making scenes concrete/ handling revelations

[Dragonlady]

Anyone else struggle with how to actually write/set a scene even though you know what you want it to do? I guess it's a sort of planning, but I just end up staring at a blank page for ages and not getting anywhere, any tips/tricks/methods would be useful to hear for brainstorming etc. For example, at the moment I know I need to introduce the Evil Stepmother, and have more meetings between the main protagonists, but my brain is giving me zero help with it.

I also have a big decision to make- the protagonist is a teenager/young woman keeping a secret from her parents about her identity. They are not going to be pleased when they find out. (think along the level of religious conservative parents discovering their child is gay, but this is a different, magical scenario). There are so many ways this could happen, I don't really know where to begin choosing. Not something I have a lot of personal experience with. Do you know of any writing that has done this sort of thing in a good, non-cheesy way?

 

[olive]

In simple terms, something like what Petunia Dursley feels about her sister Lily being a witch? She chooses to see her as a freak, a threat to 'normal' people.

 

[The Judge]

Anyone else struggle with how to actually write/set a scene even though you know what you want it to do?

I'm actually in the throes of this issue at the moment. I need to write a short and I know the backstory and what has to happen but I've yet to fathom how to do it, or to be precise how to begin it -- if I can't get the beginning right in my head, then I can't start.

I just end up staring at a blank page for ages and not getting anywhere

My advice would be to close the page down and go and do something else altogether, preferably something mindless and repetitive. I'm a firm believer in giving my sub-conscious time to solve the problem on its own without my conscious mind interfering. Going for a walk or having a bath often work for me.

any tips/tricks/methods would be useful to hear for brainstorming etc. For example, at the moment I know I need to introduce the Evil Stepmother, and have more meetings between the main protagonists, but my brain is giving me zero help with it.

If my sub-conscious is playing hard to get and nothing comes after a few days, then I switch from right brain creativity to left brain logic by drawing up a list of ideas with pros and cons for each. So I'd list different ways we might plausibly encounter Evil Stepmother for the first time -- cooking in the kitchen, working in the garden, making clothes, applying cosmetics, falling down drunk. Each situation would have a different effect -- foreshadowing her attempt to poison Our Heroine, for instance, or showing that she's spending money on silks and satins for herself while OH is in homespun. I'd then ask why and how questions of each eg where does she get the money for the silks, is she having an affair and the other man buys things for her; is she selling jewellery OH's mother left to her? The same thing for the protagonists meeting -- by chance in the market or at the theatre, by design in an orchard or the public baths? -- and follow through the implications and repercussions of each.

Usually when I've carried out an exercise like this it becomes clear which option works best either for the story logic or for theme/foreshadowing. If you still can't decide, though, just pick one and write it, then pick a second and write that, and see which writes best.

 

[sule]

Everything The Judge said is great.

When I have a scene that I just cannot figure out how to write I usually have to sit down and really get into what I want the scene to accomplish; what is going to have changed for the characters by the end of the scene or what the readers will have learned. Oftentimes I discover that the reason I didn't want to write the scene was because it really wasn't accomplishing a whole lot, that it was kind of just a connective scene moving the characters into position or being used to give the readers some small bit of knowledge. To engage myself as a writer I would try to find other things to tie into the scene: character arcs, or small bits of foreshadowing or even taking the thing I wanted to accomplish in this first scene and weaving it into another scene that had a lot more going on. I don't know if this is at all like the issue you are having, but generally the scenes that I have trouble writing are the ones that feel like they don't build to anything.

Conversely, if I feel like the scene I'm writing is so important that I'm intimidated to write it because I'm worried it will be too complex then I will take some time to just sit down and 'block' the scene like film and theater does: write down all the characters in the scene, where the scene will be, what kind of things might be going on in the background, where the characters will be in relation to each other and how they interact with their surroundings, break down bit by bit the things that need to happen and the order they happen, and just build myself an outline of the scene so I can physically see how all the things in the scene work together and then I have a better chance of doing the scene justice. This method certainly helps me better visualize the scene as I write it.

 

[.matthew.]

foreshadowing

Grrr. My pet peeve right there. Either the writer puts it in so subtly that you don't realise until the end (best case), or they hamfist it in so you see the twist coming. Pointless either way, but with an obvious twist it's like they've added their own spoilers.

