The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 21 Feb 2008

Wicked little cliffhanger . . .

Okay, here's the setup. There is a small group - say six or seven people - doing something together. In the show I was watching, they were having dinner together. And the phone rings. One of them answers it, says, "Hello. Oh. Yes." and turns and looks at the gathered people. Long pause.

And they ended today's episode, so we'll have to see what that was all about tomorrow!

So, your task, should you choose to accept it, is to lay out that scene. Have your people gather, and the phone rings. Given cell phones, this could happen almost anywhere. And someone answers it, says hello, and then . . . pause, look around, and . . .

This is where you decide. Do they hang up? Who was on the other end of the line? What was said that made them look around like that? What do they say to the people sitting there, and what is the reaction to all this? Do they take one person aside and whisper, do they simply blurt it out, what happens next?

One line?

We never thought that the phone ringing marked the end of our happiness.

Go, write!

When we write, we learn about ourselves.

Original posting: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 00:23:16 -0500

Flipping across the odd cable stations, I happened to see a short film segment.  It was on Independent Film Channel or some similar collection of eclectic bits.

It was an interesting piece.  Set in a diner, starting with an old woman coming in the door saying to herself, "So I am speaking French?  How interesting!"  (the movie was subtitled)

She glances at the table with the reserved sign, sits down at the next booth, and tells the waitress that she knows what she wants to eat.  She orders the special, eggs, bacon, sausage, etc. and tea and coffee, "not in the same cup, of course."

We get a glance around the restaurant, then shift to the young man in heavy coat and knitted hat pulled over his hair who comes in and sits at the reserved table.  In the background, we hear the waitress say, "That's reserved."

He shifts, pulls something out of his coat, and puts it under the table.  Then he gets up, hands empty, and heads out of the diner.

A pair of men come in, and sit at the table.  We see the young man get out cigarettes and a funny black box, then switch it on.

Then we cut to under the table.  Sticks of explosive, and a timer, starting at 5:00.

Another set of shots around the diner, this time solarized as if a bright light were shining.  Frozen shots, as the timer ticks across the first few seconds.

The two men who apparently were the intended targets leave.

Then a series of tiny scenes.  The old man yearning to meet the old woman.  The fat man trying to resist food, and wanting it.  The waitresses trading snippets of conversation as they pass, then taking a moment on the stools for the best part.  The young girl who sees the blinking light on the bomb, but cannot convince her mother to believe her.  The young couple who come in angry with each other and sit at the table with the bomb.

The timer ticking down, down, down.

The old woman picks up the discarded black box out of the trash (she had watched curiously as the young man discarded his cigarettes).  First she switches it one way and the timer stops!  Then she shakes it, shakes her head, and pushes it back again, and the timer starts again.  3...2.

She pushes the switch back and forth.

A quick flip through the faces, the people we have come to know, to wonder about.

And then the scenes come to life again.

And we see that the timer has frozen as the old women tossed the box in the trash again.  She smiles at the old man, and we exit, with music.

Slices of life, almost cliched, some trite, not particularly exciting.

But!  With the bomb under the table adding its accent, somehow these scenes gained in interest.  One focused on what might be the last moment for each of these people, and wondered.

So -- your exercise.  Take a common scene (diner, office, bank, subway, you pick it).

Add a bomb.

Then tell those scenes of life against the backdrop of the ticking bomb.

And let us know whether the end is...

BOOOM!

or

life goes on.

[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:


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


Checklist for dramatic scenes


[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!

Original Posting: 3 July 2008

Ch. 10: Dramatic Tension

Aha! Bet you thought I forgot, didn't you? No, just delayed by the rageous slings and arrows of life. And if you think there is no such word, well, what are we comparing outrageous to? Inrageous or just plain rageous? (Which reminds me of the joke about lasses, but we probably don't need to tell that here :-)

Anyway, on with the show! In case anyone has lost track, we're talking about the book Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld. And we're at chapter 10, where Jordan talks about dramatic tension. He starts out by offering us a kind of visual analogy for dramatic tension. Imagine, if you will, two strong men having a tug-of-war with a rope over a pit full of snakes. First one man gets the advantage and pulls the other to the brink of the pit, teetering, almost falling in. Then the other man gets the advantage and yanks his opponent right to the edge. Back and forth they battle, with the dramatic tension cranked to the max.

