HAVE A CLEAR IDEA OF WHY EACH SCENE IS INCLUDED IN YOUR PROSE. Ask yourself, Why is this moment a scene instead of a summary? What about this scene furthers the overall narrative of my piece? If you have a difficult time answering these questions, you need to rethink your choice. Perhaps you need to compress the scene into a summary instead.
TEN QUESTIONS FOR TIGHTENING YOUR SCENES
Every scene in your essay or short story deserves your focused attention. At the revision stage, consider the following ten questions for each of your scenes:
Is the time frame obvious to readers?
Did you begin the scene when something important happens?
Does the dialogue advance the plot, reveal character, and heighten tension?
Did something significant happen?
Was this relevant to the conflict?
Is the main character’s or narrator’s goal clear?
Does the scene have tension, and does that tension build?
Does the scene end when the tension is released?
Are your actions and reactions balanced?
Is there a shift in the overall story because of this scene? Discovery, revelation, recognition?
SCENE EXERCISE: WHO/WHAT/WHY
This is a great exercise for practicing action and reaction beats in your story: First, think of two people. They can be lovers or co-workers, neighbors or family members. Any two will do. Write their names side by side on a piece of paper.
Next, answer these three questions about both people, and fill in your answers in their respective columns:
Who is this person?
What do they want today?
Why is this want important?
Examine the motivations of these two people. They each have a personal agenda. Those agendas might be similar, but maybe their consequences are different. Maybe someone risks losing love, while the other person only risks missing a movie.
But what if they were in the same scene together and in conflict for some reason? How would they engage? Would they be confrontational? Complementary? Or would they ignore each other completely? Write that scene.
I’ve performed this exercise myself to give you an example:
MARGARET RICHARD
Margaret is Richard’s tenant and upstairs neighbor. She lives alone with a cat she isn’t supposed to have. Richard owns the building that he and Margaret (and two other families) call home.
Margaret wants Richard to replace the apartment’s small white refrigerator that stopped working that morning—without him learning about her cat. Richard owes an amount in gambling debt that he can’t seem to surmount. He hasn’t been on top for years. He wants to fix the fridge upstairs rather than replace it, but he doesn’t want Margaret to think he’s cheap. She’s got the other families in the building talking about repairs already, and it could get out of hand.
Margaret is hiding from her abusive husband. If she gets evicted from her apartment, she’ll have to reach out to family for help, and that could lead to her husband finding her. If the lady upstairs gets pushy about replacing the thing, he’ll have to find a way to quiet her down before everyone wants a new fridge.
5
SETTING
Setting refers to the when and where of a short story or essay. It’s the place and time in which your characters are acting. But setting isn’t just backdrop. Setting can influence theme, characters, and action. Choose your setting purposefully, from the first paragraph to the last.
Essays and short stories usually take place in only one or two locations, but the number could vary. Each environment you show can illuminate your overall story. To cut down on verbosity, be specific when you describe your settings. Use concrete nouns with distinctive connotations that allow the reader to fill in some of the details for you. Instead of writing building, you can write skyscraper, dormitory, or courthouse instead.
Another way to economize is to show the time of day, the climate, the weather, or the landscape, with the intention of conveying emotion. A stormy day can mirror sorrow. A vast desert can echo a theme about being lost in the world. A broken clock can remind readers that the character doesn’t have much time left to figure out his dilemma.
Lisa Fugard is a novelist who also writes short stories and personal essays. She’s a terrific writing instructor, too—my partner in the creation of Storytelling Boot Camp. Here’s what Lisa has to say about setting”
Working with setting is not about describing the beach or the restaurant or the mountain slope in the first paragraph and then letting all sense of place fall away. Do so and you risk losing your readers. Instead, it’s about carefully selecting specific sensory details to maintain the sense of place, to set the atmosphere, to reveal character, to foreshadow and amplify the theme of your story or essay. You are searching for the detail that opens up the narrative universe for your readers, not one that has them admiring your beautiful prose—tempting as that may be. One specific detail carries far more power than ten generalities. You want the detail that leads your readers deeper and deeper into your story and activates their imaginations—the detail that has them turning the page because they are invested in your characters.
CONTINUE TO REVEAL SETTING THROUGHOUT YOUR PROSE
Begin your exploration of setting by thinking about the broader environment you intend to show readers, along with the things that are right at hand. What does this place look like? Is it a crowded pizza parlor or a church on Tuesday morning? What can you hear? Birds? Dripping water? A nearby train? What is the weather like? Tropical? Breezy? Snowy? Damp? What is she holding? Do you see a flag? Use the details you’ve chosen to establish an opening mood or tone for your piece. For example, if you’re writing an essay about a time when you felt hopeless, zero in on the bleakest details available—the gray carpet or the rain-soaked jacket in a heap at your feet, perhaps. Darken the lighting.
