TECH: Make A Scene #14: Dramatic Scenes

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 27 July 2008

[In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, this is another chapter from Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfeld. We're wandering through various specific kinds of scenes at this point. And today, we've got . . .]

Chapter 14: Dramatic Scenes

Rosenfeld says that dramatic scenes are where you bring emotional content to the readers. When you deliver stunning emotional consequences, pushing the protagonist and the plot into new territory, you use dramatic scenes.

Rosenfeld says the goal of drama is to get the reader's feelings involved, not fancy writing or even the characters' emotional range. Dramatic scenes often lead up to epiphanies or climax scenes and usually include:

• a focus on emotional intensity
• heavy relationship-oriented interactions, deepening connections or sometimes breaking connections
• actions that push the protagonist into reflection on inner consciousness
• indications of an upcoming turning point

There are lots of forms of drama, but they all push characters into change. Drama forces characters to make decisions and face complications that makes them think about their own behavior and actions and beliefs.

Dramatic scenes often counterbalance contemplative scenes or dialogue scenes, bringing out the emotional confrontation. Since they push protagonists into change, they're more likely in the middle and the end of the narrative than in the very beginning

Structure of Dramatic Scenes: dramatic scenes often open and close at a slow pace, although the emotional intensity and pacing should grow higher and faster until there is some sort of climax, and then may back off again. Often there are three parts:

1. Slow opening, with exposition, setting details, and interior monologues
2. Rising pace and emotional intensity, with dialogue, actions, and emotional content rising to a crescendo.
3. Slow down for reflection, with increasing interior monologue or exposition

Rosenfeld suggests thinking about emotions as hot and cold. Hot emotions such as anger and passion erupts and spillover, they're loud. Too much hot content leads to melodrama. Cold emotions like shock and hurt often results in silence and withdrawal. Too much cool emotion though can make the scene flat and frozen. You need a balance of both for a good dramatic scene.

Dramatic Scene Openings

Dramatic scenes often builds slowly towards the real crisis. Dramatic tension, the potential for problems and conflict, often needs a setup. Narrow the focus down, bring in actions and characters with a sense of foreboding and emotional intensity. Introduce the interaction with another character or with a larger force of opposition.

Then, through escalating events and their actions, push the protagonist to change. "Dramatic scenes put the pressure on your character to transform so that your plot can move forward." Some examples of emotional complications in dramatic scenes include:

• confrontations
• reunions
• borrowed or limited time
• crushed expectations
• the threat of bodily harm or death

"What matters most is that at the end of a dramatic scene, your protagonist has had a new or enlightening emotional experience that causes her to behave, think, or feel differently."

Keep in mind that dramatic scenes need to be based in the overall plot. Intense emotional conflicts should push this story forward.

Closing the dramatic scene: given the emotional intensity of a good dramatic scene, you don't want to end with a cliffhanger. Give the protagonist, and the reader, a moment to reflect on what happened.

Avoiding Melodrama

One of the concerns of many writers is that their dramatic scenes will slide over the line into melodrama. Melodrama, with over-the-top excessive emotional intensity is hard to believe. It's usually a result of a writer not quite trusting the readers to get the point. So to avoid falling into that trap, be subtle. Let your readers figure things out, let them put together the puzzle of the hints and images that you provide.

So where does melodrama happen?

• sentimentality, with cliches, trite, and corny dialogue and sentiments
• hysterics, too loud, too emotional, too far out
• grand or unrealistic gestures, with changed characters acting out their new understanding in bigger than life ways
• silver screen speeches, with the characters suddenly sounding more like actors than actors. When the reader wonders who is writing this dialogue, you're in trouble.
• knee-jerk reactions, with characters changing too easily
• an overabundance of descriptors, a.k.a. purple prose. A heavy layer of adverbs and adjectives sometimes contributes to melodrama.

Reducing the Melodrama Quotient

1. Check the emotional intensity. Are there sufficient grounds for the emotional responses?
2. Fine tune dialogue. Read it aloud, get someone else to read it, and work on it until it sounds like real people talking, not puppets for the writer's voice
3. Adjust character behavior. Make sure the motivations and the actions line up and are natural.
4. Keep gestures human scaled. Your characters need to do things, but they should seem possible.
5. Balance your characters. All of your characters need to be roughly in the same scale. Villains that are so much stronger, interesting, and so forth than the protagonists can make a scene unbalanced.

Checklist for dramatic scenes

1. Does the scene focus on characters' feelings?
2. Does the scene have an emotional climax that pushes the protagonist to change?
3. Are character relationships and interactions the focus of the scene?
4. Are the reactions intense without being melodramatic?
5. Does the dramatic scene introduced an epiphany or contemplative scene?

[Hum? Interesting that we had a whole chapter on dramatic tension that focused on delayed conclusions -- the truck barreling down the alley towards the protagonist, and postponing showing exactly what happens for a while. But now we're talking about dramatic scenes, which I sort of thought might be those that fill in that waiting time, and we've gone off into the emotions and feelings? Oh, well, I shan't let the hobgoblin of small minds hold me back :-]

So instead of Sergeant Friday's "just the facts," we're going to get some emotion into our dramatic scenes, right? One suggestion from me -- think about times that you've felt the emotions and feelings. Pick up details and bits that helped make you feel that way, then transform them for your stories. Maybe that picture of a mother frantically digging into the rubble where a child was buried in an earthquake makes you gulp? Okay, now how can you use that in your story? Or the proud stance when you listen to a song with a someone chasing that impossible dream? Put that into your story!

Assignment? Well, the obvious one is to check out a dramatic scene in one of your stories, and feel free to do that. But . . . let's find that song that makes you sniffle a bit. Might be someone lighting up the sky on Independence Day, might be someone saying "You can let go now, Daddy" or whatever, but take that song. And write up the scene. Go ahead and make it melodramatic if you want to, this is practice. Then tone it down. Can you make that tearjerker just hints and images? Just an impression that makes the reader sigh?

Go ahead, write!

The writer's job is to help readers see the invisible.

FILL: Random quotes?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 28 July 2008

There are days when the random quotes seem to be aligned. Take these, for example:

"No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit." Ansel Adams

"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy." Jim Hightower

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." Hans Hofmann

"Is yours an honest lament?... Most are not, you know. Most self-imposed burdens are founded on misperceptions. We -- at least we of sincere character -- always judge ourselves by stricter standards than we expect others to abide by. It is a curse, I suppose, or a blessing, depending on how one views it.... Take it as a blessing, my friend, an inner calling that forces you to strive to unattainable heights." RA Salvatore

"Glamour, that trans-human aura or power to attract imitation, is a kind of vessel into which dreams are poured, and some vessels are simply worthier than others... A beautiful woman can turn heads but real glamour has a deeper pull... Glamour [is] the power to rearrange people's emotions, which, in effect, is the power to control one's environment." Arthur Miller

Five out of 10 of today's quotes from http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 seem to me to focus on creativity, on striving to reach unattainable heights. Kind of a challenge, eh? Humbling, but also calling us to do it, to try!

And then, of course, there's this quote from Bob Hope?

"Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning."

Write two paragraphs and call me in the morning?