Make A Scene

by Jordan Rosenfeld

  Rosie stretches out her trunk, reaching for something.

  In this climax, the opposite forces—the innocent elephant and the brutal animal trainer—clash, and the result changes Jacob and Marlena, and even Rosie, for good.

  Some climactic moments will test your protagonist directly. He will rise to the challenge and prove himself worthy of something—he will deliver that ring to the fires of Mordor. Some will take things or people away from your protagonist, leaving her to deal with an emotional experience that changes her. Either way, climactic scenes, like epiphanies, are about change; but climactic scenes are about more permanent change. A protagonist can come to an epiphany without reaching the ultimate event of the narrative. But once you arrive at the climactic event, nothing will be the same.

  POST-CLIMACTIC EVENT

  When the climactic scene is over, your work changes. No longer do you have an imperative to drop in new plot information or create suspense. The scenes that follow a climactic one are about resolutions, sorting through the aftermath of the event and determining where to go next, showing that your protagonist has changed. You do want to be sure that all plot and character questions are answered, however.

  In Stranger in a Strange Land, Michael's death gives his followers motivation to keep up his work—to turn the world into a better place. In Geek Love, the loss of her family and her livelihood forces Olympia to finally become her own person, and it allows her to tell her daughter, Miranda, the truth of her origins. While the climax leads to loss, it also leads to a better future for Miranda. In Water for Elephants, Jacob and Marlena can now create a different kind of life for themselves, and those who suffered under brutality of one sort or another are able to get free of it.

  Your climactic scene is a big one in the narrative—it is, in essence, the point that the entire narrative is driving towards, the moment of no return, and it should be written with care.

  CLIMACTIC SCENE MUSE POINTS_

  • Use as many of the elements of a scene as possible to build a well-rounded, complex climactic event: action, dialogue, setting details, emotional content, dramatic tension.

  • Each protagonist will have only one climactic scene.

  •The climax event must be directly related to the significant situation.

  •The climax is a point of no return that must change your protagonist permanently in some way.

  • Keep the stakes high.

  •The climactic scene is the high point of action and drama—all scenes that follow it will be slower and more reflective, and contain less action.

  All good things must end. But as the aphorism goes, the end of one thing is also the beginning of another. Final scenes, then, are the end of one chapter in a protagonist's life. A rare few protagonists will actually die at the end of a narrative, but in general your final scene is the conclusion of the events that your first scene opened with—your significant situation. However, the final scene need not feel completely over and done with. In fact, a final scene may very well feel like a new beginning. This scene should:

  • Provide a snapshot of where your protagonist is after the conclusion of your plot

  • Be reflective in tone

  • Provide a full-circle feeling by recalling the significant situation

  • Move at a slower pace

  You may also save one last surprise, answer, or insight for the final scene, but this isn't something that's necessary.

  Though the final scene marks the end of your narrative, in the reader's mind, your characters and settings may very well live on, so you want to put as much work into creating a memorable ending as you did into your captivating beginning.

  LEADING UP TO THE FINAL SCENE

  Before we go on to look at the structure and content of your final scene, let's discuss the final scenes—yes, that's plural—that come before the very final scene of your narrative. The three to five scenes that come before the last scene have the job of supplying answers to outstanding questions that your plot has raised (see chapter eight). Those scenes are where you solve the crime, return the kidnapped child, or bring the lovers back together, thus tying up your plot, decreasing tension, and bringing a sense of resolution to your narrative. The job of the true final scene is to show the reader where your protagonist is now, how he has changed, and what he thinks or feels as a result of the consequences of your significant situation and its offshoots.

  Showing Character Transformation

  The final scene is the last impression your protagonist will make upon the reader. Unless you have a very, very good reason for your protagonist not to have changed (if, for instance, the plot of your novel was that people were trying to change him through brainwashing, cult activities, or some other form of coercion, then a successful arc would portray your character resisting change), your protagonist should not be the same person he was when he started out. The principle areas where your character is most likely to reflect change are in his attitude, job, relationships, and even location. Whether he has a new outlook, a new lifestyle, a new love, or a new sense of self—character change is the defining factor of your final scene.

  Concluding the Significant Situation

  As a result of your narrative's significant situation, a world of consequences has unraveled for your protagonist, taking him on a complex and interesting journey. That journey eventually has to conclude in a way that makes the storyline feel finished. If the story is a murder investigation, the reader must learn whodunit by the end. If it's a romance, the reader should glimpse the happily ever after. You get the idea—the final scene of your narrative will either be the literal conclusion of the significant situation, or the point in time that comes just after the situation ends.

  The final scene is the place where your protagonist reflects upon, deals with, or accepts the consequences of your significant situation.

  Final scenes inevitably have a contemplative air about them and may not be as long as other scenes because there's no need to introduce elaborate new actions or plot situations. The final scene is a snapshot of where your protagonist finds himself at the end of his journey, and should offer just a glimpse. Most tension and drama should be concluded or winding down by then. (You rarely leave a narrative on a suspenseful note unless there's definitely a sequel coming.) The ending is a place of reflection, and right from the launch of your final scene, you want to make this clear by slowing down the pace and providing room for reflection or interior monologue.

