Writing

What is a Scene in a Novel?

Definitions of a Scene

A scene is the smallest unit of narration. It is a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. One editor calls it the DNA of story. Cells of information shape the essence of a narrative, in which characters undertake actions in a vivid and memorable way on the journey toward a compelling goal. Scenes contain all the elements of story telling, such as point of view, voice, vivid characters, plot, and setting.

A long scene might run to more than fifteen pages; a short scene might fill only ten or fewer pages. Some scenes are as short as a couple of pages. Short scenes often make readers hungry for more. But too many long scenes may cause a lack of momentum; too many short ones might seem choppy.

What is a Chapter?

A chapter is comprised of related scenes that are, generally, all working together to make a similar point. Successful plot-based author of thrillers, James Patterson, sometimes writes chapters that are just one scene, and sometimes even just one page long. Think about making a new chapter when the character’s goal in the scene changes, or the direction of the story changes. Deciding how to structure the story is where your creativity comes into play.

Structure of a Scene

Most well-planned novels have some form of broader structure (such as three-act structure or narrative arc) ensuring that everything hangs together. And so it is for a scene. In written narrative such as fiction, section breaks are used to signal various changes in a story, including changes in time, location, point-of-view, character, mood, tone, emotion, and pace. The section break can be considered a transition, similar to a chapter break. It is marked by a space and/or by an asterisk or a fleuron or by other ornamental symbols.

The Part Reveals the Whole

More importantly, scenes must have a distinct function and purpose within the larger narrative arc of your novel. That’s right, you cannot tot up segments, or scenes, without being aware of the potential end product, or purpose of the writing. Think of scenes as being the individual beads strung together on a chain to form a lovely necklace; or lyrical notes to form a beautiful melody.

To see the world in a grain of sand Blake meant by this that even something as minute as a grain of sand tells us about the world at large. Or, to put it another way, the part reveals the whole, by distilling it discreetly, bit by bit, throughout the novel. A scene works to show the reader, at any one time, a part of the character, the plot, the action, and the development. A larger, more intricate picture is revealed by the end of the novel.

Once you have learnt how to show and to tell, in combination, you are on your way to finding a satisfactory structure for your novel and for your scenes.

Questions to Ask Yourself About Each Scene

* What is the goal or purpose for this scene?
* What characters are involved and are they all necessary?
* What is at stake for the protagonist in this scene?
* What is the main conflict in this scene?
* How does this scene further develop my novel’s plot?

The Purpose of the Scene is Key

The purpose of the scene relates to the overall story. It may be to introduce the inciting event, present plot points, build suspense, develop character, show a climax, establish mood, describe setting, intensify conflict, move the story forward, or present the resolution. If you can’t articulate the purpose of a scene, think about removing the scene.

Where does the scene take place? Have I made it easy for the reader to visualize this?

What role does the setting play in how the scene unfolds?

When does the scene happen? Is it in chronological sequence with preceding events? Or is it a flashback? Have you made the scene’s time-frame in relation to the rest of your story clear?

Who is in the scene? Do you need more or fewer characters?

What happens in the scene? What is the scene about?

Why do the characters behave as they do in this scene?

These questions are all related to cause and effect, which is an important aspect for creating narrative drive.

Two Further Metaphors for Novel Structure

Emma Darwin thinks that most of us feel that the chapter is the basic unit, and happily “read” section-breaks or switches of narrator, as joints in a larger whole. She sees a novel as a bridge, with piers and arches, perhaps of different widths and heights, perhaps rising to a crown and down again, which embody the big, stretching strides.

national museum

Another favoured metaphor is a train. “If the major scenes are the carriages, and you write them in full, showy, almost-real-time glory, then the couplings are also crucial: not just the big steel hooks and chains, but the electrics, communications, brakes, platforms, doors and so on. You can’t have one without the other and any railway buff knows that the engineering of the couplings is as fascinating and crucial as any other part of the train.” Darwin trains-carriages

Sarah Domet “Because a scene combines all elements of fiction in harmony with one another, it isn’t just one aspect of craft—it’s all of them put together, artfully and thoughtfully, to achieve the same kind of balance you hope for in that extravagant dish you prepare for your dinner guests.”

cuisine

References:
The Writers Digest Blog: Writers Digest.com
Emma Darwin: This Itch of Writing

February 5, 2019 0 comment

Novel Writing

The Sea Voyage: a metaphor

How to Write a Novel

After gaining a Teaching Certificate in 1965, I embarked on a journey from Australia to England, passing along the Suez Canal shortly before its forced closure by Egypt. My eventual goal was France, following in the footsteps of my older brother, William. I’d saved up my return fare for a berth on the P&O liner S.S. Oriana, a sparkling white vessel known as “the Queen of the Sea”. It was waiting for me to board it at Circular Quay in Sydney on the evening of 31st December, 1965. Along with three other teaching friends, I’d be arriving in Southampton on 24th January, 1966. This marked the beginning of my obsession with writing as I began to document, in a travel journal, my experiences during four years abroad. What I was to discover was that voyaging overseas was a great metaphor for the creative writing life. There were pitfalls for the traveller, like the dangerous rocks, winds and sirens that threatened Odysseus during his earlier travels; as well as great joys, during and at the end of the journey. Much would be experienced and learnt that no one could have taught me.