But on the rest of that post, yea, totally agree. Scenes that just exist to connect two others are really hard to write. I'd definitely mirror the suggestion that the connecting information can be weaved into a busier scene to diffuse the boring bit.

-

On to the OP, I struggle to write what I know has to happen as well. For me it feels like all agency is gone, there's no surprises, and it just stagnates.

Have you thought about going the old road of having the introduction to the evil stepmother as her just being her evil self? Write her as the total personification of her character, without shades of grey (you can add those in later if you wanted). Your protagonist could simply bump into her in the house and be subjected to her usual nastiness?

 

[Star-child]

Suggestion: Put the conversation in another activity - one that can't be easily paused. Use the pulse of that activity to govern how the characters can speak and react, and use changes in the activity to color reactions. The conversation ends when the boat makes it to shore or the bread is baked.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Anyone else struggle with how to actually write/set a scene even though you know what you want it to do?

I get around this by putting down notes of what I expect that scene to be generally about and what I expect to happen in it, then move on. That at least helps with a sense of progression, and I find it easier to come back and expand notes rather than face a blank screen.

 

[Azoraa]

Anyone else struggle with how to actually write/set a scene even though you know what you want it to do?

what I do, and I take this mainly from my non-fiction writing in academia -- but I find it works just as well for me in fiction, is the following: I write "diary-style". I write what the next scene should be about. It goes something like this:

"So, the next scene should show how L and A get to know each other better, and then somehow lead up to the decision to start an expedition. Maybe they're cooking at the fireplace, or something like that. Maybe roots they found, that someone gathered. K, or B. Then they notice they need to gather more, and suddenly L and A are left alone. An awkward silence descends upon them.
A: So, how is you project coming along?..."

Did you notice what happened? I transitioned from writing about the scene to actually writing the scene. The usable material starts somewhere mid-scene, but that doesn't matter, because it's much easier to write a beginning for a scene that you can see in your mind.

I can really recommend that technique. Always works for me. Doesn't mean I'm always satisfied with the results, but I never have writing block... (knock on wood)

 

[Dragonlady]

Thanks all! Loads of ideas. Evil stepmother actually belongs to protagonist 2, the love interest, so I could do a scene where he finds out his dad is remarrying, they could already be married and I do a scene exposing her prejudice, or protagonist 1 is invited to the wedding and becomes concerned, for example. I know I should just pick one, write it and see what happens perhaps, but my brain doesn't seem to work like that. Making notes as suggested may well help. @The Judge I have definitely learned not to push it as you say. @.matthew. I know what you mean about foreshadowing, I'm more building a theme if that makes sense?
@Star-child my current wip is very relationship based so I have a lot of that. With the revelation it's more does she get forced to tell them, or do they find out somehow and confront her sort of dilemma

 

[Biskit]

Anyone else struggle with how to actually write/set a scene even though you know what you want it to do?

I'm currently dealing with a sequence of scenes where multiple plot points get resolved but other twists are needed to hit the final target for the end of the whole thread. It's complicated, convoluted, and makes the scene setting tricky.

Put the conversation in another activity - one that can't be easily paused. Use the pulse of that activity to govern how the characters can speak and react, and use changes in the activity to color reactions.

I'm sort of using variations on @Star-child's suggestion. My 1st person POV complains about things, so I've got him bitching about breakfast, and then admitting that breakfast is fine really but it's all the rest of the mess that's the problem. It also gives me the chance to tidy up other threads reasonably concisely with a "secondary conversation" which is nothing more than winks, nods and looks. (I end up using breakfast a couple of times - my main character has ended up involuntarily running a boarding house.)

My MC is natural complainer, so it's often easy to open a scene with him grumbling. I've just been skimming through my chapter headings and found one where my MC is explaining why no-one in their right mind would want to attend a particular meeting, before sliding into describing someone putting everything into making the meeting tolerable, and finally there he is at the meeting he never wanted to attend.

I often find putting what I want to say into something completely different, even incongruous can really work.

(This is also where I ought to have one of those safety signs, "Caution, slippery, wet prose, pantser writing in this area.")