  OPENING YOUR FINAL SCENE

  Counterpoints and reflective exposition are two popular techniques for kicking off your final scene because both methods allow you the opportunity to fully illustrate to the reader just how much the events of the story have changed your character.

  Counterpoints

  A fantastic way to show that your character has changed as a result of your significant situation is to open the final scene with a counterpoint to the first scene, so that the reader has direct and specific cues about how your character has changed. What this means is that you set up your final scene to resemble your first scene, but you change the details to reflect the kind of change your character has undergone.

  For example, in Kate Atkinson's literary mystery novel Case Histories, cop-turned-private-investigator Jackson Brodie's final scene opens with a distinctly lighthearted tone, with the words (in French) "goodbye sadness." He has solved his case, accepted that his ex-wife will never take him back, and found himself attracted to Julia, the quirky woman he met while investigating her sister's death. There's a carefree tone and mood to the scene. He's driving in his convertible, playing music on the radio, and wishing he could get rid of Julia's dull sister Amelia so they can flirt more effectively:

  Au revoir tristesse. Jackson drove with the top down, the Dixie Chicks playing loudly on the car stereo. He picked them up at Montpelier Airport. They

  were dressed ready for the convertible, in chiffon head scarves and sunglasses, so that Julia looked like a fifties movie star a
nd Amelia didn't. Julia had said on the phone that Amelia was a lot more cheerful these days, but if she was then she was keeping it to herself, sitting in the backseat of his new BMW M3, harrumphing and grunting at everything that Julia said. Jackson suddenly regretted not buying the two-seater BMW Z8 instead — then they could have put Amelia in the boot.

  Now contrast that with the Jackson Brodie the reader met at the beginning of the narrative, who was having trouble quitting smoking, dealing with car and work troubles, and fighting with his ex-wife:

  Jackson switched on the radio and listened to the reassuring voice of Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour. He lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one because he had run out of matches, and faced with a choice between chain-smoking or abstinence, he'd taken the former option because it felt like there was enough abstinence in his life already. If he got the cigarette lighter on the dashboard fixed he wouldn't have to smoke his way through the packet, but there were a lot of other things that needed fixing on the car and the cigarette lighter wasn't high on the list. Jackson drove a black Alfa Romeo 156 that he'd bought secondhand four years ago for £13,000 and that was now probably worth less than the Emmelle Freedom mountain bike he had just given his daughter for her eighth birthday (on the proviso that she didn't cycle on the road until she was at least forty).

  Notice how in both scenes he's driving in a car and listening to the radio, yet the feeling of the first scene is tense and cranky—while the final scene is relaxed and free and improved upon. In the final scene, he's driving a new BMW, not a lemon of an Alfa Romeo. He's not worrying about his ex-wife or his daughter, and whereas in the first scene he had "enough abstinence in his life," now he's got the prospect of a relationship with a new woman.

  Counterpointing your first scene is a wonderful way to provide a definitive sense of closure and change to your narrative. Look back at your first scene and see how you can set up a similar one in terms of the setting and other small details, but change the tone, pace, and interior monologue to show that your protagonist is clearly in a different place from where he started.

  Reflective Exposition

  Reflective exposition is another strong way to kick off your concluding scene. Since the final scene is a time for reflection—after all, you've just spent a novel or story's worth of time dealing with actions and interactions, putting your protagonist in conflict and danger, and keeping tension and drama alive—interior monologue and exposition can be a natural fit here.

  In Janet Fitch's Paint It Black, protagonist Josie Tyrell has finally gotten a glimpse into the life and mind of her boyfriend, Michael, who committed suicide at the start of the book. She has driven to the hotel where he did it, read the journal entry he made just before, and come to understand the family he came from. Now she's left to pick up the pieces of her life and carry on:

  Josie sat on the bed in number 4, smoking a ciggie. The sunlight shone bright and cold through the open door. She knew it was time to leave. There was nothing else to do but pack up and head home. And yet, how could she leave this place where he'd made his end? She sat up against the rickety headboard and picked cholla spines out of the bedspread, flicking them into the ashtray. Maybe she should take up knitting. Something quiet and productive. She didn't want to go back home, back to the empty house, as if Michael had fallen through a hole in the ice and just disappeared. But she couldn't drag his raw death through her days like this, like a giant bleeding moose head.

  When you open with interior monologue, you can drop the reader directly into the mood, emotion, or thematic state you want him to be in for the finale. If you want to set the stage for redemption, forgiveness, acceptance, or any of the larger themes of literature, interior monologue and exposition allow you to do this quickly and to the point, since final scenes are not often very long—they are merely bookends to your protagonist's journey.

  establishing the right pace

  Your final scene does not need to have the same dramatic structure as all other scenes. Your significant situation is over, and your protagonist has undergone his changes. Your final scene does not require you to set a new intention that must be carried out. It is the place to let your protagonist rest and reflect, and for you to convey a feeling, an image, or a sense of theme to the reader. Therefore, the pace tends to be slower. Actions are small and kept to a minimum, with attention to details that elicit your character's inner life and attitudes, hopes and feelings.