It’s the same with writing. You might have to experience its joys and downfalls before you figure out properly how to do it yourself. This applies particularly to writing a longer work, such as a novel or a modern memoir. Having been taught by several successful novelists for my postgraduate diploma and Master degree, and having read many “how to” books, I have come to realise certain things. Mainly, that finding a pathway towards publication is a minefield, and takes a great deal of perseverance and a good dose of luck on the part of a beginning author. And that even published writers may not be the most qualified persons to give advice about the craft of novel writing. Like the advice of one well-known author who told me to just “get it down” in segments, and then arrange cards in order to find a plotline and a story. This approach—called by some “pantsering“—may help; it did not help me. One thing that this excellent writer forgot to mention was that he had had mentors—editors and others—to assist in the structuring of a final work when he was writing during earlier decades.

Even Ernest Hemingway, who seems to have been “a natural”, had women and other writers, fawning over him, only too happy to assist him, if not with craft ideas, at least with confidence boosting and secretarial work.

January 13, 2019 0 comment

Book Reviews Writing

Alone not lonely in Apartheid South Africa

Alone not lonely is Maureen Mendelowitz’s second novella to be published by Ginninderra Press (2018). See my post about her first book on this site. I attended the successful launch of the 2nd book at JewishCare Centre in Woollahra recently.

The date coincided with public awareness of domestic violence issues against women, including in Australia, and White Ribbon Day. The attractive front hall of the Centre in Saber Street was already packed with eager friends and visitors when I arrived.

Rada Pantzer, Jewish Care’s program co-ordinator for domestic violence, addressed this subject at the start of the launch, and spoke abut the concept of “gaslighting”, a form of emotional abuse based on humiliating the victim, that can lead to physical violence as well.

Domestic violence is a major theme in the novel. Another co-worker of Maureen’s, Charmaine Silove—who happens to be a member of Waverley Writers of FOWL—launched the book with a passionate review of its contents that whetted our literary appetites. Finger food and drinks were provided by Jewish Care, and Maureen happily got to sign many books at the end of the evening.

This is a heartbreaking, yet not totally negative, story that had to be told. And Maureen Mendelowitz, expatriate of South Africa during the Apartheid years, is the one to do it. Utilising her skills as a creative writer, the author gets across the horrific effects of the political system on its segregated inhabitants, especially women. She does it by creating vivid characters and settings, by applying humour and irony, by recreating realistic prosody—snippets of Afrikaans spoken by a coloured maid—and with the help of poetry. We are never, or rarely, told or forced to live the horrors, as Maureen and others had to. And yet we are shown what happened. It is often done metaphorically, as in the case of the “exploding dog” (page 31), an apt image of the violence of the system in South Africa. It goes without saying that young males and animals were abused in society as well. But this is a story about women in the society of the time.

The narrative is a universal one, with different faces and degrees of suffering, as instanced by the growing awareness of domestic abuse in the Australian society and media at the present time.

alone-not-lonely-cover

We feel empathy for the characters, especially for the downtroddden and abused maid, Milly, who is the real hero in the story, for simply surviving her abuse.

I loved the part where she up and leaves her abusive husband, placing the wedding ring on a saucer in the kitchen and never looks back. (page 46). A real triumph in the midst of such repression against the coloured minorities during the Apartheid years.

And the clever juxtapositioning of the stories about two women, one white, the other coloured, in the same novel, is poignant and telling. Dana, the spoilt yet fragile white woman, suffers a similar fate to her maid, Minny, although the abuse is emotional rather than physical in the former’s case.

Background is given to show how main characters have arrived at their current situations. One of the interesting aspects about Dana’s past, is that, as a child, she was gaslighted by a coloured maid, which might go some way to explain psychological damage, and an unconscious lack of empathy towards Minny, at least in the beginning.

In this way, the author ensures that no one character in the novel is totally good or bad. It is the political situation that is the real villain. Domestic violence is also a metaphor for the Apartheid system itself.

You can purchase this book at Ginninderra and on Amazon.

December 17, 2018 0 comment

Poetry Writing

Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now

First a note about the painting, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, that serves here as a symbol for Joni Mitchell’s song. Both speak of life, love and beauty.

For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love, or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them.

Plato further argued that contemplation of physical beauty allowed the mind to better understand spiritual beauty. So, those looking at Venus, the most beautiful of goddesses, might at first note a physical response, followed by a lifting of their minds towards the godly.

A Neoplatonic reading of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus suggests that 15th-century viewers would have looked at the painting and felt their minds lifted to the realm of divine love.” (Wikipedia)

Mitchell’s song reveals a more modern approach and understanding of reality. In Both Sides Now, she questions whether her experiences of love and life have been the real thing, or as illusionary as clouds floating in the sky. Could this be another way of exploring, from a different angle, the same questions that Plato referred to in his philosophical writings? That is, how poetic words and songs may hint at and reflect the ‘beauty’ of truths, often concealed beneath the surface of things.

