Crafting a Scene: the Necessity/Sufficiency Rule

Scenes

Darned if I know. I just write a story, and I don't even think in terms of scenes. For me, a novel is one long story, and not a bunch of connecting scenes. It's like a chess game where each move causes a reactionary move, which causes a reactionary move, etc. Attack and defense.

Pace and flow, mood and tone, highs and lows, action and pauses to rest, and a seamless novel from beginning to end are, for me, far more important than individual scenes.

For me, the notion of scenes conjures the image of a chain, a bunch of connecting links. I prefer the image of a rope. . .one seamless story beginning to end.

I'm sure my stories have seams, but certainly not consciously, and I never, ever work while thinking in terms of scenes.

You know, this reminds me of my golf game. I'm a pretty damn good golfer -- until I start *thinking* about it. If I just walk up and hit the ball, I rock. If I stand there and start thinking about my stance or where my hands are or how my shoulders are turning, my game goes in the crapper.

I think for a lot of people, this applies to fiction writing too. If you start thinking too much about what you're doing, it can bind you up faster than some of Mama's oatmeal surprise. Which is one of the reasons my answer to the "how do you do it" question is usually "I don't know and I don't wanna know". YMMV.

These are interesting thoughts to ponder. I'm a fiction novice, but in the process of developing my plot, I found myself becoming more interested in the backstory.

The main plot revolves around a women's relationship with her ski instructor. The backstory involves her father, a former 10th Mountain Division member, who is killed at the Trade Center on 9/11. At first, the main character simply told her instructor about her dad, but my "beta readers" wanted more. They wanted to be sitting around the fireplace in Vermont when the first idea of the 10th was talked about.

As I began to research this period in history, what started out as a backstory became a sub plot, and a rather interesting one at that. I think that if I had been too concerned about the scene's necessity, it would have never had a chance to develop. Sometimes you have to "go with the flow," then check back later to determine whether or not the scene is supurflous.

My name is Zornhau. I am an Analytical Writer, so I'm happy to discuss technical approaches on their own merits. (Non-Analytical Writers should change channel about now, lest the discussion fry their muse.)

I think, what you describe is on of those implicit rules of good writing such as Motivation-Reaction units, which most people do, but not everybody thinks about.

IMHO, your two tests are useful as far as they go. However, they only really apply after writing a scene.

I tend* to work the other way around. I start off with the plot points, then create scenes to show them.

If I haven't got spare plot points, there is no scene - your Law of Neccessity.

All the plot points have to go into the scene outline before I start writing - your Law of Sufficiency.


Cheers
Z

*Actually, "tend" is an understatement. I have a very systematic way of developing plot based on nested story questions, each with their own plot points/"moves".

I don't think in terms of scenes so much as "segments". I'll use one of my WIPs as an example. I know that in the first segment, my MC has to total her car, lose her job, learn she's the benificiary of a sizable inheritance, and fly to Scotland to claim it. These four things need to happen -- in that order -- to move the story on to the second segment.

I just write the darn thing, and cliched as it sounds, let the characters do what they want. If they do something that's not really going to move the story along, I'll probably just delete it later.

For me, there's a difference between revision and analysis. I think you can be too rule-bound or scientific when it comes to things like this. For instance, you can learn the notes on a piano keyboard, practice, record yourself and analyze what you're doing -- adjust what you do based on that analysis, and people may even recognize the song when you play it. But it's not going to sound anything like a virtuoso who learns music by ear and just plays. (I'm not trying to say *I'm* a virtuoso, just that that type of approach is what I strive for.)

Maybe it all comes down to right brain versus left brain. Left brain people are attuned to things such as logic, sequence, literalness and analysis. While Right brain people are attuned to design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. While most people have a mix, there's always a dominant side. For me, this is one of the reasons I believe writing fiction can't be learned. You can learn the steps and rules, of course, but I don't think you're going to produce any works that...um...work.

Just my .02 cents. (or maybe 4 by now )

In the skiing world, we call it "analysis paralysis" which I confess to be guilty of. Sometimes, I have to just let myself feel the snow. Then, later, when I see myself on video, I can analyze what was not quite correct.

I recently interviewed a singer/songewriter who is also a ski instructor. He siad that people who are overly analytical about the sport tend to be over achievers in their physical execution. Thus, despite having the best equipment and studying with the best instructors, they still end up getting injured.

Perhaps there is an analogy for fiction, here.

