Karen Sandler

Tag: scene

  • 5 Proven Ways to Wake Up the Draggy Bits in Your Novel

    Awakening Final cover-sWe’ve all been there. You’re at point A in your story. You can clearly visualize your destination: point B, when that next Wow moment happens. Point B is one of those scenes you’ve been looking forward to writing since you first thought up the story, and you know it’s going to be fantastic.

    But somehow, you’ve lost your road map between A and B. Your character seems to be slogging along with shackles on his feet, and every word out of his mouth sounds kind of lame. You know the story will pick up when you get to that gonzo scene on the horizon, but how do you get from here to there without putting your reader to sleep?

    Here are some methods that I’ve used to kick those pages into higher gear:

    1. Change your point of view character. This one is a favorite of mine. Of course, it assumes you’re using more than one POV in your book. If you are, the problem may be that the wrong character is telling that part of the story. It’s one of the other characters who is doing much more exciting things at the moment. Perhaps they’re in the middle of the action instead of on the sidelines. They’re the one who should be front and center.
    2. Switch from summary to scene. If you’re like me, you’re sometimes in such a hurry to get to that point B scene that you summarize a bunch of action to get there quicker. Summaries are great when you need a time transition and the action that takes place during that summary isn’t particularly important to the story. If it’s a string of ordinary days, better to summarize. If those are the days during which the main character is in captivity by space aliens and having her internal organs reorganized, I think the reader is gonna want more details. A scene with those details is called for.
    3. Get your characters talking. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of your characters silently doing things (unless it’s heart-pumping action) can be pretty snoozy after awhile. Often you’re trying to reveal information that moves your story forward. But for a reader, dialogue between two characters is a much more fast-paced way to reveal that information. Note: You don’t want to fall into the expository dialogue trap, e.g., “As you know, Bob, earth has been taken over by space aliens. You and I have had our internal organs reorganized several times now.” Both Bob and the speaker know this already and would never have that conversation.
    4. Get your characters moving. Sometimes even fast-paced dialogue can get a little dull if the characters are just standing in a room bouncing words off one another. Let them walk and talk. Or run and shout. Have them leave their room, or if they’re trapped in a prison, have them trying things to escape. Or they’re at least pacing, somehow in motion.

      El Gato
      El Gato ready to fight the Bad Guys.
    5. Throw in a fight scene. Well, not necessarily a fight, but go for some action. Don’t worry for the moment how it relates to your story. When I’ve gone ahead and written that scene that wasn’t in thesynopsis, that I hadn’t planned for, nearly every time, it magically ends up being a key moment for what comes later. Until I started writing it, I didn’t know I needed that scene. Sometimes I don’t figure out why I wrote that scene until I’m much farther along in the story. And if it turns out what I wrote never meshes with anything else? Just delete it. You probably got things moving just by writing it. That was its purpose and now it’s time to let it go.

    I hope these help. They work for me. Do you have any other methods of juicing up your story when it lags? Let me know in the comments.

  • Dialogue vs. Scene

    When does dialogue constitute a scene? If two or more characters are talking to one another about elements of the story they’re featured in, is that a scene? And if it is a scene, how much of it can we include on the page without interspersing it with action?

    To me, a scene is where something is happening. It’s a visual depiction of that something. It must be pertinent to the story and move it forward, but if there’s something important to your story, I fervently believe it should be shown and not talked about.

    Of course, dialogue does have its place. I recall learning (back in the Dark Ages when I first started writing) three rules about dialogue. Dialogue should do one or more of the following:

    •     Convey character
    •     Reveal information
    •     Move the story forward

    So, yes, you could have some number of characters in a room talking, characterizing themselves with their word choices or tone (e.g., using plenty of slang & f-bombs, or more erudite language), revealing information (e.g., that they saw Col. Mustard in the library with a hammer), and moving the story forward (e.g., I’m pregnant, and you’re the father). But if it’s just folks talking in a room, is that really the best way to use dialogue?