April 26, 2018 1 comment

Writing

The Narrative Arc

I have recently been researching diagrams to represent the Narrative Arc. I had completed a personal memoir, River Girl, based partly on childhood memories, that was complex in structure. How was I to analyse and to improve, if necessary, on this work in terms of its overall structure? I had never mapped out plots and story lines beforehand, preferring to focus on creating believable characters and “zingy” writing in the first instance.

It seemed to me, in fact, that some genres e.g. detective stories and thrillers, were better suited to pre-planning methods, while other narratives depended on the writer “getting it down” first, and worrying about structural issues later on. I saw myself as belonging to the latter category, rather than to the former.

However, I also saw that at some stage in the writing process, any writer will need to consider the overall structure of a longer work. This might take place towards the end, or in the middle, rather than at the beginning of the task of writing a novel. So it became more and more important for me, as I came to the end of writing my works, to consider what makes a successful narrative in terms of overall structure. This led me to try to identify the elements and functions of the narrative arc.

March 17, 2018 7 comments

Writing

the personas behind narration

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Definitions of Narrative Personas

According to Ernest Hemingway, the writer’s job is “to sit in front of the page and bleed”. But it’s not the person in flesh-and-blood who is there in the page, but a persona called the narrator, who steps in for him or her. I’m the one who signs the book for you when it’s published.
The narrator lives on the page, within and between the words, the images, and the dialogue, and directs the characters, as if they were marionnettes, performing at the end of strings. Although they may share lots of qualities, the narrator is not exactly the writer, even in a memoir. This fact, once the writer acknowledges it, may result in a sense of freedom, benefiting the writing as a result.
The Character: A main character is called the protagonist. The character’s job is to enthrall the reader and s/he is always integral to the plot. Dialogue spoken by a character will advance the plot and, at its best, utilise or suggest a certain voice that is basic to the meaning and rationale of the text.

The Writer is not the Narrator and the Narrator is not the Writer

So where is the narraTor in this? Concealed behind the writer and the characters, and linked to voice.

March 8, 2018 0 comment

Poetry Writing

a funny thing happened …

Cargoes by John Mansfield

I woke up the other morning with an old verse I’d learnt at school — not sure which year, but it was at least half a century ago — playing in my head like on a tape recorder. And the rhythm was still there!

I’m sure some of my readers will have also known this poem from school days: “Cargoes” by John Masefield?

Even the foreign words were still intact and popping up out of the subconscious like bubbles from a geyser.

It took me some days before I got around to Googling the poem and finding oral renditions of it on YouTube. I think what I liked about the poem (and still do) was the exotic-sounding words, not to mention the rhythm of the seas, and the sense of the wind in the sails. It lifted me out of the dreary classroom and into exotic faraway places .

The contrast of the last stanza, with the two preceding ones, always enchanted me in class. That’s when the rhythm changes to mimic the type of sturdy, industrial-age “coaster” vessel and its more prosaic cargo.

I read somewhere that the cargo items in Stanza 2 were taken directly from the Bible.

March 1, 2018 4 comments

Travel Writing

A Tuscan Village Holiday

Italy: Fast Cars

Driving on the autostrada is a relief after Rome. Watch on the right, my partner says repeatedly, having been traumatised when the mirror on our rented manual Fiat Punta was flattened against a truck in Rome’s crowded streets. I’m the driver, having learnt to conduire à la droite in France, as a student there. Mark will prepare lots of fresh dishes, based on heavenly tomatoes, plucked straight from the fields. When we get to the outskirts of Siena, we ask for directions to our destination.

Tonni: an Etruscan Village

A rusty sign on a hedge, after winding roads and an unsealed gravelly stretch, marks the hamlet. First settled during the Etruscan era. Dogs, cats, a few children and a smiling woman with false teeth greet us. Several small cars are parked on the narrow gravel street, mediaeval buildings, the lot set in field and forest—oak, laurel, elms, conifers, and the ever-present cypress pines.

February 3, 2018 2 comments

Australia Memoir Writing

Moree and Insistent Voices

Moree, with a population of about 8,000, is situated in the north-west of NSW on the Mehi River and at the junction of the Gwydir and Newell Highways. It is famous for its Artesian Spa waters, which were discovered accidentally in 1895 when a bore was sunk in search of irrigation waters. Instead, mineral water heated naturally to 45 degrees spurted upwards flooding the area. For years I had wanted to return to this town, so loved by my father.

January 24, 2018 1 comment

Writing

The Source of “Voice” in Fiction

My Writer’s Voice: A Childhood Spent on the North Coast of NSW

The historical photograph of my hometown, with the Clarence River and Susan Island across the water, brings me back to long-forgotten memories of childhood evenings underneath a balmy, star-spangled sky in South Grafton next to the water’s edge. I wonder now whether this is the source of my writer’s voice? Are the places and storytellers from childhood that I carry within the true source of my writer’s voice?

Grafton on the Clarence. State Archives NSW

January 9, 2018 0 comment