WI3: Scene Sag leads to the B Word

Attention: I will now admit my fatal flaw as an author. Are you ready?

I have zero formal training to do any of this.

My last English class was in high school. I managed to test out of college English courses, which didn’t do me any favors in the long run. While I did take a Creative Writing class in high school, of which I have fond memories, that had been over a decade before I had attempted to write a full-length novel.

Anyone else in my boat? Anyone??

::crickets::

Crap. Well, anyways…

Not to toot my own horn, but I do feel like I have a knack for prose, for rhythm and flow, for building imagery. But technical literary concepts—passive tense, suspension of disbelief, show vs tell, to name a few—were terms I literally had to look up after getting feedback from my beta readers. How embarrassing. Thankfully there are tools that can save me from looking like a complete idiot, like Grammarly. You better believe I paid for that subscription. I’ve learned a lot from Grammarly, but it can only do a fraction of what I need to know.

This is precisely the reason I’m grateful for writing conferences and events, like the Writer’s Institute in Madison, WI.

I’m able to get that training from industry professionals that have been through it all and can share their lessons learned. I attended two such writing workshops given by R.R. Campbell, author of Imminent Dawn. First, how to build a proper scene structure, followed by how to add fizz/heart to that scene. His immersive speaking style had his audience engaged—not to mention giggling—in learning the elements required for a well-rounded scene. I’d never looked at any of my scenes in the way he’d explained, and it made me anxious to dissect my completed novel to the molecular level.

As instructed, each scene should have 5 things:

Setting
Goal
Conflict
Resolution
Cliffhanger or Pivot Point or Change Moment (Method to move the plot forward)

Without properly building your scene with these core components, you may experience what Campbell calls, ‘Scene Sag’. You’ve read scenes with the sag. Scenes that lack an arc, are listless, drift from what the reader actually cares about, lack forwarding momentum, or lack stakes. It makes your reader BORED. The dreaded B-word. A bored reader can be a death sentence. Or, to be less dramatic, a bad review. A lost contract. A lost opportunity.

Nevermind, it’s a death sentence.

In a previous post, I’d mentioned LUCK = PREPARATION + OPPORTUNITY, a lesson learned from Nick Chiarkas, another presenter at the Writer’s Institute. Properly building scenes is part of that preparation, without which opportunity will be wasted.

So don’t let your scenes sag.

Once a scene is properly outlined, Campbell’s second workshop taught me that scenes must have:

Characterization
Theme
Backstory

These things are needed in order to induce an emotional bond with your reader, which is how you make them care. Flat scenes lack engagement, leaving readers asking: Where’s the fizz? Which leads to the B-word.

Characterization

It might be easy to list physical features or personality traits, but a character your reader cares about is more than that, and it’s your job to create that connection.

Theme

What is your story really about, beyond the logline? Does your scene lend towards that theme?

Backstory

Why are characters doing what they do? What drives them? Personal history is crucial to understanding and rooting for or against a character.

The 5 Senses

One of the most effective tools to create a gateway to characterization, theme, and/or backstory is the 5 senses. Almost any sensory experience can tie to a memory or a thought process, giving the reader an idea how this character thinks. But you must be careful to keep the degree of specificity relevant to how that character actually thinks. Are you describing how the character would perceive the world around them, or how you would? Is the noise of the cicadas a lullaby or a screech? Kind of depends on the character’s perception. Interesting food for thought!

I don’t know what to do with my hands

Campbell also gave us a valuable tip if you’re not sure where a scene should go. Put something in the character’s hand. It could be anything. Why is it there? This question could reshape the entire scene in a way you hadn’t thought of before.

Lastly, a big picture lesson I learned from Campbell he likely didn’t intend was this:

Teaching workshops at conferences like this is going to be a necessary part of my future.

Say I get my book published? Hallelujah, dream come true! But what happens next? Say my publisher has a publicist that actually tries to sell books for me. Also a dream come true! But chances are I’ll get three months out of that. And then I’ll be on my own. So how will I keep selling books?

As I listened to speakers throughout the conference, I felt a connection through their life stories and shared experiences. They had worked hard to write and publish a book, just as I’m doing now. That fact alone made me want to read their book. That’s the hook, and since I bought books from three speakers wishing I could spend more, the strategy totally worked on me. So yea, I’m going to have to do this to sell my books, and that was an enlightening lesson for me. And bonus, speakers get to attend for free!

Talk to you soon,

Crystal

Here’s a little bit about R.R. Campbell‘s science-fiction thriller, Imminent Dawn:

Art-school dropout Chandra would do anything to apologize for her role in her wife’s coma–including enroll in the first round of human trials for an internet-access brain implant.
At first, the secretive research compound is paradise, the perfect place to distract Chandra from her grief. But as she soon learns, the facility is more prison than resort, with its doctors, support staff, and her fellow patients all bent on hatching plots of their own, no matter how invested they might seem in helping her communicate with her wife.

Making matters worse, a dark wave of uncertainty crashes down on the compound, forcing Chandra to become an unlikely but pivotal player in conspiracies stretching from the highest levels of the North American Union government to the lowest dredges of its shadowy hacking collectives.

To save herself and her wife, Chandra and her newfound friends from the study will have to overcome the scheming of a ruthless tech magnate, the naïveté of an advancement-hungry administrative assistant, and the relentless pursuits of an investigative journalist, all of whom are determined to outpace the others in their own quests to resurrect lost love, cover their tracks, and uncover the truth.