Three Questions to Improve Your Scene Writing

Wendall -- every other Thursday

Since I’ve been much occupied with the launch of Cheap Trills, this week I'm offering an essay I wrote for my students on scene writing for film, in hopes it might be useful for fiction writing too, but mainly because it might remind you of some films worth watching and re-watching.

Marilyn Monroe's character, Sugar, makes an entrance for the ages in Some Like It Hot.

 

Screenwriting courses always stress the importance of film structure, but frequently ignore the very building blocks of that structure: the scene. Yet so often, it is one scene which we remember, which haunts us when the film is done—Sugar boarding the train in Some Like it Hot, Evelyn Mulwray's incest confession in Chinatown, Bertie’s first meeting with Lionel in The King’s Speech, the farewell in Casablanca. What is it that makes these scenes so unforgettable? I think asking yourself these three questions can put you on the road to memorable scenes of your own.

 

In Chinatown, Faye Dunaway gives us one of the most quoted scenes in film history.

 

1) WHY IS THE SCENE THERE – WHAT ARE ITS FUNCTIONS IN THE STORY?

 

Often we write scenes and we don’t really know why. Then we become attached to them and they stay when they don’t really have a purpose. When you’re looking back at your script, it’s important that you know EXACTLY what the scene is contributing to the story—what are its FUNCTIONS?

 

Scenes are both a short film in themselves, with a beginning, middle and end, but they must also always be looked at in terms of their purpose in the entire film—as part of a sequence, as part of an act, as part of the whole. So each scene has a specific goal both in and of itself and a goal in terms of the whole film.

 

THE POSSIBLE FUNCTIONS OF A SCENE:

to give plot exposition/new information

to give character development

to set up a world

to provide backstory

to express the theme

to create suspense

to create laughter

to set/maintain an atmosphere/tone

to provide transition(in time, place, story)

to set-up a later scene or situation

to pay-off an earlier scene or situation

to speed up or slow down the action

to turn the action in a different direction

to express the writer's POV

to change the way we feel about the story

to reference another film and evoke emotion that way

to resolve a conflict

to create rhythm

 

This opening shot from Fritz Lang's The Big Heat does a host of things, including starting the plot and mystery of the film and symbolizing the violence in domestic life that permeates the story.

 

SCENES SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE MORE THAN ONE FUNCTION. Usually, the best scenes have at least five. Often in a first draft, scenes only accomplish one or two objectives, but frequently, in rewriting, combining scenes will give you one powerful scene operating on several levels.

 

Beyond that, you have all the potential elements of a scene to consider and use. Believe it or not, the elements of the slug line itself can make a huge difference.

 

2)WHAT ARE THE PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE SCENE? WHAT IS THE LOCATION? WILL THE SCENE BE MOST EFFECTIVE SET DURING THE DAY OR NIGHT? INSIDE OR OUTSIDE? PUBLIC OR PRIVATE?

 

The elements involved in when and where a scene takes place can add so much tension, irony, emotion, suspense, etc. to a scene, and it’s an area many writers take for granted or don’t consider seriously.

 

Think about how much more depressing a bowling alley is during the day and how that highlights Bad Blake’s downfall and creates empathy for him in Crazy Heart. 

 

Showing this bowling alley in the harsh light of day, rather than at "neon night," helps show Bad Blake's desperate situation.

 

Or how the place where Sandra Bullock hope will be safe, inside the capsule, becomes a kind of prison in Gravity, and how the cuts to the exterior— space—increase our concerns about her survival. The brothers in Hell or High Water talk around subjects indoors, but air the truth more easily outside.

 

How does the actual location help to add conflict to the scene? Is it a recurring one in the story, and if so, does it gather meaning each time we return, as in Emily Blunt’s apartment in Sicario or the mill floor in Norma Rae? Do we worry that Martin Sheen’s mission in Apocalypse Now is “off the books” when it takes place at a private residence rather than an office?

 

So many crucial scenes that mark the emotional movement of Sally Fields's character happen in the mill, including this famous one.

