Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure

by Jack Bickham

  However long the period of pure emotional reaction is, however, just about every normal person will get through it at some point and start thinking again. This transition to thought may be quick or it may be marked by numerous relapses into pure emotion again. However it comes, though, rational process starts percolating again. The person has moved from emotion into thought.

  Thus the first two stages of sequel in fiction closely parallel what actually happens to us after a real-life disaster. In real life, there are tragic figures who never get beyond this thought stage, brooding the rest of their lives about their setback or loss. But in fiction we need movement forward, and so we look to the pattern followed by people who have gotten beyond a disaster to see how their process went on.

  When we do this, we see that people who move beyond disaster will slowly focus their thoughts on some new decision that they hope will make things better. And, having made this decision, if it is to have meaning, at some point they act upon it.

  So, because we want forward movement in our fiction — and decided at the outset to write about people with the courage and the will to take their own lives by the scruff of the neck and make things better, we structure our fiction sequels with decision and new action.

  Emotion . . . thought . . . decision . . . action. The four structural compartments of the sequel. Sequels thus get a character from one disaster to the start of the next scene.

  Now, because it often delves deeply into the head and heart of a viewpoint character, sequel is not "stage-able" like the scene. Sequel is often wholly internal. And because it focuses on often-painful reactions which might pass in a moment—but could also require hours, days or even weeks to get through — sequel cannot be told moment by moment, as in a scene. In sequel, you can and probably must have summary. In sequel, you can show a character alone, and dig deep into his thoughts and feelings. In sequel, you seek feeling and understanding by the reader— sympathy.

  Thus, while a scene is characterized by conflict, which is exciting and told moment by moment, a sequel is characterized by feeling and logic, and can span great chunks of time or space. (Occasionally, as mentioned earlier, you may get by with simply summarizing some plot action or using a simple "Later, downtown . . ." transitional sentence or paragraph. But here we are looking at a developed story component —one which delves deeply into the character's reactions to what has just happened to him.)

  There is another striking difference between scene and sequel which illustrates the potential flexibility of sequel. As we have learned, the goal portion of a scene usually takes only a few lines at most, and the disaster often is shown in even less space; virtually all of the interior structure of a scene is devoted to conflict —and this is an unvarying structural rule. But in the sequel, how much space you devote to each structural component is entirely flexible, depending on your impulses as a writer, the kind of story you may be writing at the moment, the kind of viewpoint character you are dealing with, the harshness of the disaster that has just happened, the complexity of factors the character must consider in trying to reach a new decision, and even some other factors that will become apparent only in chapter 8. Little about sequel structure is hard-and-fast, except that the sequence of the parts must always be imagined by the writer in the order which human behavior dictates—emotion first, then later thought, then the reaching of a decision, then a new, goal-oriented action.

  Let's consider each part of the prototypical sequel in a bit more detail.

  Emotion

  Reeling back in the aftermath of a scene-ending disaster, your character first experiences mixed feelings that may be quite chaotic: anger mixed with surprise, fear mixed with resentment, bitterness mixed with disappointment and suspicion, and so on. In this first portion of a full-blown sequel, you are dealing with the problem of portraying a person who is not yet quite rational as a result of what has just happened. Portraying such an emotional state in a character is often very difficult, but in some types of books such as the contemporary romance it must be done in considerable depth.

  How do you present such an emotional segment? You use every bit of imagination you possess, and place yourself in the heart and head of your suffering character. Knowing everything you know about what has happened earlier in the story, the importance of the scene goal that has just been denied, the strength of your character's motivation, the importance of the long-term story goal, and the depth of your character's surprise, you imagine not merely what you might feel in such a situation, but what this character must be feeling. Then you devise ways to show and tell this strong emotional state.

  Essentially there are three ways to give this emotional state to your reader. You can do it by description, by example, or by discussion.

  Description

  Description of emotion means just what it says. You sit at your keyboard and do your best to describe the character's internal emotions. Often such description is virtually timeless: time seems to stand still as you describe the pain or rage or whatever feelings are there. Some writers can beautifully describe emotion in a character, while others find it one of the hardest jobs in fiction.

  Example

  When you choose instead to get the emotion across to your reader by example, you search for gestures or actions the character might take which would show the reader the results of the inner storm. For anger, you might show your hero slamming his fist through a thin office partition, for example, or hurling a telephone. For sadness, you might show him dabbing at wet eyes, blowing his nose, then crumpling into his chair to stare like a zombie. For confusion, you might show him striking his own forehead with his hand, walking aimlessly, forgetting an important appointment, failing to follow a conversation. Any combination of actions may be devised to illustrate to the reader that strong emotion is raging beneath this surface.

