Six questions I ask about every scene - by Rowena House

For this blog, as always when I’m blathering on about craft issues, I’m indebted to the many writing gurus I’ve read over the years. This one in particular is far more a synthesis of their ideas than the product of any original thinking of mine, so I’ll start by thanking some of the experts to whom I return again and again for inspiration: Emma Darwin, Robert McKee, John Yorke, James Scott Bell & Shaun Coyne.]

So, the six questions I ask of each scene…

1. Why is my viewpoint character in this place at this time?

The why question helps me work out the motivation of each viewpoint character at that particular time & place in the story. It is the first question because motivation is such a critical issue for the credibility of a story (and also where agents and editors often focus first when reading a new manuscript).

Thinking about motivation also helps me see the scene from a reader’s point of view: the actions, reactions and decisions of the scene protagonist will only make sense to them if they know why the character is doing what they’re doing, and accept (emotionally) that it is a realistic thing for them to be doing under the specific circumstances I have created on the page.

As a writer, drilling down ever deeper into the why question makes for deeper and truer characters, too. If at any time the answer to the question why is ‘because I need my character to be here/to do X for the plot to work’, then it’s almost certainly time to rethink that scene.  

2. What is my viewpoint character planning to do in this scene?

Establishing the intent [or scene goal] for the viewpoint character is the next question I ask, whether it’s an action scene (the character is doing what they planned to do) or a reaction scene (something unexpected happened to them in an earlier scene and they’re working out what to do about it).

Even if the main point of the scene in plot terms is the next unexpected event, I try to see if this event could also stop my scene protagonist from doing what they intended. It that way, the event is a dramatic force of antagonism for the character, rather than something purely extraneous.

To keep each scene relevant to the overall story, I also work out how this particular scene goal is a stepping stone towards the protagonist’s overall Story Goal. For example, in my WW1 novel, The Goose Road, the Story Goal was Angelique’s aim to save the family farm for her soldier brother. Each scene worked towards this in an incremental way.

3. Who or what is stopping them from achieving their scene goal?

Basically, there are four types of antagonism to chose from: 1) inner conflicts (emotional and psychological), 2) inter-personal conflicts (another character or characters); 3) societal conflicts (e.g. the character’s  social status makes it hard for them to have agency, like Lyra at the start of His Dark Materials), and 4) environmental or physical obstacles, such as flooding rivers, high walls, labyrinths etc. etc.

When building towards big climactic scenes, much fun can be had in combining forces of antagonism to make them complex, e.g. where one problem builds on another, making the scene uniquely difficult for the protagonist. For example, a hero has a debilitating phobia about dark enclosed spaces (an inner conflict) but his only escape route is a pitch black tunnel (a physical obstacle).

We can then complicate the situation still further by making it rain (an additional environmental obstacle as the tunnel floods) with the prison guards banging on the blocked cell door behind him (interpersonal conflict). 

Okay, this is a crass example (I think it’s been done to death on screen) but complicating complex forces of antagonism is a tool well worth have in one’s storytelling tool box (to borrow Stephen King’s metaphor in his brilliant On Writing).

4. What happens as a result of the conflict/s between the viewpoint character & these force/s of antagonism?

It’s pretty much a truism that conflict drives plots forward. So, when plotting, it can be helpful to think of the story as a series of ‘beats’: action-reaction, followed by re-evaluation of the situation, and then a fresh decision about the way forward. This leads naturally to rising conflict, where characters have to take ever riskier decisions leading to ever bolder actions.

While each scene may only take the protagonist one step along this road, a sequence of scenes which climax at a new, riskier strategy (from which there is no going back) is the lifeblood of drama.

The point of Question 4, therefore, is to check whether I have mined every scene for optimum drama each step along the way.

5. How do the events of the scene make the viewpoint character think & feel?

Once upon a time, it was acceptable for writers to tell readers about their characters through extensive biographies, delivered via backstory and exposition. Today (or so we’re repeatedly told) readers prefer to understand fictional characters through their emotional & psychological reactions to conflicts, tensions and pressures within the story.

At times, we may still decide to narrate some backstory, or allow our characters to debate issues or themes, but, overall, contemporary scenes need to include characters doing something significant or making a meaningful decision based on credible thoughts and feelings.

6. What is the scene protagonist going to do next?

If conflict drives stories, then change drives scenes. So my final question is a big one: what changes in the scene? What’s going to happen next as a result of that change? In both character-led and more plot-orientated stories, protagonist generally initiate action, so that’s where I focus this final question.

Firstly, I review how the next action will up the jeopardy in some way. Is the cost of failure greater than before, are the stakes higher? If not, how can I make them so?

Then, how does this next action link with other plotlines? Does the linkage need to be clearer or do I want the reader to experience an Ah-ha moment of realisation later on in the story?

