That is, after the big developmental overview, when
you nail down that elusive concept of the “heart” or soul of the story, and
decide, for example, whether you’ve got too many subplots or characters, the natural
focus for re-writing is the scene.
Not voice, not sentences, not even structure as
such. The scene.
From their expressions, I’m not sure I convinced
my students, perhaps because the example I used of an ideal scene was old and
rather lame, and taken from Robert McKee’s Story,
which is brilliant in my opinion, but rather too rooted in black-and-white
films to be self-evidently relevant to today’s novelist.
Then, later than week, cuddled up with our cat
on the sofa, watching the BBC 2 drama, Effie Gray, “Bingo!”
From now on, whenever I need to define an ideal scene it will be the climax to that story, with Derek Jacobi as a lawyer confronting the odious John Ruskin (played superbly by Greg Wise), preparing to bring
his entire world crashing down with one word.
Before looking at that one word, and how the
scene builds up to it, here’s some context from George Saunders, winner of this
year’s Man Booker prize. He has been interviews all over the place, but these
quotes come from this article in The Guardian:
In it he says, “We often discuss art this way:
the artist had something he “wanted to express”, and then he just, you know …
expressed it. We buy into some version of the intentional fallacy: the notion
that art is about having a clear-cut intention and then confidently executing
same. The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and more of
a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully ... An artist works outside the realm
of strict logic. Simply knowing one’s intention and then executing it does not
make good art.”
His self-editing method is a binary process, which
he describes as a meter in his forehead flicking from positive to negative as
he imagines how each passage he’s written will be received by a first-time reader,
and then editing his work “so as to move the needle into the [positive] zone.”
He describes this process as repetitive,
obsessive and iterative: “watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle,
adjust the prose … through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship
slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of
incremental adjustments … Falsehoods get squeezed out of it, lazy assertions
stand up, naked and blushing, and rush out of the room.”
Beautiful prose, isn’t it? I’m really glad he
won this year’s Man Booker prize, and I look forward very much to reading Lincoln in the Bardo over Christmas.
However…
What if you don’t have time to steer your ocean
liner through a thousand incremental adjustments? What if you have a full-time
job and/or a family to raise, and no milk in the fridge and a deadline to meet,
and… and… and..?
In other words, what if writing isn’t your whole
life?
For me, in the trackless oceans of imagination,
structural advice books are star charts, and the solid possibilities of a
well-crafted scene as essential as a life-raft.
So, back to Effie Gray … via Robert McKee.
If I had to keep just one book from my library
of writing advice guides, McKee’s Story
would be it. Despite his focus on film, the understanding he’s given me about storytelling
is unequalled.
In a nutshell, what he says about scenes is this:
every scene should build, beat by beat, to a Story Event, by which he means a meaningful
change from positive to negative or vice versa in a fundamental human value (or
a Story Value as he terms it).
Examples of changes in a Story Value include: cowardice
to bravery, hope to despair, fear of commitment to commitment, happiness to
sadness etc.
For McKee, such switches should be achieved by pitting
a protagonist with a clear objective against an equal or more powerful force of
antagonism with a diametrically opposed goal. Via progressively escalating confrontations,
the scene should culminate in an unexpected pivot point that alters this Story Value
for a central character.
All of which the climax scene in Effie Gray, written by Emma Thompson, does
to perfection.
SPOILER ALERT: Do watch the film first if you
want to experience the deliciousness of the denouement in full. It is available
on iPlayer for the next few weeks. I’ve skipped over some elements of the plot
for the sake of brevity, which does a disservice to the richness and complexity
of the sub-text, but anyhow, here goes.
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Events
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Structural beats
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Effie Gray’s lawyer gets out
of a carriage and opens his legal document case. Earlier scenes have
established Effie’s desire to escape from her unconsummated marriage with
abusive & sexually-repressed John Ruskin.
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The protagonist’s objective is established: to deliver a legal letter.
In this scene, the lawyer is both Effie’s proxy and also a representative of
Victorian social values & the law.
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Inside the house, the
interfering parents of self-satisfied grandee John Ruskin excessively admire a
new portrait of him by an eminent pre-Raphaelite painter.
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The antagonists’ objective are established: the Ruskin family seek to
enhance John’s social standing via the portrait.
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Servant George enters with
news of an unexpected caller for John.
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The inciting incident. An external force interrupts the domestic
status quo.
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Effie’s highly respectable
male lawyer, kept waiting on the doorstep, announces he has a citation to
court for John. John’s parents stand between
John and the lawyer.
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The lawyer communicates his scene objective. The parents, by blocking
the doorway, form a physical barrier between the lawyer & his objective.
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John & his mother
question the purpose of the citation; when the lawyer says it is a petition
for divorce from Effie, the father snatches the letter.
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A force of antagonism strikes directly back at the lawyer.
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The lawyer insists the
letter must, by law, be delivered to “the defendant”. The father reluctantly
relinquishes the letter to the lawyer, who gives it to John. While taking it,
John remains composed, and questions Effie’s grounds for divorce.
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The protagonist’s proxy defeats the father’s desire to protect John by
calling up the power of the law, i.e. society’s power over the family. Effie wins round one, although John’s disdainful
pride & self-confidence remain apparently intact.
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When the lawyer refuses to answer
John’s questions, citing the delicacy of the matter, John presses him for an
immediate explanation, culminating in his demand for an answer. In response
to this demand, the lawyer states that her grounds for divorce is John’s
impotency.
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This beat of questions and rebuttals builds to the pivot point of both
the scene and the entire story.
The word “impotency”, delivered in Derek Jacobi’s magnificent voice, challenges
John’s manhood. Effie is calling down on him not only the full weight of the law,
but also Victorian society’s expectations of a man and his sole duty to his
wife. With one word, she has countered all of John’s malicious threats to
ruin her reputation through false allegations of wantonness.
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The horror of the impending
scandal slowly dawns on the mother, but more quickly on the faces of John and
his father. As their expressions turn from shock to comprehension to shame,
the father shuts the door in the lawyer’s face.
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John’s cold, imperious pride (his Story Value throughout the film) is
quenched. Henceforth, he will be humiliated, while Effie’s Story Value
switches from enslavement within their marriage to the freedom to live as she
wishes and to love another. Well done, Effie! And well done to the film
makers. A fantastic scene.
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@HouseRowena
PS Publication date for The Goose Road is now April 5th next year - after a brief shimmy to March!