 

Think about the contrast in the first act of The Godfather—what goes on in the Don’s office vs. what goes on outside at the wedding. This is the epitome of how to use contrast of public/private. Is a scene more or less intimidating if anyone else is there? Is it more or less romantic if it’s public vs. private?

 

3) ARE YOU USING ALL THE POTENTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE SCENE TO THEIR BEST ADVANTAGE?

Here are most of the elements which are available to use in any scene:

Primary Characters

Secondary Characters

Tertiary Characters

Landscape/Physical Setting/ Weather

Physical Details/Size of setting/Objects, etc.

Dialogue

Sound/Silence

Color

Primary Physical actions/events

Secondary Physical Actions/events

Background Physical Actions/events

 

Often as writers we fail to take advantage of all the elements that can elevate and dramatize the material.

 

It’s amazing how much an object—like the bag of bread in Michael Clayton or the spacesuit helmet and whiteboard in Arrival—can layer and deepen a scene. 

 

 

Tertiary characters can mean everything, too. Think of how much the “I’ll have what she’s having” line makes us remember the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, or how the fact that Terry and Charlie forget there’s a driver in their cab leads to Charlie’s murder in On The Waterfront. Behaviors in the background can make scenes feel more dangerous, more claustrophobic, more exposed, more hilarious.

 

Rob Reiner's Mom steals this scene with her one and only line.

 

Weather can also work for you. Rain is often used for painful emotional scenes, but if the tone of your piece is ironic, then bright, painful sunshine may serve your purposes better. Obviously, the heat and humidity in Body Heat helped create the atmosphere of corruption in that film. Think of Fargo, where the weather is a character. The rain and mud in Don’t Look Now makes the inciting incident more horrible.

 

The "heat" is on and makes all the difference in Body Heat

 

And sounds can add immeasurably to a scene—think of the how the insistent warning signal in Alien and the iron lung in The Verdict create tension and emotional movement in the characters.

 

So, next time you are going back to your scenes, be sure you are making the most of them.

 

WENDALL’S upcoming Cheap Trills appearances:

 

READING AND SIGNING

Sunday November 5th at 2pm

BOOK CARNIVAL

348 S. Tustin St.

Orange, CA

https://www.annesbookcarnival.com/events/

INTERVIEW on Baron R. Birtcher’s WRITERS BAR PODCAST

available November 10 at https://www.facebook.com/WritersBarPodcast

 

Cheap Trills is now available here: https://amzn.to/3PVPuc1

--Wendall

 

 

 

 

Writing Dialogue in Historical Fiction

Annamaria on Monday 

Today’s blog was inspired by a question I received this past week from Angélica Ramírez - Doctora en Traducción, who is translating my debut novel City of Silver into Spanish.  My story takes place in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (now Bolivia) in 1650.  Here is what Angélica asked: “Should we try to take the readers to the past and give them a taste of 17th-century Spanish by using all old forms of respect? Or should we produce a version written in contemporary Spanish that would be more readable?

This is a proverbial question.  Those of us who have published in this genre, especially if our books are set deep in the past, often get this question in bookstores and libraries.  My favorite all time answer was given at a Bouchercon 2016 panel by my friend Jeri Westerson.  Jeri writes marvelous noir mysteries that take place in Medieval England.  An audience member asked if her characters shouldn’t talk the way people did the Middle Ages.  Jeri said, “I made a conscious decision not to write my novels in Middle English.”  The line got the laugh it deserved.

While John Fowles was writing The French Lieutenant’s Woman—a novel which takes place in the 1860s, he kept a diary, part of which was published by Granta Magazine.  Here is what he wrote on May 20,1967, along with my bracketed explanatory addition: “I am writing The French Lieutenant’s Woman at the moment; and reading Mrs. Gaskell’s Mary Barton [novel published in 1848] at the same time.  Her dialogue is much more ‘modern’ than mine—full of contractions, and so on.  Yet in order for me to convey the century that has passed since the time of my book I am right to invent dialogue that is much more formal than the Victorians actually spoke.  This gives the illusion better.  In a sense an absolutely accurate Victorian dialogue would be less truthful than I am doing.”

