Make A Scene

by Jordan Rosenfeld

  Changing POV From Scene to Scene

  Remember that a scene should largely take place in one location (unless the characters are on a moving vehicle or taking a stroll). Therefore, if you've got a chapter-long scene—that is, you're writing one scene per chapter—you automatically limit the physical location of the chapter.

  When you have multiple scenes within a chapter, try to think of each scene within the chapter as a separate square of a quilt, or a piece of a puzzle that must add up to some sort of goal or understanding within the chapter. It's best to use multiple scenes in a given chapter when you want to:

  • Look at one issue or topic from multiple angles

  • Switch to multiple physical locations or in and out of present time

  • Build up new plot information that the current scene won't allow, but that needs to come at that juncture in the story

  • Introduce another character within the chapter

  Author Jodi Picoult includes multiple scenes per chapter in her books because she writes about subjects that can be viewed from many different angles: suicide, rape, motherhood. Therefore, in a given chapter, when addressing a specific plot angle, she'll often give multiple characters a scene of their own, shedding numerous different kinds of perspective on a plot element.

  For instance, her novel Second Glance is about Comtosook, a Vermont town where paranormal events occur when a developer threatens to build on sacred land, and where a long-hidden eugenics program designed to weed out unwanted genes is revealed to have been conducted in the early 1920s. The novel features multiple viewpoints. Each chapter is broken into a series of short scenes told from the points of view of as many as ten different characters that are being affected by the strange events. Note that although there are multiple scenes per chapter, each scene has only one point of view. To show that she's beginning a new scene, Picoult uses a visual cue—a break of four lines (sometimes called a soft hiatus) or a symbol like I or * * * or □—and identifies the point-of-view character within the first couple of lines. These scenes offer different pieces of insight into the plot that is being explored at that particular juncture. Here are three samples of scene launches that all appear within chapter two, in which people are trying to determine whether Angel Quarry is haunted, or whether someone is pulling a prank:

  • Ross didn't know whom he blamed more: Ethan, for planting this seed in his mind; or himself, for bothering to listen. Angel Quarry is haunted, his nephew had said, everyone says so. .

  •"What do you make of it?" Winks Smiling Fox asked, grunting as he moved the drum a few feet to the left. Where they'd been sitting, the ground beneath their feet was icy. Yet over here, there were dandelions growing. ...

  • "Ethan?"

  From his vantage point beneath the blackout shades, Ethan froze at the sound of his mother's voice. He whipped his body back so that it wasn't pressed against the warm glass windowpane. .

  Each scene may be its own unit, but the three to six scenes within the chapter all play off each other and add up details for the reader. By the end of the chapter, the reader is pretty sure that, yes, Angel Quarry is haunted.

  Using multiple scenes within a given chapter is a common and effective way to allow for a mosaic feeling—a feeling of little parts adding up to equal a larger, more comprehensive whole. But it comes with a caveat: When you have multiple scenes within a chapter, you will serve the reader best if each of those scenes has only one viewpoint—and not an omniscient one—since you're already forcing the reader to move around.

  Changing POV From Chapter to Chapter

  In many narratives, one chapter can be its own long scene. The benefit of this construction is that you don't have to get complex with your POV structure. One scene per chapter is undoubtedly the simplest and clearest structure to work with, and if you are new to writing, I recommend that you use this structure until you've mastered scenes and can move on to more complex

  structures. When your whole chapter is just one long scene, you can focus on the protagonist's scene intention, decide what kind of scene it's going to be (see chapters twelve through twenty-one), and use your core elements one chapter at a time. This structure requires less work of you, and it also allows the reader to stay in one place and time per chapter. This structure will feel more straightforward to the reader, and perhaps also less textured or layered, but you can guarantee that you will tell a simple, clear story by using this method. One scene per chapter is an ideal structure when:

  •You want to keep your characters in a unified time and place

  •You're writing a dialogue scene, as dialogue takes up a lot of room

  •You're writing a suspense scene, as it requires more time to draw out actions

  •Your narrative has a linear chronology—it doesn't flashback in time

  •You want to switch to a different type of point of view to achieve a different effect for another protagonist—for instance, protagonist A is narrated in the first person, but protagonist B is better served by third person limited

  Consider that when a chapter is one long scene, you have time to devote to a particular protagonist, and you may consider using a limited point of view because, by nature of the length of a chapter, you have more page-time to delve into one protagonist's experience and reveal it to the reader.

  DEVOTING EQUAL TIME TO POV CHARACTERS

  Now that we've covered the idea of using multiple points of view, it's important to discuss how to let your protagonists share the time on the page. The most definitive way to tell the reader that you have more than one protagonist is to give each protagonist equal time in your narrative. You may devote an equal number of scenes, or give individual chapters to your protagonists, but you do need to be egalitarian if you're going to have multiple narrators.