During your story, think about a central unifying aspect of your setting that you can repeatedly show for maximum effect. Maybe the weather changes as the story unfolds, or you keep coming back to the veins on the back of your mother’s hand. Maybe it’s the smell of strawberries that you weave through the piece.
Every character will react to an environment differently. For instance, some people like rain and some don’t. Showing reactions to an environment can reveal new information about your character (or yourself). When you allow your characters to interact with the environment, you can create stronger emotion and conflict. For example, if you want to reveal how uncomfortable your Uncle Harry is when he’s in a crowd, study his physical stance under this stress. Zoom in on his feet. Is he fidgety? Does he roll his ankle around like he’s warming up for a sprint? Or does he plant his feet far apart, establishing a safe zone for himself?
Think about putting your characters in unexpected settings. The environment in your plot can add layers to your story. For example, if you’re writing fiction, maybe you chose to have two people argue about doing the dishes while they’re seated in the balcony at an opera or in the upper deck of a baseball game. When writing an essay, why not reflect on the bad news from the doctor somewhere other than the doctor’s office? How about a busy playground? An airport?
Sensory Details
Specific details make a setting come alive, but there’s no need to be wordy. A few well-placed sensory details can save you space on the page while introducing a setting that readers can see and feel. For example: “When we’d passed the outlet mall and the casino, the I-10 became a lonelier road. It narrowed into two skinny lanes. As expected, the haulers took over the right, their fat cargo nearly riding the white dotted line that separated us.”
Consider all five senses when you show the places that matter to your story. Let the reader see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the things you describe around them. Every environment has a source of light, a scent, landmarks or symbols, sounds, etc. And all of these things can create a specific mood for your scene’s backdrop.
TEN TIPS TO WRITING
A MEMORABLE SETTING
There’s nothing very interesting about watching two people on a date in a nice restaurant. But if the restaurant is decaying, with peeling wallpaper and chipped dishes, then we start to feel a somber mood. Suppose a fly keeps buzzing around one of them, and maybe the restaurant smells like one of those tree-shaped car fresheners. That’s a setting you’ll remember. Here are ten tips to getting it right:
Your opening paragraph needs to settle readers into your piece. They’ll be searching for the who/what/why of your essay or story. Use setting in your opening as a way to orient them. Give clues about the location or the year that your narrative takes place.
Don’t use the generic version of anything—not a room, not a hospital, not a car. Always give your setting at least one interesting detail. Maybe the room has a carpet stain in the shape of a human skull. Perhaps the hospital is so close to the freeway that you can hear the rush of cars from the parking lot. Maybe the rental car your character is driving smells like a wet dog.
Think about the sources of light. Is it a foggy day at the beach? Are you in a room with tall windows? A supermarket aisle lit by fluorescent lights? These images create a background.
Think about sound. Is there an elementary school nearby, or is your story set on a desert island filled with exotic birds?
Don’t use the first adjectives that come to mind. If you imagine a character’s car to be a sexy red sports car, stop and ponder your choice. What if the car had zebra stripes instead? What would that say about your character? What if the car was bubblegum pink?
Find ways of matching your setting to the tone of your scene. Images have connotations, so use them to your advantage. If you’re showing a tense argument between two people, perhaps you point out the storm brewing in the distance or the pot of chili on the stove that’s about to boil over. For other situations, you might consider how vegetation and water can create feelings of cool refreshment. Fireplaces and candles remind of us romance. Shadows make us worry.
Settings can have a flavor, at times. Some settings taste like salty air. Some dry your mouth.
Think about scents. They evoke memories so quickly. Flowers, smoke, a cake baking in the oven, and gasoline are all vivid and universal scents that will remind your readers of moments from their own lives. Make your descriptions of universal scents unique to your story by showing your characters reacting to them.
Be consistent with your setting. If you mention a gathering of ducks on the front lawn as your character enters the house, revisit the setting when she leaves. Either the ducks are still there, or they’ve moved. Maybe they’re gone for good. Your readers will want to know.
Use setting to enhance your ending. Sticking the last note is essential, and setting can help. Let the environment reflect the last mood you want to leave your readers with. When you want them to feel hope, brighten the lighting. Add rain to represent a cleansing. A strong wind can bring with it the feeling of change.
SETTING EXERCISE: CREATE A SENSORY-RESOURCE LIST
The settings we show in short stories and essays have to feel complete, and we only have so many words to use. Using specific sensory setting details can elevate your prose without taking up much space on the page. To make your job easier, create a bank of interesting setting words for anytime you feel stuck. I like to use a spiral notebook for this exercise because I can keep adding to it.
On one page, write the word home in the center of the paper and circle it. Next, fill every bit of space left on the page with better words to describe home. Anything that comes to you, write it down. Use all five senses somewhere in your collage of words.
