Revision Tip: Scenes as Building Blocks

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

Each scene is a step towards the final big event that happens at the end of the story.

Can you tell I’ve been learning from The Plot Whisperer? One of the things I do as I revise is to check my story, scene by scene, to make sure each scene has a purpose.

I also think about the characters in each scene, what their goals are for that scene and how the scene contributes to their overall goal. I’ve been noticing some interesting ways my character’s goals interact, leading to scenes that have more than one purpose in the story. Watch for:

- scenes with no apparent purpose:  they need to be cut or amped up (even if the writing is amazing)

- scenes where too much is happening: sometimes they need to be broken up

- scenes that repeat in terms of the pattern of events or structure 

Cool Quote:

 “…it wasn’t until I learned to see scenes on a micro level—as needing goals, obstacles and turning points of their own—that I became a publishable writer.”

 Lena Coakley,Some Thoughts on Scene Structure, posted on her blog November 30, 2011.

Getting Past a Stumbling Block

I'm trying to question everything as I revise my novel and sometimes my questions get me stuck. For the past week, I've been faced with a plot problem that stopped me from moving ahead. But this weekend, instead of revising words and phrases, I went back to my scene summary to look at the bigger picture. What a great idea that was!

It's much easier to see the whole novel with brief descriptions of each scene. Since I'm not looking at my "beautiful" writing, it's also easier to make changes to the storyline. Making a few changes gave me confidence to make more. Here's a few things I want to remember:

1. Nothing is set in stone, just because the words are on the page.

2. It's easy to open a new file to save changes in to avoid messing up what I wrote before, in case I need it later.

3. I make the rules for my own story (as much as the characters might want things to go their way).

4. Sometimes it's okay to do what is convenient for the plot. Not everything has to be a new twist.

Make Two into One: Revising to Condense

Despite the pain involved in the process, I've managed to cut some scenes from my novel. Yay! It's making my story stronger. Something else I've noticed is that in some places I can condense scenes by combining two scenes into one. For me, this works when two scenes have some similarity:

 1. Setting. Does your MC need to visit the same location again? Maybe both goals can be accomplished at the same time. I had my MC walking the dog at the same park twice within a couple of chapters. Was the second visit necessary? I managed to combine the scenes to reduce the number of setting changes.

2. Dialogue. Sometimes when I'm preoccupied with solving my MC's problem, she has similar conversations with more than one character. I had to ask myself, is anything new emerging? Sometimes the same information is being rehashed in different conversations. Cut and condense.

3. Events. When notes from my critique buddies say things like, "didn't this already happen?" it forces me to take a second look at the obstacles I'm throwing up for my MC. They may be different, but not different enough to stand out. That's when I start moving around large blocks of text to capture the strongest reaction to the obstacle. It forces me to find another, even tougher way to make things hard for my MC.

Off Stage vs. On Stage: How Much Do You Show?

Lately, in working on my current novel, I’ve found myself spending a lot of time on subplot instead of the main plot events. I need to make decisions about which parts the reader needs to experience as the story moves along and which parts can be summarized through dialogue or a descriptive paragraph.

It’s not as easy as it seems. I want to experience all of it. While that’s perfectly reasonable for the first draft, I also don’t want to lose my focus on the main storyline. Some questions I'm asking myself:

1) Is the information in the scene critical to moving ahead the plot?

2) Am I getting so far from the main story that the reader will forget what’s happening?

3) Do I need to know what’s happening here? If so, I write the scene but mark it for possible summarizing later. Maybe I need to know, but the reader doesn't.

Thinking in Scenes

In parallel with reading lots of MG and YA books for my 100 book challenge (and making good progress on that, by the way), I'm also reading The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass. I occasionally worry that with each new novel, my writing technique won't show much change from the last one. So, picking up a book on writing technique from time to time helps me feel like I'm trying to apply something new in my writing (along with all the great tips I get from my critiquers).

Lately, I've been thinking about scenes. A key strategy Maass suggests is to make sure there is a goal for each scene, so it advances the plot. While I don't get too hung up on these kinds of things when I'm writing a first draft (maybe I should?), I do keep a separate file that gives a short summary of what happens in each scene, something like this example from Novel #2:

Chapter 1
_____________________________
1: Molly shows Kayla changes in their house

2:  Molly & Kayla speculate about cousins
_______________________________

More recently, I've been writing slightly more to describe what happens in each scene, including the key interactions between characters, ending up with a brief summary that other people besides me could actually understand. It helps me stay on track. But maybe I should be including the first and last lines as well? Any other ways to keep track of what's happening in your scenes?