  A lot of authors adopt a simple formula such as this: Each point of view character narrates one chapter or scene, taking turns in order. Character A goes first, then B, then C. Then you repeat that pattern: ABC, ABC, ABC. In other words, you give each character a chance to narrate, then you start all over again. You might give each character a chance to narrate within a given chapter, so you have three scenes for every chapter, or you may devote whole chapters to one character each. You may find the need to do variations on this: AAA, BBB, CCC, for instance, or AA, BB, CC, so long as the time each protagonist gets is as close to equal as you can make it.

  While all people undergo some change in life, characters in fiction have a dramatic imperative to change in order to give meaning to the narrative they star in. These transformations, however, can't happen all at once, or too easily. The reader tends to be suspicious when a character starts out mean and becomes kind too quickly, for example. So how can you change your characters in ways that lend credibility to each scene and feel authentic in the course of your narrative? Gradually.

  Though each narrative has its own variation on shape and structure, it is helpful to think of breaking your novel or story into three parts (or you can use the theatrical term acts if you like). Doing so allows you to step back and really watch as your characters grow and change over the course of your narrative, all the while creating a satisfying arc for the reader.

  THE FIRST PART: EARLY SCENES

  The first third of your narrative is all about establishing the nuts and bolts of characters and their basic conflicts and plot problems, and setting in motion all the seeds for conflict and challenges to come. In these opening scenes, the reader is meeting your characters just as if they were new guests over for dinner. Their words, actions, and reactions to other people will all serve as introductions, and these first impressions will be remembered and will set the stage for their behavior deeper into the book. We'll now look at the ways you can establish information and set up your characters for change in the first third of your narrative.

  Establishing Character-Related Plot Threads

  At the same time as you establish that your protagonist is a smack-talking hooligan with seductive eye
s and a mop of brown curls, or a lonely librarian who reads mystery novels and winds up investigating an actual crime, in this first section of your narrative, you also need to establish:

  • Involvement. What is your protagonist's relationship to the events of the significant situation? Is the event his fault, centered around him in some way; did he accidentally stumble into it, or is he integral to it?

  •The stakes. What he stands to lose or gain as a result of the above-mentioned events will create necessary tension and drama.

  • Desires. What he desires, from material goods to deep and abiding love, will inform the stakes and his intentions.

  • Fears. What he fears, from bodily harm to not obtaining his desire, will also inform the stakes.

  • Motivation. What reasons does he have to act upon the events of the significant situation? What is he driven by?

  • Challenges. How does the significant situation challenge his life, views, status, other people, his status quo, needs, etc.?

  We'll walk through these points using excerpts of early scenes from the first part of the novel House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III.

  Involvement

  Co-protagonist Kathy Nicolo (married name Lazaro) is a cleaning woman whose self-absorbed husband divorced her eight months ago. Since then, her life has been a wreck: Financially, she just scrapes by, and her stability as a recovered alcoholic and addict is severely tested. The only material thing of significance to her is the house she inherited from her father, where she lives.

  How is she involved in the significant situation? In the first scene she wakes up to find a locksmith and a cop at her door with a notice of eviction for back taxes—an erroneous notice at that. It doesn't matter; until she can prove in court that she has done nothing wrong, they have the right to evict her, and they do. Kathy loses her house and must go live in a motel while she sorts things out. In the time it takes her to get a lawyer, her house goes up for auction and is purchased by co-protagonist Colonel Behrani, a once wealthy man from Iran who is now a struggling immigrant with iron pride.

  For simplicity's sake, I'm going to focus on Kathy's storyline for this first section, though Dubus does a thorough job of developing both characters fully and weaving their stories together seamlessly.

  It's pretty clear what Kathy's relationship to the significant situation is: She's been evicted from her house. Though Kathy claims it's a mistake, the reader doesn't have enough evidence yet to know if this is true. She seems volatile, and the reader isn't sure if she's trustworthy; she could be the kind of woman who might fail to pay taxes:

  "That's all right 'cause I'm not leaving." My throat felt dry and stiff.

  The locksmith looked up from his work on my back door.

  Deputy Burdon rested one hand on the countertop, and he had an understanding expression on his face, but I hated him anyway. "I'm afraid you have no choice, Mrs. Lazaro. All your things will be auctioned off with the property. Do you want that?"

  "Look, I inherited this house from my father, it's paid for. You can't evict me!" My eyes filled up and the men began to blur. "I never owed a fucking business tax. You have no right to do this."

  The Stakes

  The stakes are pretty clear: Without her house, she's got nowhere to go but to a motel, and on her small income, even that expense is a big one—Kathy could wind up in dire straits pretty quick. This evokes some sympathy for the woman, even though the reader doesn't really know who she is yet. Your stakes must be equally clear; don't make the reader guess. Remember to:

  • Show what the protagonist has to gain

  • Show what the protagonist stands to lose

  Let the reader see in the scenes from the first part exactly what is at stake for your protagonist. Does he stand to be kicked out of his tribe if he speaks his mind; lose his worldly possessions if he loses his job; lose his child visitation rights if he can't pay child support? These questions and their answers must be enacted in scenes in the first part of your narrative.

