The next morning was fiercely windy and as he crossed into Texas passing some purple beehives and a sign that read SEE THE WORLD'S LARGEST PRAIRIE DOG, 3 Ml WEST, the wind increased, banged at the car with irregular bursts and slams. Tumbleweeds, worn small by a winter's thrashing, rolled across the road in the hundreds. Sheets of plastic, food wrappers, sacks, papers, boxes, rags flew, catching on barbwire fences where they flapped until a fresh gust tore them loose. The landscape churned with detritus.
—That Old Ace in the Hole, by Annie Proulx
Proulx gives us another page or so of description like this, before the scene action begins, all in keeping with the tone of the story.
Notice the details, building one upon the other, all adding to the mood. This is double duty at work. Not just descriptions, but ones that are relevant to the strategy.
Another good use of the leisurely opening is to show the passage of time.
It was the rainiest May ever. A sense of ordinary life had established itself by late winter, had risen from the chaos and comfort of schedules and lazy weekends, school vacations, colds and flus and dentist appointments, long sleepy Saturday mornings of drawing together in Mattie's bed. In early spring, they threw off their jackets and tore outside. The garden was in full crazy bloom and the children were growing like Topsy, too, as Isa always said. They now spend three weekends a month with Nicky and Lee ...
—Blue Shoe, by Anne Lamott
In Medias Res
A good default setting, even in literary fiction, is to start a scene as close to the scene action as possible. By central action I mean the heart of the scene, the reason you're writing it. What Raymond Obstfeld calls the "hot spot."
In medias res means "in the middle of things," and that's what you should go for. Often you can cut some flab off the opening of a scene and make it move a little faster. For example, a chapter might begin like this:
It was warm on Tuesday. The sun beat down on the pavement like Lucifer's hammer. The whole city seemed drenched in a torpor unrelenting in its somnolence. Don fought the traffic all the way into the heart of the city but happily found a lot that didn't cost a second mortgage to park.
He walked up Main Street, starting to sweat in his white cotton shirt. The Massingale Building was right there where it always was. Funny, he thought. Did I expect it to move? Expect it to hide from what I'm about to do?
He took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to Suite 415.
Clearing his throat, Don drew his gun and charged in.
"Nobody move!" he shouted.
Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with this opening. It all depends on your strategy. But if this is supposed to be a fast-moving, action type of novel, you have other ways to do it.
Don drew his gun and charged into Suite 415. "Nobody move!" he shouted.
You can then take whatever in the description you want to use and marble it in throughout the scene.
Don can notice the stifling heat, for example, because the buildings air conditioning system is down. Another way to start is like this:
"Nobody move!" Don shouted. He pointed his gun at the startled receptionist in Suite 415.
Vary your openings. Don't always lead off with the same rhythms. Use dialogue, thoughts, and description, but always put them close to the hot spot.
Establish Viewpoint
Your scene openings must quickly establish the viewpoint character. Whose scene is this? Readers need to know.
Next, tell us what is important to that viewpoint character. What is her agenda? What is her objective? The whole reason she's "onstage" in the first place?
You can do this explicitly or implicitly.
Explicit
Margie walked into the Red Canary looking for Bob. She was going to lay him out once and for all. Let him know exactly what she thought of him. Take her for granted, would he?
Implicit
Margie walked into the Red Canary. She looked around. Where was Bob? She noticed her hands clenching and unclenching. She paused, trying to slow her breathing.
You use the implicit opening when, from the scenes preceding, it's obvious what the character is feeling and thinking.
The exception to this is when the action in the scene is meant to be a surprise. Perhaps we don't know how Margie feels about Bob but will find out when she hits him over the head with a pitcher of beer.
But most of the time you want readers clued in on who wants what in the scene, so they can enjoy the tension of wondering how things will turn out.
Intensity
Remember Hitchcock's axiom: You don't want dull parts in your fiction, and dull parts are those without trouble.
The greater the trouble, the greater the intensity. You want to have some sort of tension in every scene, though it doesn't have to be of the highest sort. That would wear out the reader. Modulating tension is one of the keys to writing fiction. You give your readers some breathing room, too.
But when they breathe, let it be with a tight chest. Always look at your scenes to see if there are ways you can ratchet up the tension a few degrees. Can you:
• Make the stakes more important?
• Make the odds greater?
• Make the characters care more?
• Make the incidents more challenging?
• Bring in a surprise character?
• Have the setting or weather provide an obstacle?
Prompt
The last paragraph or line of your scene has one purpose: to get the reader to read on. It prompts him forward in some fashion.
While there are going to be innumerable possibilities for you at the end of each scene, here's a list of some:
• a mysterious line of dialogue
• an image that's full of foreboding (like the fog rolling in)
• a secret suddenly revealed
• a major decision or vow
• announcement of a shattering event
• reversal or surprise—new information that suddenly turns the story around
• a question left hanging in the air
Greg Iles uses foreboding—literally!—for this scene ending from Sleep No More. This scene is early in the suspense novel. John Waters is a young husband and father, with what seems to be the perfect life. But then he happens to encounters a stunningly beautiful mystery woman at his daughter's soccer game, one who reminds him of a lover he had before he was married.
