I can convince him I'm a good businessman with my sales charts, maybe achieving that aim will make him look more favorably on my scene goal.