Unpacking The Story
I’ve been having a bit of trouble lately unpacking my story, and I thought maybe for some of you this would sound familiar and some of you might have some tips or tricks to share.
I’ve broken my story down into sequences, and broken it further into scenes. My problem is I often end up with something like a shotgun blast; A scene here, a scene there, peppered across the bird’s eye view of my story. The problem is not just connecting the dots between key scenes, but creating new ones that fill and flesh out the story and create greater depth between your big moments.
A good example is when you write out your story as a logline or a 3 page treatment, you have a lot of indirect narrative. For example, “The hero goes on a trip to city A, and meets with Jerry. When he arrives back, he gets in a fight with his wife.”
Now, this treatement of indirect narrative may be perfect from the standpoint of getting the higher level story structure laid out. But using our example let’s say that the hero’s meeting with Jerry, and his fight with his wife upon return are two major events of the story that take place a month apart. Let’s also say that you don’t intend for that month to be glossed over… you intend to create more scenes to fill the space between those two key points.
What happens in between? It’s not just indirect narrative of “Hero returns, fight begins.” Maybe there are things the hero experiences or discovers on that month away, and some of those things lead to increased tension which culminate with a fight with the spouse on return.
Again, this is just an example, but it illustrates that two plot points may be very close together on the logline or plot line, but in terms of scenes they are meant to be further apart, buffered and padded by other scenes that you haven’t yet created.
Unpacking scenes from your higher level sequences or plotline can be tricky. What methods do you use to better unpack your story? How do you deal with the problem of filling the gap between two pivotal scenes? How do you extrude, unpack, extrapolate one scene into five, or create that breathing space between the major plot points or significant moments of the story?
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December 10th, 2006 at 4:06 am
Here are a few ways I extrapolate more out of scenes:
1. Dialogue - Write out my characters’ talking, discussions, musings. To a taxi driver, the behind-the-counter guy at the bodega, the dry cleaner, a telemarketer on the phone, the doctor, their friend, even themselves — anyone. As long as they are talking. In conversations, ideas and motivations bubble to the surface, and catalysts appear which can spur action.
2. Scenes of everyday life - This is what happens during the main drama points. Describe grocery store trips, running in the park, hanging out with friends. Again, include dialogue to make scenes more lively, realistic. Here’s where random characters/interesting events can pop up to make your characters’ lives more full and interesting. Keep the scenes you like and toss out/embelish the ones you don’t.
3. Brainstorming filler - Look at scene A and scene Z. Type up/write down a list of everything that comes to mind while thinking about them. Do this is a stream-of-consciousness way. When you’re done writing the list, look for a chronological sequence. Is there anything there that is sequential, or at least connective? (Hopefully, yes.)
Let us know if any of this works for you. You are definitely at one of the more challenging points of writing.
December 12th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
I thought it was advised to NOT write mundane everyday life stuff of the character? Cut all your “making coffee” scenes, etc. because they do nothing for the story.
Or perhaps you mean from a purely generative standpoint… don’t worry about the mundane stuff, just generate?
December 13th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
I’ve had many a story die after chapter 3 when the unpacking started. What did I do? I swited to a smaller format to cut my teeth. I wrote 2 45k children’s novels.
My next novel will be adult fiction. We’ll see what I’ve learned…
December 13th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Yes, the generation is key. Sometimes writing about the mundane stuff is just a block-breaker to get the writing flowing.
Other times, however, I’ve started completely mundane scenes that become completely wonderful and surprising. The ordinary walk down the street becomes something else entirely. Somehow something would click for me while writing the boring, non-pressured, daily routine, and imagination kicked in.
These mundane scenes are a trigger for better scenes for me. Maybe writing them frees up my subconscious to release the “real” story.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Not that I know what I’m doing, but these are the places I put scenes that reveal and develop character. For me, brainstorming often works. I use some key theme or plot words and they lead to ideas that may seem unrelated at first, but will work well to flesh out the story while continuing to move the story forward.
For example, if I’m brainstorming fear, I may come up with fear of mouse. I can use a scene with a mouse (sorry, bad example but you get the gist) to help develop and reveal the character’s fear and well as foreshadow events to come.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:21 pm
What a great idea, Nienke! That just spawned some ideas for one of my stories too … thanks!