Waters turned back to the dark river, his gut hollow with foreboding, his mind roiling with images of two women, neither of whom was his wife.
Iles capitalizes on this to create a scene ending that hints of dark tones to come (the use of the word dark in relation to the river is the right choice of word): hollow foreboding in the gut. And the images of two women roiling in his mind, with the reminder that he has a wife he's not thinking of. A recipe for disaster to come.
A sense of foreboding—or discomfort, anger, frustration, confusion—is inner trouble for the character, and trouble is always enticing for the reader.
Here are some chapter-ending lines from an early Stephen King novel, Christine:
It was bad from the start. And it got worse in a hurry.
*
That's what I thought. But that time I was wrong.
*
"Dennis," he said, "I'll do what I can."
*
That night I didn't get back to sleep too quickly.
*
But I'm a little older now.
*
We went up, and tired as I was, I lay awake a long time. It had been an eventful day. Outside, a night wind tapped a branch softly against the side of the house, and far away, downtown, I heard some kid's rod peeling rubber—it made a sound in the night like a hysterical woman's desperate laughter.
*
It was a question he shrank from. He was afraid of the answer.
Work on your HIPs. It will pay off in greater readability. It will give your book an irresistible forward moti
on, and that's what you want. Challenge your readers. Make them miss appointments because they can't put your book down.
THE PRESSURE COOKER
Legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky was, in the 1950s, called "the bard of the commonplace." He wrote about ordinary characters (as in Marty) who become sympathetic through their everyday struggles.
He did this by placing them in a pressure cooker.
An example is his film Middle of the Night with Fredric March and Kim Novak. It's about a middle-aged widower, successful but lonely, and a twenty-four-year-old girl, beautiful but nervous. Ordinary people surround them—his sister and daughter and son-in-law (Martin Balsam), and her mother and sister. Also a fifty-nine-year-old salesman at March's work (who attempts suicide).
All of them seem ordinary yet interesting in their ordinariness because their anxieties are understandable to us (we know we have, or would have, the same) and pressed to the limit in the story. March is desperately lonely and tries to hide it (the tension shows in a wonderful phone call scene early on). Finally he breaks and practically begs the girl to love him.
She is anxious, almost to a neurotic degree. She has been used by men physically (including her ex-husband) and she does have passions. She wants to be truly loved but is afraid if she does love March he will eventually abandon her (he, on the other hand, is constantly worried about her being attracted to another man).
Balsam has a great scene as a henpecked husband with a controlling wife who finally bursts and makes a plea that his wife cares more for her father than she does for him.
Novak's mother is tightly wound and tries to convince Novak to dump March and go back to her ex-husband.
Each scene has some sort of this tension built in. It's like his characters are pressure cookers. The anxieties cause them to tremble inside a little, and these anxieties gradually build until the characters explode to relieve the pressure.
So, in every scene, ask about the characters' inner anxieties:
• Are they understandable, human?
• Are they on the way to being pressed to the limit?
• How can you show, subtly or overtly, the pressure?
• What will be the consequences of the explosion?
MOVE AROUND
Avoid "talking heads." That is, two characters talking where nothing else is taking place. Give a scene some sort of motion, either with the characters themselves or something around them.
I was writing a scene once where my Lead, a lawyer, visits a client who runs a lumberyard. They meet in the yard, then the client invites the Lead into his office to talk. That seemed natural, as the reason for the scene is mainly for the lawyer to tell the client he has to pull out of the case.
A couple of things hit me. First, one reason we jump to static scenes is when the main purpose is to exchange story information verbally. So we get the characters into a place where they can talk. Logical, but static.
Then I remembered one of the things I like most about my favorite TV show, Law & Order (the Moriarty/Noth/Orbach years). When the detectives interview witnesses, they usually go to their place of business and interview them as the witness is walking around working. It's a great way to avoid talking heads and also provides some opportunities for conflict, as in "I have to get back to work now" (at which point Orbach says something like, "Maybe we'll talk at the precinct next time").
So I rewrote the scene as a "walk and talk." Here's part of it:
Pete was holding a clipboard and talking on a cell phone out in the yard. Stacks of lumber in various cuts and sizes created a bunker feel, as if this might be ground zero against a military attack. Sam felt besieged, and a bit like a traitor.
It hurt even more when Pete smiled at him and checked out of his call. "Sam, nice surprise."
Pete's grip was strong this time, invested with optimism. Sweat glistened on his arms.
"Moving a lot of wood?" Sam said in a feeble attempt at small talk.
"If that Valley Circle development goes through—you know the one out at the end of Roscoe—we'll move a whole bunch."
"That'd be nice."
"We could use it. Walk and talk?"
"Sure."
