Glad to see you had fun without me last week! I hope everyone is staying safe and well. I like the idea of a periodic open-thread day – any thoughts on how often?
Meanwhile, back to the post that was supposed to be up last week…
“Making it clear to the reader” for a given scene comes in two parts. First, there are the key things that the reader must get from the scene; second, there’s everything else.
Key things a reader must get from the scene vary, even if – sometimes, especially if – it’s an action scene. The most important takeaway may be anything from “Someone is trying to kill the Protagonist!” to “Protagonist has amazing reflexes and mad skillz with weapon-of-choice” to “Sidekick’s behavior is odd, which is clue for later” to “Protagonist cannot respond coherently in the morning, not even to a critical revelation, until they’ve had at least three cups of coffee.”
The key takeaways for a given scene need to be really clear. Identifying them, however, is often not easy. Seemingly trivial things, like a description of the handcuffs, may provide the protagonist with the clue that lets them escape (and the readers with the detail that convinces them that the protagonist could and would escape). Other things that seem vitally important to the writer – like knowing the exact order in which the tumblers of the lock have to be raised – may just slow down the scene for the average reader (“Yeah, yeah, the protagonist can pick locks, I get it, now what happens next?”).
(One of the great frustrations of writing is doing weeks of research in order to make sure that one is not making a horrible error, and then realizing that “She picked the lock and eased the door open” is all the detail that the scene actually needs…but I digress.)
Ahem. There are two sorts of key things in a scene: the ones that are vital to the rest of the story, and the ones that are vital to the scene itself. These two categories often overlap – if the point of the scene is to demonstrate that a particular character is cool under pressure (character development that will be important to the overall story), it is almost inevitable that the character keeping his/her cool will be vital to the particular scene.
In other cases, the vital-to-story thing may look like an off-the-cuff comment about visiting a neighbor (who later provides the protagonist with a place to hide, or with important gossip that explains someone’s motives). It looks like something that could be cut, because it’s not immediately important to the scene, but it’s actually vital set-up for later.
Things that are vital to the scene are those that carry the reader along convincingly, so that they believe what’s happening. Most of the time, these are also things that show the reader what’s going on, but sometimes these are things that give the reader a muddled sense of what’s happening while also conveying why it’s muddled. An example would be a scene in which the viewpoint character has a concussion or a high fever and is having a hard time parsing what’s happening around him/her. Fight scenes – especially ones where the POV is either too busy staying alive, or not in a position, to see the whole picture – can be deliberately confusing while also being convincing…in fact, sometimes the confusion is part of what makes it convincing.
So how does one go about making all that clear to the reader?
The main thing is not to provide too much information. This is why it is useful to know what has to be there (as opposed to what the writer thinks should be there). The gold standard test for vital information is “What happens to the story/scene if I leave this bit out?” If the answer is “plot/characterization/scene falls apart,” then it’s vital. If the answer is anything else, it’s not – though you may still want or even need it if the answer is “the scene is less vivid/interesting/cool.” The emphasis on “may” is because some writers try to include every single possible interesting/cool bit, which can damage flow and pacing, as well as distracting from the vital bits.
Most writers, in my experience (and including me), try to cram in too many details, in the interest of providing the reader with an exact mental picture. This is unnecessary and counter-productive. Readers will make their own mental pictures; the writer only needs not to contradict him/herself or describe actions that are physically impossible given what’s already been said about the setting and what the characters are doing.
This is where doing a sketch draft (see previous actual post) and knowing your key takeaways become important – they keep you from having a character fall backwards into a table that’s supposed to be in front of him. (Writers who chronically under-write do not usually have this problem; their first draft looks a lot like the scene blocking/sketch drafts that the rest of us do as pre-writing. Rather than pruning, they need to add some “cool bits.”)
In short, a big part of making it clear is showing only what needs to be shown to get the effect you want. This applies on a macro level, when you are deciding what goes into (or gets cut from) a scene, but it also applies at the micro, sentence-by-sentence level. You know that “the table” isn’t enough description, but “the rickety rough-hewn thick square blue-painted oak table” is far too much. It also applies at the action level, where “She picked the lock and eased the door open” may be all the reader needs to know at that point. If there’s a reason to mention that she set down her sonic screwdriver before opening the door (say, you want her to forget and leave it behind), that’s important setup for later, so you put it in, but you rarely need to give a tumbler-by-tumbler account of picking the lock.
Description is something I’m fair-to-middling at. It’s not something I get for free, but it’s also not one of my Great Banes.
As a reader, I’m on the “want more information” side of reader variability. I especially want to be signaled when the POV character’s perceptions are muddled. I’m the kind of reader who feels cheated and annoyed when an author gets too-clever about using unreliable narration.
On the open threads, I didn’t included a suggestion for how often because I wasn’t sure myself. I’m thinking that once a month is too often, and once every two months is not often enough. So, maybe once every 6 weeks? Also, if the website elves can manage it, I’ll suggest leaving each open thread open for comments until the next one is posted.
Heh. doubt I’ve ever done weeks of research on any one small element, but I have done days of research (on the history of locks, for example) to figure out what sorts of locks a culture has that is consistent with their technology level. I needed to know—locks were important to the story line—but they never did appear in any blow-by-blow descriptions.
I find I often have to spend an hour or two researching small (but important) details that will mentioned only briefly. But my readers often speak of the depth and richness of my worldbuilding, so I think I’m achieving a reasonable balance. 😉
Regarding an open thread…I think I agree with Deep Lurker that a 6 week interval might be good. Try it and see?
I once ran into the “too much detail” problem in a scene where the protagonist hired a street urchin to deliver a message to an ally. In the first draft I described her looking around for a suitable kid, what he was doing, how he reacted when she called him over… and then I realized that all that detail made it seem like the incident was going to be important later, which it wasn’t. I ended up reducing it to one sentence (along the lines of the “She picked the lock and eased the door open” example).
Remember to include those details that your point of view character would notice. The architect notices how old the houses are, the gardener what the flower gardens hold, the handyman what needs repair. . .
In my first novel, one of the themes underlying the adventure was humanity versus inhumanity. One of the motifs I used to reflect this was eyes: glittering, insectile, and so on. So there’s nothing wrong with including a word or two in a scene to help reinforce those things.
(I like having a theme, both because it pushes me to write on more than one level, and because I want to give readers something that resonates with them. Heaven knows I’ve read enough adventure novels in my life that I’ve since forgotten.)
Six weeks between each “open mic night” sounds good to me too.
From a short story, author not revealed:
“He went across to the fireplace and stood with his back to its warmth, staring into the fire with unseeing eyes.”
Evidently he has eyes in the back of his head!
Great commentary on hitting that sweet spot between too-little-to-evoke and too-much-to-handle — and on doing the research necessary to avoid some potential gaffe even though none of it appears in the story.
But I especially liked the qualification, “though you *may* still want or even need it if the answer is ‘the scene is less vivid/interesting/cool.'” Some descriptions of good technique have one so intent on getting efficiently to the end of the story that I begin to wonder why we’re reading it at all — unless something *fun* is going to happen at some point. Which explains my current preoccupation with finding ways to write a scene that *both* advance the story line *and* are enjoyable in themselves.