Finally, what if this action never happens? Would it matter? If not, does this scene deserve a place in the manuscript at all?

Right. That’s the washing done and I’ve got to pack for a trip to France, sailing tonight to visit a writer friend, with gale force winds forecast in the Channel. Gulp. Happy writing one & all.

Website: rowenahouse.com

Twitter: @houserowena

Man Booker, BBC2 & Robert McKee: guiding lights for self-editors – by Rowena House

Last week, as I was explaining to a local writing group a selection of approaches to self-editing, I basically talked myself into a corner and reaffirmed (at least to myself) a truth about revision.

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:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write

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.

 

Events	Structural beats
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.	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.
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.	The antagonists’ objective are established: the Ruskin family seek to enhance John’s social standing via the portrait.
Servant George enters with news of an unexpected caller for John.	The inciting incident. An external force interrupts the domestic status quo.
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.	The lawyer communicates his scene objective. The parents, by blocking the doorway, form a physical barrier between the lawyer & his objective.
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.	A force of antagonism strikes directly back at the lawyer.
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.	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.
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.	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.
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.	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.

@HouseRowena

 

PS Publication date for The Goose Road  is now April 5th next year - after a brief shimmy to March!

 

 

                                     

Snapshots

Recently I found myself thinking about my earliest memory. It is a snapshot from a time before I had much in the way of language and it has worked itself from the moorings of anything else I was experiencing at that time of my life and floats freely now in the stream of my imagination. As a writer, it is a scene I find interesting precisely because of its lack of moorings, because it throws up questions and starts me thinking of the possibilities of its context.

So much of the memory is clear and sharp. I can see, hear, feel and taste things as though I were experiencing them this instant. The first thing I see is bars – cot bars. This immediately throws up the first question: how old am I? I must be less than two, as I know that I had to vacate the cot for my younger sister who came along about two years after me. But I am sitting up, so I am not a small baby. As I let the scene run in my mind’s eye I realize I can hear crying, and that it is me making the noise. So, I have been left in my cot and I am crying. But why? I am still very small, arguably too small to be left crying like this. I then hear that the crying is not particularly convincing. It has in fact reached a point where I am simply moaning the word “Mummy” over and over again at a subdued pitch. So possibly I have given up hope on anyone coming to see what I am crying about. I then realize I have already cried too long and too much by this point. I have come to the memory at the point where I have almost cried myself out; my eyes are swimming with tears, and my nose and mouth are full of tear-snot, that liquid which is thicker than tears and which comes at the end of a particularly long bout of weeping. I have managed to produce so much of it by now that I am blowing bubbles with it every time I say the word “Mummy”. My crying is slowly giving way to the creation of these bubbles as I watch, intrigued at how big I can make them. 

And then the memory ends, switches itself off as though I were watching a short video clip which is now finished. Did my mother come and get me? Had she left me for a long time because she had fallen asleep, exhausted by looking after a toddler while she was pregnant with my sister? Or perhaps someone else was looking after me that day? If so, did they feel bad when they finally came to me and saw how much and how long I had cried? Or was I in reality only crying for a matter of minutes anyway, my sense of abandonment amplified by my lack of an understanding of the passage of time?

As I thought about this memory, I realized that my writing often starts like this, with a scene or a snapshot of a character, and then the whys and wherefores, the what ifs and how comes are what set the cogs whirring and thus the story into motion. Without an initial image or soundbite, I do not have a hook on which to hang my story.

My book Monkey Business started with a voice in my ear, that of the hippy uncle character, Zed. I heard him muttering one day, talking to his nephew, Felix, and explaining how Nature has its own rhythm without recourse to watches or clocks. Suddenly a scene was there, fully formed, and I could work outwards from that to create the rest of the book – a story essentially about a little boy who worships his uncle and shares his love of animals and how this, coupled with a large dollop of misunderstanding, gets the characters into some tricky situations. I had wanted to write about a boy like Felix for a while, but had not known how to start the story until Zed turned up.

My most recent book, I’m A Chicken Get Me Out of Here! had a similar beginning. After a night of anxiety when one of our chickens did not come home to roost (but did thankfully appear the next day unscathed) I began to wonder how she had survived. I was turning this over in my mind when my son's friend asked if he could bring his guinea pig round to our house to meet our chicken. This meeting sparked off a scene in my imagination where the fictional chicken arrives at her new home to find she is expected to share a hutch with an OCD guinea pig called Brian. Once I had scribbled down my imagined scenario, the rest of the story found its way, spreading its tentacles outwards from that snapshot.

Even though snapshots such as these kickstart a story, they rarely find their way on to page one of the finished story; more often than not they will worm their way into the middle of the book, and beginnings are often written once I have got to the end.

So I thought I would throw this out into the ABBA ether – how many of you start with a scene or an image? And how many prefer to work in a more linear way? Answers on the back of a snapshot, please.

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