 

[Azoraa]

I often find putting what I want to say into something completely different, even incongruous can really work.

phew, I really like that. Really. I need to think about that... hmmm... how could I? hmm... *goesawaytothink*

 

[Biskit]

phew, I really like that. Really. I need to think about that... hmmm... how could I? hmm... *goesawaytothink*

I do have a very twisted mind.

(Shamelessly nicking a quote from an amazon review: "It has to be said, Huntley-James writes a good story. But you have to wonder about a person whose mind works like that...")

 

[Star-child]

@Star-child my current wip is very relationship based so I have a lot of that. With the revelation it's more does she get forced to tell them, or do they find out somehow and confront her sort of dilemma

I don't understand your comments as they pertain to my suggestion.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Biskit what do you mean by "I often find putting what I want to say into something completely different, even incongruous can really work."?

@Star-child a lot of the actual plot is conversations or interactions between people so for the scene 'one of her friends finds out' I had to decide what they were doing, which helped structure the scene- I had them harvesting herbs in the garden. So I can see how your suggestion would work, when I've decided who initiates it and why.

 

[Biskit]

@Biskit what do you mean by "I often find putting what I want to say into something completely different, even incongruous can really work."?

I've just been trawling for a nice example.
The scene starts with MC rambling about "a week is a long time in politics" and sliding into grumbles about how his work schedule changes at the drop of a hat but his landlady (of the boarding house he inherits) is very strict about punctuality, and now he has to commit the sin of skipping breakfast because he is needed at work immediately, but this morning the landlady is apologising because breakfast will be late...
OK, pause for breath.
What the scene is really about is the emergency staff meeting at work. My time travelling MC is "under cover" in this particular time and place, an oppressive regime that has just captured an "enemy of the state" which means everyone's life is turned upside down that morning. It also prompts a notional villain to show my MC a very human side, establishes the dynamics of some tertiary characters and sets up various things for later. It's supposed to be a far cry from the domestic trivia at the start. (Oh, and that enemy of the state is the whole reason the MC is there, so at least they inserted him into the right bit of the timeline.)

 

[tinkerdan]

You really need to be able to frame it into the whole story first.
Figure out what it is supposed to accomplish in the the whole and how it impacts the story latter.
When I do that. I can then either sketch it out or just notate it for later.
That later is when I reach the scene it impacts, by then I might have a clearer idea of what had to have occurred and who and how each character was meant to interpret events and how that all leads to the moment. If it is vital to the story but the page is blank, that's not a bad thing, that's an opportunity to move on and discover more fully how you need to block it in later.

Otherwise if you try too hard now and forget to go back, some astute reader is going to call you out and say something revelatory such as, 'It reads as though you don't quite know where this is all going.'

 

[Dragonlady]

@tinkerdan that's a really useful way of putting it thanks, as I know exactly what the impact of these scenes will be, perhaps focusing on that will help me work out exactly what will be needed.

 

[Dragonlady]

if it helps anyone else, I realised I need to do some work on my characterisation. A lot of these decisions - it shouldn't be me making them, it should be the characters.

 

[Star-child]

if it helps anyone else, I realised I need to do some work on my characterisation. A lot of these decisions - it shouldn't be me making them, it should be the characters.

No, you should be making them. Your characters can't control the setting, outside events, interruptions or a thousand other things that determine how the scene will play out. People make somewhat arbitrary decisions about how they confront and react to confrontation, so those decisions aren't simply the result of what the character is likely to do but what they could do - if you provide them with a framework that allows them to make that decision. But people aren't programmed to stay on some sort of course due to their character and history.

 

[Dragonlady]

It's definitely a factor in one of the threads I'm looking at. I already know what the big conflict is going to be - and pinning down the characters can help me to see what setting and other factors would work best. I know what outcome I want - pinning down how a certain character would react to the situation playing out in different ways can therefore help me work out what would work best to get that outcome if that makes any sense. For example, he really cares about appearances, so would him finding out in a public setting moderate his reaction (and would there be any repercussions later).

With the step mother thing, a big question is whether i'm going to introduce another POV for some of it. I'm not sure if I really want to. If I don't, then working out how that character feels about his dad's impending marriage will help me decide what sort of situations I can use to show the main protagonist, and the reader, what's happening in his family.