That being said, I do not believe that this was where NF was going in his post. Many of us, myself included, probably assumed this when we saw the mathematics analogy, but that is given proof that even writers sometimes don't read for full context.

I have a few scenes in my novel that are fictionalized versions of events that happened in real life. When looking back at them, it's a "you had to be there" issue. The scene is funny, but does very little for my plot.

These "rules" are an extension of the principle of Occam's Razor. They are only useful to people who do not have a sense of those factors. That sort of weighing is going on at every level of writing, from the number of words in a sentence to the overall length of the piece. That's why some people writer more readable stuff than others...they make those decisions at every moment, as part of their voice and style. Just like athletes and singers do. If they have trouble in an area, they might go to a coach and think about some exercise like that. Probably they say, duh.

Yeah, this is like the golf swing, or like the centipede who couldn't walk after somebody asked him how he did it.

I am also an analytical writer, but I'm going to disagree with zornhau a little and say that before I write I consider what scenes will be necessary and sufficient to get me from the beginning of my story to the end. Although necessary and sufficient seem like rather strong words - personally I prefer 'useful (meaning useful towards fully exploring the themes and primary characters) and entertaining'.

In point of fact, I am currently working on a novel outline that doesn't have scenes yet. I described what should change in each act, and now I'm working on cutting each act into smaller movements and specifying what should be happening in each, then I will cut each movement into scenes and group them together into chapters to give me the final detailed structure of the novel.

NeuroFizz said:

Hi, Patti

"...probably just delete it later..." Check. That takes some analysis. .

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It's hard, because obviously if I didn't think it was wonderful I wouldn't have written that part in the first place. But when you go back a year later and think, "Gee, the dialogue is really snappy and fun, but this whole page doesn't do ANYTHING for the story," it kinda sucks. But out it goes anyway.

NeuroFizz said:

Sorry, but I'm kind of weirded out by the "...let the characters do what they want" part. I think this stance is greatly exaggerated by most writers. We are all surprised by how our characters turn out, or by some of the things they do, but in your case, she has to total her car, lose her job, learn she's a benificiary, and fly off to claim the inheritance--in that order. Most of us probably lay down similar constraints on our character's development. It's hardly "doing what she wants" at least at that level. So, even the most die-hard "let the characters show their own way" writers still use analysis and pre-destined construction (at least through the first draft). .

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I know it sounds weird, but a lot of times it's true. The MC is doing what *I* want to an extent, but it's hard to keep her from doing other things. You can tell someone to go sit at their desk and work, but it's a crapshoot -- they might be really productive and create a giant spreadsheet for you, or they might just sit and play Tetris and look at porn all day long. Secondary characters, for me, frequently refuse to do what I want them to. In my previous ms I had one who flat out refused to die -- took me three attempts to kill her, because the wench just kept showing back up.

NeuroFizz said:

But, what happens when you go back over that first draft and you want to chop, modify, retouch. Do you evaluate scenes then? Have you ever had a scene, or chapter, where you stopped and thought...that isn't right. Do I need to go there? That's what I'm thinking of. You probably go on gut feeling on the first-to-second draft step, but without knowing it, you may be doing a similar mental calculation. So, this "rule" may not have to be spelled out for you, which is the way it should be for someone who has that gut feeling, who is comfortable with the craft. What about those who don't yet have that waistline intuition?

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I've studied theory quite a bit. More than anyone should, in all likelihood, and the more I've studied various writing theory, the less I believe in any of it. Pretty much all theory seems to work better when looking back than when looking ahead.

Most theories seems to me to be constructed from dissecting a completely finsihed work and saying "Ah, ha, that's how I/he/she did it." I'm not sure it is how it was done. As Stephen King says, as writers, we really can't tell anyone how we do what we do, we can only tell them how we think we did what we did. And we're probably wrong.

I have no doubt my stories have scenes. I suspect having scenes is unavoidable. Even if it were possible to write a novel without scenes, readers and others would separate various sections into scenes in their own mind. But I don't construct them as scenes, and I don't think of them as scenes, first draft or last.

I tend to think good writing may be a matter for analysis, but I also believe that good storytelling isn't. Really good storytelling is, I think, always instinctual. Most of the really good storytellers I've known wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about, and probably wouldn't read a theory, or even think about writing analysis, anymore than they think about the theory and analysis of breathing.