Next, write the word work on a different piece of paper. Circle the word work, and fill in the rest of the page with specific sensory details about work, remembering to use each of the five senses at least once. Continue your bank of sensory setting adjectives by using these words in the center of other pages: storm, childhood, vacation, school, commute, and gym.
Revisit these pages whenever you feel your setting needs better adjectives.
I’ve performed this exercise myself as an example:
HOME bungalow quiet adobe
rustic rose-trellised retirement
Victorian condo town house
contemporary cottage tenement
suburban beloved apartment
stately spacious
remodeled duplex
6
CHARACTERS
Delivering full-formed characters can be difficult when writing short stories and personal essays. You don’t have the ability to develop deep characterization when you only have a few pages to work within, yet you need to make a character shine just as much as he would if you were writing a 400-page novel. The key to success is to let characterization work double-duty. Reveal your characters through action, speech, appearance, and thought. Blend these elements together to amplify characterization while writing economically.
The people in our stories have the enormous task of delivering our plot and our themes through action and speech. Each one of them has desires, fears, hopes, and disappointments. You are in charge of how much page time each character gets and which ones are most important to your story. Be selective and purposeful with your characters. Each one must matter.
Every character—including an essay’s narrator—has layers. Characters and people have a side they show the world and a side they only show to certain people. And then there’s an inner self that’s personal and private—the person with biases and judgments. Your goal as a writer is to reveal several layers in short prose so that a character’s actions feel authentic.
CHANGE
During the course of your story or essay, a character must change. There must be a noticeable difference between his introduction and the conclusion. Every character must also be affected by the events you present. Even in a very short piece of writing, we want to know that the character we’re following is capable of change.
In essay writing, showing vulnerability is key. It says to the reader, I want things to be different than they are. I’m willing to examine myself closely, and therefore, I’m willing to change.
In fiction, all readers need to see a tiny nugget that lets them see the main character caring deeply about something. This is all about showing empathy. Let your readers know that your main character has a goal worthy of achieving, and they’ll root for her, even if she gets in her own way.
REAL PEOPLE IN YOUR STORIES ARE CHARACTERS, TOO
You need to know your characters intimately to write about them authentically. This is especially important to remember when you’re writing essays. Your audience doesn’t know the people in your life. They don’t know anything that you don’t tell them.
When writing true stories, take the time to study the people you’re including. Show your audience specific details about them that reveal their respective inner dispositions and motivations. Take a step back, and allow yourself to see this person as a participant in your narrative. Why does she belong there? What do readers need to better understand about them as characters in your narrative? As a writer, your goal is to take real-life people and rebuild them as characters. That involves reconstructing them for readers who have never met them before.
Character Development for Short Prose
Character study can be divided into three categories:
Physical (appearance, age, gender, etc.)
Social (occupation, family, politics, religion)
Personality (habits, ambitions, secrets, hobbies)
Character-development worksheets are easy to find online with a quick Google search. These studies are basically a comprehensive character sketch that includes items from all three of the character-study categories. A worksheet will include everything you need to know about each character in your story, such as “eye color,” “worst habit,” “greatest fear,” “ultimate vacation spot,” etc.
Even though most of the information included in a character-development wo
rksheet won’t make it into your story, these development tools are perfect for characters in novels and memoir projects because they become a reference guide for the author. The worksheet is a snapshot of an overall picture, even if the narrative is only a few years of that person’s life.
But what about short-story and essay writing? Do we really need to know that much about the characters in short prose? The answer is, simply, no. Short prose is intimate, immediate, and specific to the event you’re focused on in your story. You don’t have room for much backstory (if any), and you can’t rely on long passages of narration. From your first sentence, each detail you reveal about your character has to illuminate something about her.
You can create a character that feels complete by revealing four very basic things your readers need to know: name, trait, desire, hurdle. This list is short but incredibly important. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Name
When writing an essay, you have real people and their actual names to work with—but that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. Perhaps you can use a nickname or reveal something about yourself as a narrator by creating a nickname during narrative reflection—“Uncle Whisky Breath” or “Perfect Little Sarah,” for example. Someone you refer to as “Little Rick,” instead of just “Rick,” can give readers a sense of how you see yourself in relation to this person. This characterizes you, as the narrator.
When writing fiction, be purposeful in your choice of names. Your character’s name should convey some aspect of her identity. Choose a name that fits the part of the country this person is from, the mood of the story, or even the time of the setting. Names like “Gertrude” and “Howard” feel slightly out of fashion and therefore bring an older person to mind. “Chet” and “Buffy” probably make you think of matching v-neck sweaters. The name “Alexandra” has a completely different connotation to your readers than the name “Kitty.” And what about this line: Fat Nose Jim eyed me like a juicy steak. Readers don’t need more than this to clearly visualize Jim. Maybe there are slightly different versions of Jim in each reader’s head, but they all see a big guy, tough, not too handsome. And all that just because you named him Fat Nose Jim.
Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays Page 7
