Make A Scene (12 page)

When
is information that will best serve your plot when it brings to light startling, contradictory, or unexpected results.

Why

Ah, motive, that tricky devil.
Why
is very much at the crux of plot. Betrayal, murder, deception, unusual kindness, obsessive love, and many more facets of human behavior will fill up the pages of many a plot.
Why
is often the very thing the novel or story is seeking to understand. Small explanations will be necessary along the way if the reader is to keep up with your plot.

This type of information often gets tossed into narrative explanations and pace-dragging passages of backstory. It's easier just to tell the reader why than to let actions, dialogue, and even flashback scenes tell the truth for you. Don't fall into the habit of explaining why in narrative summary. If your scene needs to reveal why a character behaved a certain way, committed an action, or kept a great secret, return to the chapters on character development and scene intentions in order to get
why
across.

How

How
—the method by which things are done—plays a great role in plot. It's usually the piece of information that ties up the investigation, reveals the missing clues to tragedies, and explains how the impossible really was possible. Law and science often play a role in revealing how something was done. Was the heiress murdered with a gun or a poisoned cup of tea? Was the fire started by arson, or by a cigarette butt tossed carelessly aside?

How
is often linked directly to
why.
If a character is plotting revenge, for instance, the method of his crime will probably be specific to the injury he believes he suffered—a spurned boyfriend might try to publicly shame the woman who dumped him by scrawling inflammatory words on her house. An insulted bigot might try to attack a person's race.

How
really can't be an afterthought. You need to know how things were done by the time you get to the scene in which it is revealed, and then the information should be imparted in as direct a way as possible, most often as dialogue: the reading of police reports, evidence in court, a deathbed confession, and so on. But you may also choose to use a device like a letter, a message played back from a machine, or an e-mail found on a computer—something that a character stumbles across that contains the answer to
how.

WHEN TO DOLE IT OUT

How you reveal information is just as important as what that information is. The most tempting way to pass on plot information is to narrate in a rushed, matter-of-fact way. But information is best served like food at a fancy French restaurant—in small, elegantly presented courses that neither stuffs the reader, nor leaves him overly hungry. You want the reader to have room for dessert—which is, of course, the end of your book or story.

Some scenes will involve revealing multiple kinds of information, while others may be all for the purpose of revealing one very important kind of information. There's no way to know what to advise without seeing a specific manuscript, but as long as you know that you must have at least one type of new information in every scene, you're on the right track.

You must always be thinking about the span of your narrative. The length of your narrative, whether it is a ten-page story or a five-hundred-page novel, will affect how soon information is revealed to the reader. A short story has less time to get things across, and often has to drive to a brisk emotional impact with a less complex plotline.

The First Part

I'm fond of dividing a narrative into thirds, which I'll refer to as parts (although they are sometimes referred to as acts). In the scenes of the first part you should do the following:

• Lay the foundation. Introduce only enough information to ground your reader.

• Thrust the reader into the action of the significant situation. Make sure the reader knows what the plot is.

• Create a sense of mystery or suspense by withholding information.

The Middle Part

Drive the plot forward by providing more information than you did in the first part. (However,
don't
give away secrets or crucial plot information, because then what motivation does the reader have to keep reading?)

• Up the ante by throwing in new and surprising information.

• Information should lead to conflict and danger that forces your characters to change or redirect.

• Throw in red herrings, or false leads, that let the reader think you're filling in missing information, or, in the mystery genre, that you're solving the mystery.

The Final Part

The final part of your narrative is in some ways the most difficult because you must use it to successfully tie up all the threads you've started. The reader should not have very many, if any, questions by the time the final part is concluded.

• Answer questions and reveal truths.

• Conclude drama. Don't introduce new information, but you may introduce surprising endings to plot avenues.

• Let characters settle into their changes.

• Lead the reader toward a sense of conclusion by turning down the emotional and dramatic tone of information revealed.

The final part is where many writers discover the holes in their plot—they can't tie up all the threads. If that happens to you, revisit your plot, ask what information is missing, and fill in those holes.