Most historical novelists that I admire make the same sorts of decisions.   Oh, I am not saying we play fast and loose with the truth.  Some, moi included, are so fastidious that—now that we can google it—we keep track of the phase of the moon on the day we are writing about, so we can get that right.  You see, I have to feel as if I am there in order to imagine my characters living in my story’s time and place. Until I have done enough research to “go there” myself, I haven’t got a prayer of taking a reader there.

  

This means that, in all these sorts of decisions, the story must come first.  Telling a good yarn while turning the reader into a time traveler is what we historical novelists aim for.  Anything that zaps the reader back to the present has to be left out.  In sentence structure and word choice, we try to make our prose sound “old-fashioned” and of the time period but WITHOUT causing the reader to stumble over it.  Or take too much notice of it.  We want the reader to get lost in the story.  We want the prose to sing to the reader

What is true—in this context—is not the deciding factor.  As John Fowles wrote, expressions that sound too modern interfere with the historic atmosphere.  So they must be left out, even if you can prove they were actually used in the period in question.  For instance, my novel “Strange Gods” takes place in Colonial Africa in 1911.  In researching those times, I read a memoir written during that period where a policeman reported that a gun-toting suspect “got the drop on” him.  When the same thing happened to my protagonist, I used the phrase “got the advantage of” simply because the other words sound too modern, which would make the reader think their use was anachronistic.

Angélica, my brilliant translator of City of Silver, knows that, in the 17^th Century, Spaniards used elaborate forms of address.   Here is what she said:

“…people used certain vocatives to express respect (Vuestra Merced and vuesa merced) that are not used anymore. Nowadays, we use a pronoun, "usted", to show respect, formality, and/or distance towards people belonging to a higher level of the social hierarchy.”

Here is how her translations would differ, depending on what I decided:

In English:

 “Be very careful, Mother Abbess,” he said. “The Bishop feigns carelessness, but he is a formidable enemy.  And you have something he wants.”

In ancient Spanish:

"Tened cuidado, Madre Abadesa", expresó. "El Obispo finge no preocuparse, pero es un enemigo formidable. Vuestra Merced tiene algo que él desea". 

 

In contemporary Spanish:

 "Tenga cuidado, Madre Abadesa", expresó. “El Obispo finge no preocuparse, pero es un enemigo formidable. Usted tiene algo que él desea". 

 

Though I am not a Spanish speaker, with my Italian and study of Latin, I can, sort of, read the modern one.  The ancient one sounds clunky to even my ignorant ears.  Still, what I needed was to give Angélica the right to choose for me.  So, I gave her my rule of a rule of thumb:  Please use constructions that sound old-fashioned, but not ones that would make the reader think about the language instead of reading on.

On the other hand, as in real life, fictional people should reveal their characteristics by the words they choose.  I once heard, in an interview, Stephen Sondheim criticize his own lyrics for a song in Westside Story.  In the song “I Feel Pretty,” the young, innocent Maria sings, “It’s alarming how charming I feel.”  In retrospect, Sondheim felt the mellifluous lyric was a mistake.  Far too sophisticated for Maria.  It is a sentence she would never say.

  

In this vein, in 1913 Colonial Africa, one might have an Oxford educated top administrator use the words “indeed” or “insufficient.” A boorish drunk in a bar or an askari who has just learned English would never use those words.

Whatever the considerations, I feel strongly that the language used must never pull the reader out of the story.  That is my ruling principle.  But, in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles continually pulls the reader out of the story.  Oh, not with weird language choices, but with mini-lectures on Victorian life from the point of view of a man living one hundred years later.  The beginning of his Chapter 13 is my favorite lecture on why novelists must give their characters free will to do what they want or need to do.  Not what the novelist-as-God forces them to do.  Lecturing that pulls the reader out of the story is the last thing I think a historical novelist should do.  But when John Fowles does it, it delights me.

 

I wish I could understand how he gets away with it.