  Desires

  Next, through passages of interior monologue, the reader gets a peek into Kathy's desires, which center mostly on her relationships. She remembers the few rare good times before her husband Nick left her; she reflects on the days with her first husband, Donnie, when she was barely an adult, and became addicted to cocaine. The reader feels her palpable loneliness—she's so lonely that even the bad memories are a comfort to her. Because of her desire for love, when Lester Burdon, the deputy who first came to evict her, shows up to check on her, even though he helped facilitate her current unhappy state, her desire makes it plausible that she takes to him:

  "I thought I'd check on you, see how you're holding up."

  He sounded like he meant it, and he seemed even softer than the day before when he'd led those men in kicking me out of my house. When we got to his car, a Toyota station wagon parked at the edge of the lot near the chain-link fence, I kind of hoped he'd keep talking; Connie Walsh was the first person I'd had a real conversation with in over eight months, and that was more of an interrogation than a talk. I wanted one, even with a sheriff's deputy in the fog.

  Kathy's pressing desire to be loved will get her into a lot of trouble later on in the narrative. Her other, more immediate desire, which will drive her actions in much of the rest of the narrative, is more straightforward: to get her house back.

  Desires will come in many shapes in your narrative and can be expressed or shown:

  • In dialogue between characters

  • In the form of thoughts (interior monologue), as in the previous example

  • In subtle actions—your protagonists may simply take what they desire, or try to

  What matters is that the reader has a feeling for what these desires are, straight away. Desires and motivations fuel a character's intentions in every scene; they help give purpose to their actions, so you'll want to make them as clear as possible.

  Fears

  Kathy's fears are a bit less direct, but they are there in the subtext of the scenes. The reader knows that she is a recovering addict of both drugs and alcohol, with a penchant for men who liked to be in control of her. This tells the reader that Kathy is not a person with high self-esteem, or someone who feels particularly in control of her own life. The reader sees that she is someone who prefers dependence on others over independence, and that the act of being out of her house throws her whole life into chaos. Kathy is afraid to be alone and afraid to be an adult in the world, to take responsibility for herself. These fears will get her into trouble in the middle of this novel.

  Your protagonist should have some kind of fear, whether it is a rational one like the fear of fire, or an irrational one, like a fear of butterflies or of the color yellow, because those innocuous things trigger memories of terrible experiences. No character should be too brave—even heroes have weaknesses. Establish what your character is afraid of early on, because in the middle of the narrative you're going to exploit those fears. You can establish fear:

  • Through speech (for instance, he can admit to a friend that he is "terrified of spiders")

  • Through behavior (your protagonist, upon seeing a passenger jet overhead, hits the dirt like he is about to be bombed)

  •Through a flashback scene in which the reader sees that the protagonist was traumatized by a specific event

  Fear is as much a part of your protagonist's motivations as desire, and it is through fear and desire that you exert change on your characters.

  Motivation

  Kathy's surface motivation is pretty clear: She's motivated to get her house back because it's all she has, and she sees it as the cornerstone of her ability to live a stable life. This motivation leads her to get legal aid and fight to get her house back. But Kathy is also motivated by older, deeper issues regarding her family and her relationship to her parents. These motivations are the ones that cause her to get involved with Lester Burdon, a married man and a cop; these motivations also cause her to become v
olatile and enraged at Colonel Behrani, who has her house; and they begin to set the stage for the drama that unfolds in the second part of the narrative.

  Your protagonist's motivations will be clear to the reader so long as you:

  • Make it clear what the protagonist's desires are

  • Make it clear what the protagonist's fears are

  • Offer opportunities to thwart the desires and trigger the fears

  In chapter eleven, we discussed scene intentions. Motivations—which stem directly from your protagonist's fears and desires—are the foundation of scene intentions. Once you know how your protagonist is motivated, and by what forces, then you can direct him to act in every scene in a way appropriate to the circumstances of your plot.

  Challenges

  Kathy's challenges are myriad. She lacks money and resources; she has a weakness for using alcohol to drown her feelings; she is attracted to men who are bad for her; and she is literally challenged by Colonel Behrani's takeover of her home.

  Challenges are the situations in which you thwart your protagonist's desires and trigger his fears, and they are good and necessary. The more of them you can comfortably create—that is, the more you can create that pertain to your plot and make sense to the character—the better, because they create a sense of urgency and concern in your reader. In the first part of your narrative, your job is to set up which intentions are going to be opposed, leading the way to the middle part, where these intentions will meet with greater opposition and create more conflict.

  Assessing Your Character at the End of the First Part

  The scenes in the first part are all about potential conflict. You want to ask yourself, have I destabilized my protagonist, given him problems and conflicts that begin to worry both him and the reader? Has my protagonist been directly involved in a significant situation that has brought initial conflict and challenges? Make sure that by the end of the first part, your protagonist is showing signs that he feels tested, forced into action, and driven toward change. Nothing should yet be too conclusive, too fixed in stone, because if it is, the reader has little motivation to keep reading.