Putting the Plot Pieces Together

Of all the core elements, plot can seem like the most complex element, because it isn't specific to one area of your scene, but must relate to all of them. At root, a plot allows for the reader to experience a sense of mystery, as scenes withhold just the right amount of information for just long enough. The reader can see only one bread crumb at a time in the dimly lit forest of your narrative. Of course, the mystery must be solved eventually, and the plot information must add up to a satisfying whole.

Following are examples from Toni Morrison's acclaimed novel
Beloved,
in which plot information is doled out carefully and builds on itself. A scene in the first part of the book opens with a woman called Beloved walking out of a pond fully dressed. She is soon discovered by Denver, one of the main characters, and taken home to Denver's mother, Sethe—a woman with a past full of dark secrets. Through dialogue, the reader learns that Beloved is not like other people. She has hazy origins and behaves unusually. This information is delivered bit by bit in scenes.

"Something funny 'bout that gal," Paul D said, mostly to himself.

"Funny how?"

"Acts sick, sounds sick, but she don't look sick. Good skin, bright eyes and strong as a bull."

"She's not strong. She can hardly walk without holding on to something."

"That's what I mean. Can't walk, but I seen her pick up a rocker with one hand."

That scene achieves the three responsibilities of new information. One, the reader and the characters get smarter: Under the category of who, they learn that Beloved is not like other people—she behaves quite oddly. Two, the reader is led to change his feelings about Beloved. Three, motivation comes into play—why. Because the characters now see Beloved differently, they begin to act differently with one another in response to her, and their changed behaviors affect the plot consequences.

In the middle of her narrative, Morrison drops even more plot information about who the mysterious Beloved is, though she does not come out and say it; she lets the readers piece it together:

Beloved closed her eyes. "In the dark my name is Beloved."

Denver scooted in a little closer. "What's it like over there, where you were before? Can you tell me?"

"Dark," said Beloved. "I'm small in that place. I'm like this here." She raised her head off the bed, lay down on her side and curled up.

Denver covered her lips with her fingers. "Were you cold?"

Beloved curled tighter and shook her head. "Hot. Nothing to breathe down there and no room to move in."

What does Beloved's description sound like? A mother's womb. The reader slowly learns of Beloved's origins, which is a crucial piece of plot information, within the context of scenes that build upon the plot and reveal character. This slow build gives Morrison time to create a character that is strange and vivid, who represents the sacrifice that her mother had to make in her journey to freedom. If she gave Beloved's identity away immediately, there would be very little dramatic tension or character-building.

As the book moves toward its close, the plot begins to move into its final stage. No longer do the characters wonder who Beloved is; now they've started to fear her. Beloved has become pregnant and begins to take up all the joy, eat all the food, to consume everything that Sethe and Denver need in the household (which is a fabulous metaphor, incidentally, for how grief works). She absorbs Sethe's attention and time and inspires jealousy and rage in Denver. As the plot comes to a close, the reader begins to root for a terrible end for Beloved, despite that she seemed so needy and frail earlier in the narrative; now she has become a parasite. Either Beloved will have to go, or something terrible is going to happen.

Without giving away the ending, I can say that Morrison brings her plot to a close that makes perfect sense—with all threads tied up.

Plot

SHORING UP YOUR PLOT

If a plot is built out of strong, vivid scenes, then the most logical place to start when writing the next scene is to refer to the last scene first. You create your own blueprints scene by scene. So before you go on to write the next scene, in which you move your plot forward just a little bit more, you must see how far, and from what direction, you've come.

You would be amazed at how often writers repeat information, forgetting that they already revealed it in the last scene. Reviewing sometimes as many as two or three scenes back can be crucial to moving your plot forward.

Once you've reviewed the last scene, or scenes, as you plot your way forward, you will come to a decision point. What happens next? Harking back to earlier chapters of this book, you know that you must up the ante on your characters and keep the action moving forward. Always keep your significant situation in mind, and be sure that there are consequences that get first complicated, then addressed and resolved, and that there is an antagonist of some kind that helps to add conflict. So ask yourself, what is the next bite?

If you find yourself stumped, you can run it through this criteria test. The next bite of plot information should:

• Involve your main character(s)

• Be related to the significant situation or one of its consequences

• Give the readers the impression of having more knowledge or clues, or that they're smarter because some new information is revealed

•Add complications or resolve an earlier complication