  While use of example is not as direct, obviously, as description, and does run some small risk of reader misunderstanding, it has the advantage of allowing the reader to observe, then reach his own conclusion. This is how we often recognize strong emotion in real life, and so it's convincing if you the author choose the right behavioral signals. In addition, a reader who intuits character feeling from observation of examples can be counted on to make a leap in his own imagination, and vicariously experience similar feelings based on some experience in his own actual past life. This kind of reader leap of identification and sympathy may actually turn out to be stronger than any emotion you might be able to arouse in him by torturous direct description.

  Discussion

  And what about it? Here we use an entirely different technique and stop being inside the character to any great extent, or with the character in isolation. Rather than trying to provide a static description of how the character is feeling, or showing him doing things that will help the reader intuit those feelings, in discussion we set up a situation where our character talks to someone else —a friend, a lover, perhaps even a doctor —and has a conversation with the other person about how he is feeling.

  Your reader in this case watches what appears to be a scene unfolding: two people talking. And in a way the resultant story component almost is a scene in its external trappings —dialogue, movement, gestures, etc.— but the intent is to allow the character to speak of his emotions, be questioned about them by the other person, and perhaps even experience new emotions as a result of feeling misunderstood, or something of that nature.

  How will you present the emotional part of a sequel? Probably by using each of these techniques as seems appropriate at the time, and sometimes by mixing them together — a description section, for example, interrupted by the entry of a friend who says, "You look like you feel terrible! Tell me about it!"

  And how long will the emotional section be? Again: This will depend in very large measure on your intentions as a writer, the kind of story, the kind of character, and so on. In a modern romance novel, the emotional compartment may be described for page after page. In a chilly suspens
e novel, it may be slashed to a few words. Your "feel" for your character and situation will help you decide, and things you'll learn in the next handful of pages will help you, too.

  The first excerpt in Appendix 4, as brief as it is, illustrates one way to hint at emotion without directly describing it. The female character looks back on a meeting with a fascinating man and remembers little of the factual content of their conversation. The reader senses how emotionally overwrought the woman must have been —how intensely she felt then, and feels now, without the author's use of lengthy description or analysis of any kind.

  Thought

  For now, let's move on by noting that at some point your character will move out of blind feeling and into thought. At first this thought may be somewhat haphazard and confused by emotion. But sooner or later (again, depending on the kind of character, story, etc.), he will begin thinking rationally.

  As he does this, his process will usually break down into the following structural pattern:

  Review

  In which he looks back on the scene that just played, remembers the disaster and what it means in terms of his hopes, thinks again about his story goal and why it's important, and thinks back to other aspects of the earlier story that may be determined in part by the kind of story it is. (In a mystery, the detective might here review earlier clues; in a romance, the heroine might recall earlier dates with her lover.)

  This process of review may (again) be very brief sometimes, very long and involved others, depending on story situation. It can serve as a wonderful tool for you the author in the midst of writing a novel, because as the character reviews, he is reminding the reader what has happened and why it's important.

  Analysis

  After reviewing, the character ordinarily moves into analysis, a short or longer period of thought in which he tries to figure out the meaning of everything that has happened, especially the most recent disaster. Again, this analytical thought process can be used by you the author to remind the reader of what's important—or possibly to make sure the reader understands some things about the plot. As the character analyzes, he also tends to further characterize himself as well, because how he analyzes will show more about how he thinks—what kind of person he is.

  Planning

  Out of analysis comes planning. Here, taking into account all the factors he can think of, your character tries to lay out a new plan so that he can struggle forward toward his story goal. He considers options, weighs them, discards some, rank-orders the rest. It is here that you as the authorin-charge show your character taking hold of the story and in effect laying out the next steps in the plot for the reader.

  In my own writing, I usually have a very clear idea of where I want the story to go next, and what I want to happen as a result. But I constantly remind myself that I cannot simply "push the characters" into what I as author want next; instead, I have to sit back from the keyboard during the thought section of the sequel, review my author desires and intentions for future developments in the plot, then put myself imaginatively into my viewpoint character's head and search for emotional and logical reasons why he or she would arrive at the same decision for next action that I the author want.

  In one of my recent novels published under a pseudonym which I don't want to reveal, my heroine at one crucial turning point must decide to visit the room of a sick person in the retirement center where the heroine works. She has just learned at the end of a scene that the resident is more ill than she had imagined; but there are both a doctor and a nurse on duty, and there seemed to me at first to be no emotional or logical reason for my very-busy heroine to drop everything and fall even further behind in her pressing work to pay a visit when such good care is already available. But that was exactly what my plot plans required that she somehow logically do.