I never have done a lot of rewriting. I sold the first draft of my first short story. Pretty much the first draft of my first three short stories, in fact. In those days, I didn't even know you were supposed to do more than one draft. I then sold the first draft of my first novel, written in three weeks, and the editor asked for no rewriting, no cutting, no lengthening, no changes, at all.

Point is, I'm not sure getting comfortable with writing is what counts, and I'm not sure it's about those who have learned to write without thinking about rules and theories. Obviously, this was someting I did from the start, and there was no learning curve.

I can think of a quite large number of other writers who also had little or no learning curve when it came to telling stories. It may have taken some of them a while to tell the right stories, but that's a different matter.

To this day, I do very little rewriting. For me, the second draft is only a chance to tighten sentences a bit, and to get rid of any clunkers. And maybe to hone the dialogue just a bit. If I need to do any serious rewriting, there's a serious problem. It means I did something very wrong, very early in the story.

I start stories with a situation that asks a question and/or poses a problem. In the middle of this situation is a character. I never think about what happens next, I just write. The situation and the character determine what happens next, not me. I really just follow teh character around and write down what happens to him, and what he sees, hears, feels, thinks, etc.

The older I get, the more I'm drawn to the conclusion that theories about any aspect of writing, be it scenes, plot, characterization, mood, tone, flow, pace, etc., are mostly fancy ways of saying someone wrote a good or a bad story. They're back-engineered science, but I think they're also largely guesswork.

I think the ability to tell a good story gives you all these things as a byproduct, but I'm not at all convinced that doing these things does anything at all to create the byproduct of a good story. I tend to think that theories and analyses approach writing from the wrong side. It's like trying to take apart the statue of David to see how Michelangelo created it.

My take on this is quite likely the reverse of your own. I don't think good instinctual writers use theory without realizing it, I think good analytical writers use instinct without realizing it.

It seems to me that most successful writers are those who have read thousands of stories, and who then sit down and write a story. What has gone in their eyes for years then comes out through their fingertips. I tend to believe this is all talent is. . .the ability to have what has gone in through your eyes then come out through your fingertips. All those stories that have gone in through the writer's eyes mix and match, get stirred into pulp, and are stored in the subconscious. Talent is nothing more than a pipeline from this pulp to the fingertips. The more a person writes, the more the spigot is opened, the easier it gets to tell a story. But the pipeline has to be there, and all the tehory in the world can't build it.

The writer has read stories all his life, and he thought of them as stories, not as writing. So he knows what a story is, and it's a story that comes out through his fingertips. Not writing, but a story.

When deconstructionism, theory, and back-engineering work for a writer, I think it's only because, sometimes, under some circumstances, for some writers, they help a writer turn on the spigot that connects the fingertips to the subconscious pulp pit.

As another thread suggested, I do think this kind of theory and back-engineering is often too much like painting by the numbers, and tends to produce the same result.

sunandshadow said:

I am also an analytical writer, but I'm going to disagree with zornhau a little and say that before I write I consider what scenes will be necessary and sufficient to get me from the beginning of my story to the end.

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Disagree all you want - there's no one right way of being analytical!

However...

sunandshadow said:

In point of fact, I am currently working on a novel outline that doesn't have scenes yet. I described what should change in each act, and now I'm working on cutting each act into smaller movements and specifying what should be happening in each, then I will cut each movement into scenes and group them together into chapters to give me the final detailed structure of the novel.

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...the outline you describe is built of - call 'em - plot points which you're shepherding into scenes, pretty much the way I do.

Well said. One thing to note is how often you hear a writer talk and he starts mentioning deconstruction and scene analysis as being important to his method.

I usually write longer works in chapters. Since I have spent decades whipping out 3000 words pieces that I can hang in my mind and "see" in one glance, I find it easy to work at that length. It's a matter of arranging chunks of that size into a picture. "Scenes" do not come into it. And it's specious to tell somebody that scenes "really do" matter whether they know it or not. I could just as easily say books are structured from the level of pargraph, sentence or letters...there they are, right?

I'd say everybody acheives a balance between structure and creative flow. For some, this can be pretty awesome. Harold Robbins reportedly just sits down and starts writing a novel and progresses through until it's done. Mickey Spillane, pretty much the same. Kerouac's "on the road" was written in long sessions of just belting it out (ok, it shows on that one). I did my first novel by sitting by a swimming pool and writing a 3000 word chapter every day for a month and it was done.