Dramatic tension, then, is the potential for conflict to happen in a scene. When trouble is brewing, when the resolution balances on the edge of a page, the reader is psychologically and perhaps even physically tense, waiting to find out what happens. And that keeps them reading.

Isn't that suspense? Jordan says that suspense comes when information is withhold from the reader (so the reader doesn't know what is happening), while dramatic tension relies on the reader knowing something is happening, although not exactly when and how. Suspense is not knowing what's around the corner, while dramatic tension comes from hearing or seeing something coming and not knowing how the protagonist will get out of the way. Tension, then, keeps the reader waiting, hoping that the protagonist will somehow escape the scene alive, and maybe one step closer to achieving his goal.

[psst? If you have a clearer example or explanation of the difference between suspense and dramatic tension, I think we'd all love to hear it. This is one place where Jordan seems a bit skimpy in his explanation]

Dramatic tension is a core element. That means every scene needs some. It can be a prickly worry about where the killer is now, or an unsettling dialogue, but it needs to be there.

Tension helps make scenes bigger than life -- more intense, more unusual, and more dramatic. Trouble, or at least the potential for trouble, lurks in every scene. Let your characters feel uncertain, scared, and lost as they listen to the scratching at the door, hoping that it's just a cat and yet knowing that it could be... their nightmare.

To create dramatic tension Jordan recommends:

• Frustrate your protagonist. Delay their achieving goals.
• Include unexpected changes without immediate explanations
• shift power here and there
• blow things up. Toss in grenades of plot information that change the protagonist, his self-image, or his view of the world in significant ways.
• use setting and senses to create a tense background feeling

On the Expository Side

Beware exposition or narrative summary. You need some to tie things together and get the reader set for the key moments of the scene, but too much bores readers.
 
And time passed. Most narratives don't try to show every moment. There are key moments that you must dramatize, and blocks of time that you can just drop out of the story. And there are some chunks that you will want to summarize with a dab of narrative summary. By condensing time carefully, you help to keep the dramatic tension high.

Similarly, condense necessary background information. Include elements that are likely to make the reader worry a bit about the protagonist or suggest things that are a little odd, compulsive, or potentially troublesome. Give readers a taste or insights into your characters, but spice it with that nervous edge of potential trouble.

Put Some Tension In the Narrative, Too

Foreboding? Remember the music in Jaws? Whenever it played, we knew something nasty was coming. Foreshadowing hints at real plot events that are coming, but foreboding is all about setting the mood. Sounds, smells, perhaps the dead bird in the bushes. It all adds up to a background feeling of fear and unease for the reader.

Thwart expectations. Postpone, postpone, postpone. Especially when the character isn't quite sure what the payoff or resolution will be, putting it off raises the tension almost automatically. Make sure that we know what is at stake for the character and that it is meaningful and has clear consequences, then have good reasons for not opening the letter or getting the news right now -- and watch the tension rise.

What happened? Make changes, but don't explain them - yet. Use the changes to push your character into action, into learning and taking control -- make them meaningful. But let your character skid a bit as they try to cope, don't always give them an easy explanation.

Tension. Important stakes, visible actions, and uncertain outcomes. As the rope pulls the characters towards the pit, and they struggle and flail trying to avoid going over the edge, the dramatic tension fills the air.

And... that's chapter 10. Coming up next, we'll look at scene intentions.

But right now, let's think about an assignment. Probably the simplest is to take a scene from a book or one you've written and go over it, looking for how it uses dramatic tension. When the reader looks at it, what potential for conflict is lurking there? How does the narrative summary and dramatization set up and then thwart completion of expectations? Then consider how you might add more tension to the scene. If the two key figures are about to have a fight -- have them bluster and pose, and then Officer Malarkey comes around the corner. And as the two opponents explain that nothing is happening, the tension rises. When will they actually have their fight? And who will win?

Write! And keep tightening that tension.

The thrill of creative effort grows from the mud of spelling and grammar.