The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Mechanics

  • Architecture Without Thought

    Mountains and blue sky are enough description to tell you where you are, don't you think?

    So it turns out that I’ve never really thought about how I construct a scene. That’s made blogging about what I do to set scenes in my stories very difficult. That doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts that echo what my fellow Confabulators have written about here, it just means that I don’t know exactly how I’ve done it in the past. So let’s examine what I think I do and we’ll see if it’s rubbish or not:

    THE PLAYERS

    Can a scene be written where there are no characters? Sure. I have. Boring. Awful. Pages of description of trees, pictures, buildings and nothing’s happening! Garbage. There needs to be action. Something has to happen. People, animals, machines, robots, anything that can move or can move things must be inserted into the description. So, I have to determine who is in the scene. Do I need to tell you what that person looks like, what race or ethnicity? Or do you only need to know their names and where they came from? Will that tell you enough to get into the story? I try to give you only enough to enjoy the story. If I were drawing, I would be using only enough lines to show the general shape of the characters, allowing the reader to fill in the rest. 

    THE GOAL

    Each scene has to accomplish something, some small change in the lives of the characters that moves them toward the end of the book. Remembering that, like the story, there’s a beginning, middle and end to every scene has been something that I often don’t do. There’s a natural arc to every scene, just like the story the scene is in, has a beginning, middle and end. By the end of the scene, things have to change. I need to know what the goal of the scene is as I begin to write it. This determines the action.

    THE PHYSICAL PLACE

    Something that I learned from making comic books (don’t worry, you can’t find them, they were self-published and really only circulated around town) is that you don’t have to draw the background in each panel. One does, however, have to describe the setting enough for the reader to be able to envision the physical place the players are inhabiting. The room they’re in, the vehicle, the house, the glade in the forest, wherever the characters are has to be described. Details are up to the individual writer to provide and I will give my reader fewer than others, but more than some. 

    THE TIME

    Day or night? Morning, afternoon or evening? April? September? January? 20th century or 14th? Perhaps the 33rd? It’s usual for a story to have a ‘ticking time bomb’ or at least a time element that’s working against the characters. If a main character is a nightowl then dropping her into a scene during full daylight certainly creates tension. These are things I consider.

    THE REASON

    Everything has to move forward. If it’s not moving, there’s not really a story being told. If the writer hasn’t developed a compelling reason for telling the story over the course of the scenes he’s written, he’s not written a good story. So, everything must advance and each scene must move things forward. Even scenes of people talking about what they’re going to do – though sometimes boring – can be essential. As long as the characters are somehow changed at the end of the scene, the story advances.

    So, to sum up here, my thoughts on the subject are indeed rubbish. Perhaps you can mine some nugget from this ramble, perhaps not. It has, however, given me an insight to what my process is and how I can improve it. Once I get there, I’ll let you in on how I did.

  • Laying out the Table

    When I stop to consider my favorite scenes and descriptive passages, I just stop.  Seriously.  “Setting the scene” has always been a difficulty in my writing, because I quite hate reading descriptions.  I like plot and character and telling detail as much as the next reader/writer, but description-skipping is one of my best strategies for consuming my preferred book a day diet. Alas, I now achieve that diet only in the summer and on vacation.  Ah well.

    The best metaphor I can think of for scene setting is Setting the table for dinner guests.  Some people like linen napkins, red silk tablecloths, magisterial dowager chairs on the table ends, baroque flatwafloe bowers of centerpieces. I am not into that. I prefer simple cotton napkins, maybe some placemats, whatever unmatched silverware is in the drawer. But my focus is on the food, the herbed turkey and cinnamon crusted sweet potatoes, creamed corn, apple spice cake goodness.  I don’t want dirty place settings, or inadequate serving dishes. I want my guests to forget all about the place settings in their rapture of tasteful delights. So my goal is that description and scene setting not interfere with the content of the story.

    Readers have offered me very inconsistent accounts of my success in this aim. Often, my creative writing teachers mentioned my descriptive passages as the strongest part of my story.  But another reader commented that my novel felt like I was watching the movie in my head and only sharing glimpses with my audience, enough to assure them that I could see the whole scene, but not enough to take them along with me.  Looks like I need to retrieve some new serving spoons–the ones I have been using can’t quite handle the gravy!

  • The Scene-tific Method

    A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was a graduate student trying to earn a PhD. During my studies I discovered something very telling about my character:

    I am an empiricist.

    I discovered that I could never truly comprehend an advanced theoretical discussion without grounding it in an observable environment. Equations and symbols meant nothing to me unless I could take them out of the sterile world of theory and dump a whole bunch of real numbers on top of them. Then I could sit back and watch what happens. If I could see the mechanics in action, I’d get it. If I couldn’t, I didn’t. My fellow students at the time thought I was nuts. I thought they were nuts.

    They were probably right. I never did get that PhD.