  It took considerable doing on my part to have my heroine feel terribly shocked to learn how serious the illness might be . . . then review her fine relationship with the sick person . . . then realize that good care was being provided . . . but then decide that she would never be able to work efficiently this day as long as she remained so worried and preoccupied, and that she owed it to herself — to make herself feel more at ease about the illness — to make a brief visit to the sick person's room and reassure herself that the sick friend did not appear at death's door. Only in this way, she decided, would she have enough peace of mind to return to her overloaded work schedule and try to get caught up.

  In this way I was able to build logic into a key turning point of the story and make my heroine's immediate cessation of regular work, and visit to the sick room, believable. But none of this would have been possible if I hadn't put myself into my character's feelings and thoughts.

  Decision

  In the above example, we have already leaped ahead into decision, so tightly woven are sequel components. The decision comes after your character has gone through as many steps as you find necessary in the process of reviewing, analyzing and planning. The decision to be made is not a generality, but a specific new, short-term, goal-oriented one. He sees now, despite all the bad things that have happened, some new ray of hope — some new gambit he can try, suspect he can question, search he can make, request he can lodge. He considers it from all angles and sees that it is his best hope to reenter the fray and again fight toward his story goal.

  This is not always necessarily a simple thing. Even after picking his goal, the character may have to brood about ways to try to achieve it. "Snap judgments" are seldom convincing as sequel decisions. The character may still be nagged by doubts, worried, scared, and confused. But he finally decides on something—the best course of action he can imagine at the moment. Almost always, you the author make this new goal crystal clear.

  Why should you be careful to make the newly selected goal clear? For at least three reasons. First, it's important for the reader to realize that the character has picked a new course of action and is ready to move into it; seeing that a specific new goal has been selected not only proves that the sequel has been important, and will now change the future course of the story; it also clarifies the logical linkage between what has gone before and what is to come next. Second, stipulation of the new goal begins to prepare the reader for the next confrontation or scene; it heightens anticipation and suspense. Third, we have already seen that understanding of the scene goal is vital to the reader's understanding of the scene and the things that are at stake; mentioning the scene goal late in the sequel preceding it adds to potential clarity about the scene goal and its potential consequences when the character later enters the scene, states the goal once more, and reenters the fray.

  Action

  In the conclusion of his sequel, your character gets back into movement again — new action — making an appointment, a telephone call, buying an airplane ticket, or doing whatever it takes to start him on his way to the time and place where he stands facing some new person. He states (again) his just-reached goal —and is plunged into another scene.

  The second excerpt in Appendix 4 illustrates many of the points we have been discussing. Having just experienced a major disaster (in this case a fall down an abandoned mine shaft), the viewpoint character experiences almost-paralyzing emotion, then thinks about her plight, finally makes a difficult decision, and takes the first step toward a new series of actions.

  Thus sequel links your scenes by showing how your character gets from one to the next both psychologically and physically. If you think about it, you will see how sequel is an enormously expanded internalization — so that the dynamic of something happening outside results in something happening inside, whichever structural level you happen to be at. In the microcosm, stimulus leads to internalization which leads to response by cause and effect. In the macrocosm, scene leads to sequel which leads to another scene by the same process.

  How long will your sequels be? Obviously, since many factors may influence how long you make any given part of a sequel, the length of seque
ls varies enormously.

  Just as some writers tend naturally to write rather lengthy internalizations during their stimulus-response transactions, some writers will tend to dwell on sequel, even sometimes skipping a scene to then write an enormously detailed sequel in which the content of the skipped scene can be condensed . . . analyzed . . . interpreted ... or even misunderstood by the viewpoint character thinking about what took place in the story but was not shown to the reader because the scene was skipped.

  Some novelists, for example, are more interested in their characters' reactions to events than in the events themselves. We can find great chunks of a novel composed almost entirely of sequels to scenes that were skipped over. Such a general structure requires the novelist to plan the story in the conventional scene-sequel sequence, then figure out ways to not write many of the scenes, yet present a condensed, interpreted version of what was in those scenes during a subsequent sequel.

  This is a highly complex and specialized technique, and I don't recommend it. For the writer capable of handling it, however, it provides some advantages. For one thing, parts of planned scenes that might be tedious to even a small degree can be condensed or left out if they are recounted in the structure of sequel-recollection, because the sequel form does allow condensation. Also, putting your story mainly in sequel form allows somewhat deeper characterization because so much more of the story is seen through a more subjective lens —a character's interpretation becoming an integral part of every event. Finally, the nature of sequel allows for a slower, more thoughtful pace —about which more will be said in the chapter that follows this one.