  Let's look at a few excerpts from the middles of final scenes. Notice their pacing, how they feel slower, quieter, and more reflective.

  Author Louise Erdrich uses setting details to bring her pace down in the final scene of her novel The Painted Drum. Protagonist Faye Travers, whose sister died young, has just been through an intense relationship with a local sculptor whose teenage daughter was killed, resurrecting Faye's own grief. The novel has spent a lot of time focusing on the loss of children and on grief—and Faye herself has pushed much of her own grief away. By the end, however, her experiences have softened her, and she's ready to face things as they are. In the final scene she goes to visit her sister's grave:

  My sister's stone marker is very distinctive. It's a carved angel that our mother bought from a church about to be demolished and had engraved with the date and name. Perhaps because the angel was not meant as a memorial in the first place, there is something stealthily alive about her—wings that flare instead of droop, an alert and outwardly directed expression, a hand clutched to her breast not as a gesture of reverence or sorrow, but, I think, breathless delight.

  There is little action in this scene—the most Faye does is clear away the debris that has piled up on her sister's headstone—because actions are not necessary. Notice, too, that despite being in a cemetery, at her sister's grave, Faye seems optimistic. You can feel her grief lifting in the way she describes the angel on her sister's marker as being "stealthily alive" and clutching her breast with "breathless delight." This final scene is pointing toward positive change. Faye is freed from her grief, and this is shown to us in the details.

  Setting details are powerful when you want to slow down the pace and convey mood. In your final scene, ask yourself how you can direct the reader's focus onto small details in a way that also creates the tone you're shooting for. For example, if your story was about a criminal who finds redemption, in the final scene you could use images that convey freedom and forgiveness—like a bird flying across the expanse of the Grand Canyon, or another character offering your protagonist his hand. These details will help you to bring your pace down to reflect the tone of your narrative.

  You can also slow your pacing down in the final scene by dropping into the realm of metaphors, which have a timeless quality. In Margaret Atwood's novel The Robber Bride, three women—Tony, Roz, and Charis—have been personally injured by one woman, Zenia, whom they all met in college. Ze-nia is a masterful manipulator who has always selfishly put herself before others, and who even manages to fake her death and stage a funeral. But she is not dead at all, and she continues to wreak injustice on the three friends until, finally, the women stop her for good.

  In the final scene, Tony reflects upon what has happened and who Zenia was in a series of metaphoric reflections that slow the pace and aim for an emotional finish:

  No flowers grow in the furrows of the lake, none in the fields of asphalt. Tony needs a flower, however. A common weed, because wherever else Zenia had been in her life, she had also been at war. An unofficial war, a guerilla war, a war she may not have known she was waging, but a war nevertheless.

  Who was the enemy? What past wrong was she seeking to avenge? Where was her battlefield? Not in any one place. It was in the air all around, it was in the texture of the world itself; or it was nowhere visible, it was in among the neurons, the tiny incandescent fires of the brain that flash up and burn out. An electric flower would be the right kind for Zenia, a bright, lethal flower like a short circuit, a thistle of molten steel going to seed in a burst of s
parks.

  There are images of war and of flowers—two very powerful contrasting metaphors that sum up the themes of the novel nicely. Metaphors often show up in literary novels, but you'll find them even in genre works because they say so much with so few words.

  THE FINAL SENTENCES

  In the final scene, the last two to three sentences (and especially the last one) are like DNA—they carry the feeling of the entire novel with them, even beyond your narrative. They should leave an emotional flavor that speaks to the entire journey your protagonist has undergone. Here we'll look at final sentences that end with action, reflection, and images.

  Final Actions

  The reader likes to know that the characters she's come to love will live on. Actions have a way of making characters' lives feel still in motion even after the book or story is over. So you may decide to end your final scene with your protagonist taking a symbolic action or gesture. I stress symbolic. If you end on an action, it should suggest a larger action than the mundane—it should conjure a feeling of an action the protagonist is taking in his life.

  In The Robber Bride, for instance, the action doesn't come until the final sentence. In much of the final scene Tony is outside reflecting on the damage Zenia wrought—she caused her to mistrust other women, to hate them even, at times. The final paragraphs show Tony outside staring at a pottery statue of Zenia, thinking, and then being drawn to the sounds of her friends inside. The scene could easily end at the finish of these paragraphs, reflectively:

  Tony picks her up and turns her over, probes and questions, but the woman with her glazed pottery face does nothing but smile.

  From the kitchen she hears laughter, and the clatter of dishes. Charis is setting out the food, Roz is telling a story. That's what they will do, increasingly in their lives: tell stories. Tonight their stories will be about Zenia.