Monday, March 30, 2015

Dramatic Dominos: Structure and Pacing in Fiction








My novel writing professor a few years ago defined structure as the backbone, the skeleton, the blueprint of my novel where every scene must advance the plot, develop my characters, and ground my reader in the story and the world. Scenes must be essential to the story; every scene must trigger another and give the reader information they’re hungry to hear, like “dramatic dominos”, in the words of Elizabeth George in Write Away. According to Jeff Vandermeer, author of Wonderbook, every story conforms to some kind of pattern, some sense of organization by which the writer decides what to emphasize and what not to emphasize in building the story’s structure. This is key. A story in a dentist’s office should be more than just a character going in for a cleaning: man visits dentist not for his routine cleaning, but to kill his hygienist, his young blonde secret lover. Does the reader need to see the hygienist and man meet weekly at the bar? Should the reader see a scene where the man plans her murder? What about a scene of the man growing up with an alcoholic father? It’s up the writer to make these decisions: what makes the page and what doesn’t? What is the most effective way of telling the story? The writer’s answer to these questions builds structure. Vandermeer describes structure as, “the body of the beast, the bones and organs inside; plot is what the beast looks like in motion, from the outside, going somewhere, and scenes are high-level organic systems: the way the blood flows within the story creature, the way it breathes” (Vandermeer pg. 137). In other words, the series of events in a story, the plot, cannot exist without some kind of foundational structure through the strategic placement of scenes, the blood line of story. So what is a scene and how should I arrange scenes to tell my story?


“A scene usually dramatizes interactions between characters and gives the reader the impression of being shown, not told, the story” (Vandermeer pg. 154). I think of scene as a camera following my characters, providing readers a “live” action experience. Summary, on the other hand, describes or “tells” the readers what happened and does not give readers that “live” experience. “Most fiction consists of scenes with intermittent or linking summary” (Vandermeer pg. 155). It would be impossible, and extremely redundant, to show every single event in a character’s life “live”. For one, the novel would drag and be well over word count. Two, not every action directly impacts character, conflict, or drives the story forward. Therefore, I as the writer must decide what to show, what to summarize, and what to leave out, to best support my story. I think this is one of the most challenging aspects of writing because it demands I know my story. Really know it. And to be honest, sometimes I’m still not clear what my story should be, what makes for the most fascinating, most suspenseful, most thought provoking tale? And I’m finding that it often takes several re-writes, brainstorming and writing several alternatives, a trial and error of sorts, until I know the version of the story most deserving of the page, and the best mode (structure) of telling it.
It is also important when deciding and arranging scenes, that I vary the types of scenes I use. Even three action packed chapters of the same thing (a chase, a battle, a death, whatever it may be), loses its excitement. Vandermeer says, “Once you have dramatized a particular type of act or action or scene more than once—sometimes as little as two or three times—it begins to give diminishing returns to the reader, especially if presented back-to-back” (Vandermeer pg. 162). In other words, the scene no longer sparks the reader’s interest. I have a feeling this is why my mentor asked me to trim Cache’s race sequence in the Jumpers. Too much of the same thing actually hurt my story. It’s better to have quality over quantity, make sure the scenes I create are purposeful and special, so they jump out and not become invisible.
Writers are basically a one man (or woman) show who are responsible for every single aspect of their story: structure, plot, word choice, characters, etc. No pressure. But I’m realizing the integral role characters play. Having a firm foundation built around my characters is crucial. After all, they guide the story.
“Skilled writers know that what you're supposed to do is continually open up your story. You do this by creating scenes in which you lay down -- but do not answer! -- dramatic questions. You do this by making sure that if you do answer a dramatic question in a scene as the novel progresses, you've already laid down another. You do this by making partial disclosure instead of giving out all the information you possess. Most important, you do this by creating suspense…, the state of wanting to know what's going to happen to the characters. Really, that's the key. Create characters who are real to the reader, who evoke an emotional response within the reader, and you create suspense because the reader will want to know what's going to happen to these people once the status quo is shattered by the primary event” (George, pg. 43).

What I find interesting about the quote above is how suspense doesn’t have to be a huge action sequence with explosions and bullets. I can build suspense in my scenes by creating authentic and likeable characters and putting obstacles, big and small in their way. Small obstacles will have just as much emotional pull on readers as the big if I design scenes that highlight my characters, raise their stakes, and keep some questions unanswered. This is profound and definitely challenges my notion of pacing.
“How quickly or slowly a scene and, over the span of a story or novel, a series of scenes seems to play out in the reader’s mind refers to pacing” (Vandermeer pg 155).  I tend to keep a fast pace through action sequences (a lot happening), first person present tense point of view, quick descriptions, short snappy sentences with sharp verbs, and direct dialogue. But I’ve heard that a continuous fast pace tires and confuses the reader whereas slow scenes bore the reader into closing the book. The trick is to juggle both fast and slow pace. Often the reader (and the character) need a pause after a climactic scene to process what happened. A slow pace allows for reflection, description, more relaxed dialogue, longer sentences and paragraphs, and opportunities to show another dimension to the character.
Two components of pacing include beats and progressions. “Beats are micro cycles of ebb and flow, progress and set back playing out within a scene—action/reaction, cause and effect, stimulus and response” (Vandermeer pg. 156). Think of a beat as the pulse, the heartbeat of the story. Sometimes for a dramatic moment to be felt, it needs another beat, more set up for the reader to connect. “A progression describes the individual ordering of events and deployment of information in scenes or across different scenes…Progressions should ramp up to something more exciting than what came before” (Vandermeer pg. 156-157). Events in the story should build upon one another, provide a sense of rising action. Beats and progressions are why my mentor asked me to write a Cache pre-race scene. One, to allow the reader more time to invest in Cache and his stakes. Two, to build suspense for the race, instead of thrusting the reader into a race they don’t yet understand or care about.
Vandermeer argues that structure, “is actually the trickiest, most shape-shifty part of fiction” (pg. 136). Why? Because each story can have its own unique structure: the best way to tell my story is not the best way to tell someone else’s. There are no lines to color inside of, nothing to trace, no exact rules. I should not be afraid to play with the structure of my story, to try new things. As long as the results feel organic, are built around character, and do not distract from the story, the structure could be anything. Currently, I’m alternating scenes, sometimes every two or three scenes between Zara in Twill and Cache in Ethandril. I made this choice because I feel it best serves the story I’m telling: two people living in vastly different worlds, with vastly different backgrounds and life experiences collide and will learn to appreciate and respect one another. Each scene allows the reader to see the world through that character’s eyes which enables readers to be tolerant before my characters are tolerant of one another. Each contrasting scene also shows readers the extremes of each setting and the stark differences between the life of a Llure compared to a Sive. So far I like this structure a lot. Where I think I’m struggling is more with the arrangement of scenes, their pacing. In an attempt to rid my story of the dreaded info dump, I’ve started scenes too far ahead. And in my effort to keep the story moving and free from superfluous description, each scene reads extremely fast and too much information is divulged at once. I need to find a balance that fits this story: the right amount of mystery infused with the right amount of information and backstory. And how do I know I’ve done it right? Vandermeer doesn’t really give me an answer for this. But I have a feeling he’d say, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. And so I pick up the dominoes, reset them, until they fall in one swift wave.








Works Cited
George, Elizabeth. "Plotting: It Is the Cause, My Soul." Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.
VanderMeer, Jeff. Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. New York: Abrams Image, 2013. Print.

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