    Turns out I have the same issue when dealing with my writing style. When I write dialogue, I often find myself mumbling the words of each character while I’m writing them, complete with the proper accents and inflections. If I can hear it, I know if it’s right or wrong. Just seeing the words on the page doesn’t often work for me. When I write action sequences, my hands are flapping and my limbs are tensing and twitching as I mentally perform the same actions I’m choreographing for my characters. At group writing events, people will often see me bury my face in my hands, looking like I’m in agony. I’m not. I’m struggling to force my brain to accept an abstraction instead of leaping from my chair and dancing around the room like an idiot to act out a scene or converse with my imaginary cast of characters.

    There’s a reason I do my best writing at home by myself.

    So, how does my empirical approach affect the crafting of scenes? (more…)

  • Start in the Middle, Fill in the Gaps Later

    It's a sunset. Everybody already knows what it looks like.

    Sometimes a scene springs from me fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead. And sometimes, every word has to be squeezed from my neurons like the last bit of toothpaste at the bottom of the tube.

    What’s the difference?

    It took me awhile to figure it out, but descriptions bore the living hell out of me. Some scenes require more narrative than others. You can’t tell a story at a constant breakneck speed. The characters need to breathe. The reader needs to breathe. The writer needs to breathe. So, sometimes the pace does require something to slow it down. Still, I find those scenes difficult to write.

    The best scenes for me, the ones that are easiest to write, start in the middle of something already in progress. This is especially true with first scenes in a novel. My first book starts with my main character hovering around a corner, clutching a toilet brush as a weapon, and about to jump out at an intruder at her kitchen table. The second in the series starts in her swimming pool. She’s covered in blood and mucous and has both arms shoved up inside the birth canal of a sea serpent. Book one of my new djinn series starts off with my main character dressed as a pirate waitress, getting ready to set a customer on fire because his hand is on her ass.

    I suppose all of those things require some description to set everything up, but when something really interesting is going on, nobody cares what every character is wearing or what the wall sconces look like. I prefer to spatter description in between other things rather than lose momentum by taking up several paragraphs as an aside.

    But this is coming from somebody who tends to under-write and fill in the gaps later, rather than write extra to be deleted later.

    In the slower scenes, I get bored. I meander. I let my characters ruminate on the color of their coffee mugs. I let them contemplate their navels, discussing the pros and cons of innies versus outies.

    So, how do I know what to describe and what to leave out? I look for the holes later and fill them in. What gets told and what gets shown? In a great scene full of action, show it all. If a description is necessary to fill in the scene, character interaction with the environment or dialogue does a better job than straight description.

    But what do I know? I have a main character who’s known for her quirky style and bizarre outfits. Number of descriptions of these outfits in book two? Zero. Completely forgot to describe them.

    Guess I know where to start editing.

  • Right Minded Wilderness

    How do I decide how to set up scenes, how much description to use, and what needs to be told versus shown? I don’t have a good answer.

    I really don’t decide. Not consciously.

    I write by the seat of my pants, flow of consciousness style. Sometimes, to appease my OCD left brain, I sit down beforehand and outline scenes and fill out character worksheets, but when it comes to the actual story writing, I am a creature of pure instinct and impulse.

    When I’m writing, I migrate over to the right side of my brain. It’s a wild, uncharted wilderness over there. It’s chaos. When I’m there, I become that creature of instinct and impulse, relying on the untamed side of myself to do what is needed, what’s best, for a particular scene.

    It’s a non-linear place. I have to let go of my inhibitions, trusting the right brain creature to avoid plot holes and navigate the bog of doom in that lies in wait in middle of the book. I have to trust that when I emerge from the right minded wilderness – wild-eyed and exhausted – my left brain creature will be able to make order out of the chaos. It has the raw materials mined from the right brain, and has to make notes on how to refine those stones into polished gems.

    If the right brain is a wild animal, the left brain is definitely the ringmaster. You can try to tame the creature, but you never know when a lion is suddenly going to turn on you.

    Sometimes my left brain has no idea what to do with what my right brain dug up. The left brain often needs more material from the right brain, which it refuses to give. And sometimes, when the left brain needs to destroy something the right brain is attached to, it shrieks and rattles its chains as if in pain.

    My left brain is still trying to figure out how to control my right. It doesn’t dare venture into the right brain wilderness, so it has to wait for the right brain to show its face. Although it has found ways to coax it out of hiding. The partnership is a tenuous work in progress.

    To be honest, my left brain is still learning how to craft the raw materials mined from the right brain into a finished product.

    I’m still trying to figure out how to decide. How much do I leave to the OCD mind, and how much do I leave to the right minded wilderness?

  • Writing description: There is a small mailbox here.