    The issue is really how much of your book is dialogue in a static place and how much is action that either leads into that dialogue, or action that follows that dialogue. If your story is fast-paced, with your characters constantly in peril, it’s great to have scenes in which they can take a breather, to sit together and just talk and regroup. James Rollins Map of Bones is a good example of that. Rollins places his characters in one dire situation after another, but there are revelations that they have to have time to chew over. So they get to safety and work out what those revelations mean, providing the reader with information, characterizing the characters, and moving the story forward.

    Here’s a dialogue example from my book, Tankborn. I’ve taken most of the action out of the exchange between Kayla and her nurture brother, Jal:

    “Tala’s out,” Jal said, “cleaning Spil and Zeva’s flat.”
    “Then we have time to change and get the river sludge out of our clothes.”
    “What about this?”
    “I’ll doctor it. If she asks, you slipped climbing down the riverbank.”
    “If she’s tired enough,” Jal pointed out, “she might not even
    notice the scratch.”
    “She’ll notice. She just might not have the energy to push it.”
    “Tala shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
    “You volunteering to stop eating? We could save plenty of dhans not paying for the kel-grain you inhale.”
    “I mean, the trueborns should give her a new baby so she won’t have to clean flats.”

    As written above, it’s not really a scene at all. It’s just two talking heads. Here’s the same excerpt with the action included:

        When Kayla slipped into the twenty-ninth warren, Jal was waiting for her by the stairs. “Tala’s out,” Jal said, “cleaning Spil and Zeva’s flat.”
    Kayla brushed past Jal and up the stairs. “Then we have time to change and get the river sludge out of our clothes.”
    “What about this?” Jal tapped the scratch on his cheek.
    “I’ll doctor it. If she asks, you slipped climbing down the riverbank.”
    “If she’s tired enough,” Jal pointed out, “she might not even notice the scratch.”
    “She’ll notice. She just might not have the energy to push it.”
    Jal crowded up past Kayla and walked backward up the stairs. “Tala shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
    Kayla slanted a look up at him. “You volunteering to stop eating? We could save plenty of dhans not paying for the kel-grain you inhale.”
    Jal gave Kayla a poke. “I mean, the trueborns should give her a new baby so she won’t have to clean flats.”

    With the interspersed action, the dialogue becomes a scene. Not so much a whizbang high-action scene, but we get a sense of place, and a sense of the relationship between Kayla and Jal, as well as revealing information about their nurture mother, Tala.

    If you’re a writer, how do you handle dialogue to avoid the dreaded Talking Heads Syndrome? If you’re a reader, what do you think of dialogue that’s independent from action? I’d love to hear others’ opinions.

     

  • 3 Tricks to Energize an Expository Scene

    Has this ever happened to you? You’re working on your manuscript and you’ve come to a point where you need to reveal information to your reader. It might be something crucial to the plot, or a vital revelation about your main character. You start writing the scene, but somehow it’s flat and boring. It sounds like a couple of talking heads. You start to feel completely blocked.

    If it hasn’t happened to you, you’re lucky. I’ve experienced this scenario any number of times writing my 20+ books. Early on in my career, I would flounder for a solution, but now I rely on a few go-to methods to freshen and energize the scene.

    1. Change the setting

    If it’s not working to have your characters sitting in a restaurant while they hash over their next step in defeating the alien zombie-vampires, get them up and moving. Your characters can walk through a park, or drive in a car, or climb up the hill to where they think the talisman is hidden. Sometimes an intimate, static setting is appropriate—in her room, or hidden in the cave safe from those AZVs. But if the scene is coming off too blah, get your characters up and out.

    2. Change the POV

    If you’re using the point of view of more than one character, sometimes all it takes to brighten up a scene is to switch to another character’s POV. That other character will have an entirely different perspective on the situation. That perspective might generate more conflict, which is exactly what will keep your reader reading.

    3. Do it with action

    This is a step beyond just getting your characters moving. Write your expository scene as an action scene. They’re fighting those AZVs, and in the process shouting out to each other what the reader needs to know—that he’s the one who left her that love note in third grade, or she stole from the church donation box to post his bail. Or you reveal information with the action itself—that AZVs have to be staked, beheaded, and tasered to be destroyed.

    So if your expository scene is lying there deader than a staked-beheaded-tasered AZV, give these tricks a try and get your book moving again.