Pete clipped his cell phone on his belt and started walking toward the north end of the yard. "You have some news," Pete said.
"Yes."
"Good?"
"In the long run, I think it will..."
A forklift loaded with 2 x 10s rumbled past them, drowning Sam's words. He didn't want to shout.
Pete's face clouded. "You think we'll lose." "No."
"What then?"
"Pete, I have to pull out."
"I thought we—"
"Something's happened to my family, Pete." Pete nodded. "The legal thing with that guy? Listen, I don't care—" "Thing is, I can't give my best to you because of it. I've tried, but you need somebody who can give a hundred percent."
A man in a blue work shirt and baseball hat shouted to Pete from the loading bay. "Hey Mr. Harper, you want us to house that load of air-dried?"
"Do it," Pete answered. "Which space?" "Just pick one!"
Now Sam felt a double dose of guilt. He'd become a workplace irritant. "I'm sorry, Pete. I shouldn't have bothered you here."
UNDERSTANDING SUMMARY
Our discussion of scenes would not be complete without an explanation of summary. Whereas scene gives the feeling of happening in real time, in front of you—think of watching a scene on a movie screen, for example—summary is the author or narrator merely relating what happened, telling us about it rather than showing us beat by beat.
Summaries are essential for fiction because not everything needs to be shown. For example, Mary and her husband, Frank, have an argument. Frank storms out and slams the door. Mary decides to go to the store to buy some groceries. At the store, she'll run across an old boyfriend, who will make new moves on her.
The obvious scenes are the argument and the scene in the store. Those are scenes we'll want to see beat by beat. But getting Mary to the store doesn't need to be shown, because it would only slow things down.
Summary is the way to get Mary from the first scene to the next in short order. Such summaries are also called transitions.
Here's how it works, picking up at the end of the argument scene:
"You can just stick it where the sun don't shine!" Frank grabbed his coat.
"You can't talk to me that way!" Mary said, "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to my mother's, if it's any of your business."
"You will not leave this house."
Frank opened the door. "I guess it's true what they say. A boy's best friend is his mother." He slammed the door behind him.
Mary stood there for a moment, feeling like a prize fool. She saw the flowers he'd brought home the night before. She picked up the vase and slammed it to the floor.
I'd better calm down.
She grabbed her car keys.
Ten minutes later she was walking down the cracker aisle at Ralph's.
That last line is summary. It spares us from seeing Mary walking out the door, getting in her car, backing out, taking a right on Olive Street, and so on. We don't need that. We just need to get her to the store.
Summary does that for us. It can also be used to set up a scene.
If the story is really about Mary meeting her former boyfriend, Lance, and you don't want to dwell on the argument with Frank, use summary:
Mary wondered if she should really go through with this. Meeting Lance at Starbucks was a risk. But she and Frank had gone through another of their frequent arguments, the kind that ended with her breaking a vase. It was getting expensive living with Frank. She hoped Lance would buy the coffee.
She pulled into a parking spot in front of Starbucks and her heart spiked. Lance was sitting at a table, looking right at her.
Finally, you can use summary if you need to cover a lot of ground quickly, as Stuart Woods does in Short Straw:
&nb
sp; "Amigo," Vittorio replied, "what are the three best hotels in Puerto Vallarta?"
"Well, Senor, there are many fine hotels, but if I must, I will name three." He did so.
"Okay, let's start with those." Vittorio broke the seal on the box containing his guns, which he had checked through, and returned them and the magazines to his holsters. The first two desk clerks took his money
and denied all knowledge of Barbara Eagle, under any name. At the third hotel, the clerk came up with a guest named Barbara Kennerly.
How can you tell if you're using summary? Always ask, does what I am writing have the possibility of present moment dialogue? If it does, you're writing a scene. If not, you're in summary. For example:
John and Stephanie arrived at the little town of Dos Zapatos on July 14. This was where they were going to spend their vacation. It had been decided. By John, of course. He had read that the town was named back in 1912. Pancho Villa shot a shoemaker because he had only one of Villa's shoes ready.
That's summary. The information about the town doesn't give us the possibility of present-moment dialogue. This does:
Stephanie stared out the window at the dirty little town called Dos Zapatos. "This is where you wanted to spend our vacation?" she said. "What's wrong with it?" John said.
"Oh, nothing that a little civilization won't cure. You and your Pancho Villa fixation."
"Aren't you intrigued by that? He shot a shoemaker here just because one of his shoes wasn't ready." "That's so exciting."
FLASHBACKS
A lot of writing teachers warn about flashbacks. Some simply echo Sinclair Lewis who, when asked how best to handle flashbacks, said, "Don't."
That's a bit extreme. Many novelists successfully utilize flashbacks. You can, too, if you approach them with great care.
The first question to ask about a flashback scene is, Is it absolutely necessary? Be firm about this. Does the story information have to come to us in this fashion?
Be wary of starting your novel in the present and going too soon to flashback. If the flashback is important, consider starting with that scene as a prologue or first chapter.
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