Comments on: Meeting across the river

By: Lady Glamis

Lady Glamis — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:19:39 +0000

Hah, excellent points! I recently learned how to analyze ever scene to make sure it was contributing to the story and to the characters. And on more than one layer, too, because if I have a scene for only one purpose, that means I can usually combine with another one to give the story more texture, up the tension, and quicken the pace.

I think that every movement a character makes need to add something to the scene more than just “moving” the character somewhere, or a transition, as you say.

Thanks for a good post!

By: gotheca

gotheca — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:33:22 +0000

Yes—every single scene must be essential to your plot. Every one. Reiteration doesn’t do it. Even in scenes meant to develop character or tell backstory, all that must occur in the context of getting the reader to the climax in a state of whacked-out anticipation. Otherwise, that scene’s destined for the Great Circular File in the Sky.

That Springsteen song is a favorite from way, way back—from back when it came out, in fact, in the Pleistocene Period—because nothing happens in it! They don’t make the heist, they don’t prove themselves, they don’t bring home any money and throw it on the bed. Cherry never learns what an utterly cool guy she’s rejected. And he never gets his noir Brando moment to “just go out walking.”

It’s all still waiting, eternally in the future, even thirty years later. Springsteen doesn’t instruct us: “Feel the loss, man.” He just does it to us.

That’s art.

Victoria

By: Jordan McCollum

Jordan McCollum — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:45:00 +0000

On the last point, about skipping the scene in the city: I can’t remember what I was reading, but a couple months ago I came to the conclusion that if everything is going to go exactly as anticipated in a scene, you don’t necessarily have to show it. If you’ve set it up really well, showing the scene might actually undercut the effect—with so much anticipation, it can be a bit of a disappointment to read the real scene.

By: Maureen

Maureen — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:12:29 +0000

Transitions are something you barely notice in a polished work but they sure do stick out like sore thumbs in novice/early drafts. I remember my first novel and how I kept wondering how to make my characters “move” and of course that’s the manuscript now in residence in the bottom a box somewhere, lol.

Thank you for pinpointing the problem and what to do about it.