    Zork I for the Commodore 64If there’s one failing to my writing it’s probably a lack of description. This isn’t to say that I don’t include any description. I do. But when it comes to including long, laborious passages about the moss-covered flagstones or the texture of the fabric in a character’s clothes, I tend to ignore it and move on.

    For me, the story is the thing. So I prefer to write about the action and let the reader fill in the details with his/her imagination.

    Personally, I blame this tendency on the game developer Infocom.

    Back in the 1980s, when personal computers were little more than suped-up pocket calculators, the great game designers at Infocom put out a series of video games based on the Great Underground Empire known as Zork. Go ahead, Google it. I’ll wait. … You’re back? Okay.

    Unlike the early arcade games and Atari console offerings, Zork was a text adventure. No pictures, just words. And the descriptions in the game were utilitarian, to say the least. If the game said the room included a table, you’d better believe there’s something on the table. A lamp? You’d better take it. Chances are you’ll need it later.

    (more…)

  • Start the Damned Thing Already, Just Not There

    Let’s talk about The Sound of Music for a minute.  Maria is, without a doubt, the most decorated sing-off opponent the Nazis have ever faced.  She also had an engaged naval captain thinking naughty thoughts about somebody who belonged to a convent, so she had that going for her.  (I guess.)

    But when it comes to advice about getting the ball rolling, I think Maria might have taken one too many spins around the top of that hill.

    “Let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start.”

    When it comes to storytelling, if you’re starting at the beginning, you’re probably doing it wrong.

    (more…)

  • The Aesthetic Tragedy

    “Behind every exquisite thing that ever existed, there was something tragic.” ~ Oscar Wilde

    I am a visual person.  When it comes to structure, I like paragraphs that look good on a page.  I don’t want them to be too long, or too short.  I despise too little dialogue, or too much.  I want a delicate balance between action and dialogue, between setting and character.  I want my writing to be aesthetically pleasing upon the page.

    I find that big blocky paragraphs are unpleasant to read, and that page upon page of dialogue seems lazy outside of a screenplay.  Mixing dialogue with description keeps me showing rather than telling, which is, of course, important in writing.

    If I feel that a page seems too dialogue or description heavy, I will try to fix it during the re-write.  Ultimately, though, what works is always more important than how it looks, and if the paragraph works the way I wrote it, then I leave it alone.  As with everything in writing, the visual aesthetic is more a guideline than a rule.

    Most of my scenes themselves are set up like a screenplay, which is the first medium of writing I really took seriously.  Many times, I join a scene in mid-action, or as close to the conflict of the scene as I possibly can.  The rest is written based on feel and instinct.

    (more…)

  • Setting the Scene (Week of 6 February 2012)

    The Cafe isn’t always well-lit and open. Sometimes it’s dark and foreboding when you’re in here, especially at closing or before we unlock the doors and get everyone in here writing. While the furniture is mostly new, some of it was scavenged or given to us, which allows the Cafe itself to have a patina of age when you walk in. The place is clean (we do a pretty good job sweeping up at the end of the day) and the coffee’s always fresh, but when the place is hopping there’s nothing quite like being in here. The pictures on the walls by our favorite artists, the music in our earbuds to inspire us and the general tenor of the place all contribute to how we do our jobs as writers.

    Setting a scene, using descriptions and telling the readers what we see in our heads is perhaps a greater challenge than just writing a story itself. This is the personal part of storytelling, it seems. Each of us approaches descriptions differently and with good reason: we don’t necessarily share one brain. We’ve all read the theories of ‘get in as late as possible and get out as fast as you can’ and ‘start on the action’ that are common bits of advice for writing scenes and stories. This week the Cafe bloggers share how they do it.

    Pull up a chair. The dark roast is especially good this week: smokey and light-bodied but intense. There’s some half and half if you need it.

  • On Writing First Drafts

    Call me a traditionalist, but for a difficult first draft, it has to be paper. A pencil, perhaps a nice fountain pen. The creative part of writing, pinning down that first draft, is a tactile, sensory experience. There’s the resistance of graphite across the page, the sound of paper rustling, the concreteness of pages stacking up one on top of another. The wrong sensations can easily derail the process; paper that is too smooth, or doesn’t soak up ink well, or a pen that skips, or an eraser that is old and hard and smudges rather than wipes clean.

    A first draft is when I don’t know what I’m going to write, haven’t yet pinned down the thoughts that have been skipping across my mind, given them body and gravitas and forced them to pose on the page. First drafts are about exploring the topic, organizing ideas, trying things out. It’s harder to delete something written down. It exists, even if I decide it no longer is needed. Pages in the recycling bin are a testament that my time has not been wholly wasted.

    Paper breaks through writer’s block. With paper, if the hand is moving, then progress is being made. Writing in longhand slows down my thinking, allows me to craft sentences, put in more meaning than just the bare bones of the facts. Paper is where the poetry begins to dance. Paper is where my subconscious mind, which is way smarter than I am, finds its own voice.