Most writing "rules" are of no use while writing. They may or may not be useful during editing...or criticism or discussion.

It's a wonderful aspect of humanity that we occupy such a spectrum of possibilities, illustrated beautifully by so many of the discussions on these boards.

Some can't write with a pre-planned structure or outline, and some can't manage without one. Some find that they write best when their words can flow directly from brain to keyboard, while others get blocked at a keyboard and can only write creatively with a pen.

The answer to many of these curiosities of behaviour lies in the orientation of our brains - the old left/right dichotomy.

Here a useful little program that you can use to test your own orientation and which may give you a clue as to which approaches to writing (and many other life matters) might work best for you.

http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/learningst/brain.exe

Well, I tried this brain program, and came out with the following:

auditory: 80%
visual: 20%
left: 68.2%
right: 31.8%

So tell me, based on these results, how do I usually write? Do I outline beforehand? Write with a pen? Always wear a hat? Play opera music? Do tell.

brinkett said:

Well, I tried this brain program, and came out with the following:

auditory: 80%
visual: 20%
left: 68.2%
right: 31.8%

So tell me, based on these results, how do I usually write? Do I outline beforehand? Write with a pen? Always wear a hat? Play opera music? Do tell.

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LOL!

Jeez, Brinkett, do I have to do everything for you, already?

Did you press the 'Personal Evaluation' button? Mine says:

'Bob, You are strongly left hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs, a productive combination of traits. The pre-eminence of your left hemisphere implies that you are organised, structured and self-monitoring. You always start analysing situations and problems by looking at details and then attempt to categorise those details in a very systematic way. You persevere on a theme.

Because of your balance between auditory and visual approaches, you can organise details into a pattern or you can arrange them sequentially so that you have at hand at least two alternatives which dimensionalize your organisation and thoroughness.' etc etc

This confirms my experience of feeling a bit lost without an outline and an overriding theme(s). If I don't have at least some sense of direction as to where I'm going I tend to dive off onto tangents, which may be interesting but turn out to be ultimately irrelevant. And I hate 'killing my darlings' once they're on paper.

It's not dealt with here, but recently I read somewhere that a lot of highly creative people (AW members, obviously) with extreme right brain dominance have difficulty communicating through computer keyboards and are far better off writing longhand. Interestingly, those people found typewriters far easier to get on with than keyboards, because there's a better sensory connection between their thoughts and their words.

I also find this little snippet that has relevance to writers.

The War of the Brains

The two brains not only see the world in vastly different ways but, in our current society, the left side just "doesn't get" what the right side is all about. It tends to dismiss anything significant coming into consciousness from its "flaky" cranial twin.

Sometimes two sides can actually disagree, resulting in our perception of emotional turmoil from the expressive protests of right brain. Our conscious mind can only focus on data from one brain at a time. We can switch from one side to the other very quickly (with our corpus collosum intact) but that's not always the most efficient way to act and eventually ultimate authority to enter consciousness is delegated to one brain or the other. In our modern world, this battle is almost always won by the left brain.

It appears that most people will never reach their maximum potential because of compromises that have been made between these two governing bodies. Sometimes skills which the right brain can perform better are routinely handled, with less skill, by the left brain. Ideally, both brains work together in people with optimum mental ability. This coordinating ability may be the key to superior intellectual abilities. In most people, however, the left brain takes control, choosing logic, reasoning and details over imagination, holistic thinking and artistic talent.

Methods have been devised to "shut off" the left brain, allowing the right side to have its say. Creative writing courses often use this method to combat "writer's block." The logical left side is easily bored by lack of input and tends to "doze off" during such activities as meditation (repeating a mantra or word over and over) or in sensory deprivation environments. The right brain is then able to "sneak" into our consciousness, filling our minds with emotional and visual vignettes and freely associated images. All too quickly, though, the left brain will assert itself and dispense with these irrational images with its Spock-like logical dominance and the right brain will have to be content to find expression in dreams.

Years ago, a really fantastic writer I respected (who, BTW, just happens to frequent these boards, but shall remain nameless...mostly cause they probably don't remember) gave a YA novel proposal I was working on a critique. There were lots of comments, but one stuck out to me then and rides along in the back of my mind to this day whenever I'm working on something:

"Every word has to either reveal character or forward the plot. Better still if they do both."

Now, for your reason to dump a scene, use this as your yard stick and it should be easy to not only justify your opinion, but teach them how to identify similar passages.