Setting scene intentions for your character
I just started reading this book called Make a Scene (by Jordan E. Rosenfeld) and in the second chapter, it talks about how you have to “set scene intentions for your character,” and, reading it, I realized I don’t do that! Or at least I never think about doing it, except for maybe in the very first chapter of the book. I have intentions for each successive scene as a writer, things I want each scene to show or add to the story or to the understanding of the character or the full depth of his problem. Each scene has its purpose in my mind, but this says I need to know my character’s intention at the launch of every scene, and I don’t!
This could really help me, might be a missing key in my writing. I mean I probably unconsciously do this most of the time, but maybe those scenes that aren’t working aren’t working because of this. I can think of a scene right now that would benefit from adding the character’s intentions at the launch (a word this book uses instead of “beginning”) of the scene, because the character does have something she wants to do at the opening of this scene but I don’t show it. I just have the MC coming into the room and being met by her mother, who wants to talk to her when she doesn’t want to be talked to, about something she does not want to talk about, and the mother shoves a list in front of her that she has no interest in reading or thinking about. If I first showed what it is the girl DID want to do when she came into this room, it would make the mother and what she wants the girl to attend to even more irritating, which would be good because I’m trying to ratchet up the tension and conflict.
Now I have to go through this story I'm working on-and every story I’ve got-and check it scene by scene to see if I’ve set my character’s intentions. I know there are exceptions to rules and no one can go exactly by the rules every time (last night I read a YA with my son-a novel recently published by a huge NY publisher and written by a many-times-published author-and it began with a dramatic scene that turned out two pages later to be a dream the main character was having!!!), but it will be interesting to see if my character's intentions are there at the start of most scenes and I've just been unconsciously doing it ...or if I have this bad habit of just having things happen to my main character and him/her reacting. This is what I'm afraid I'll find. But why should I be afraid? Now I can fix those things, those things I didn't even know to fix before (can you tell I'm excited?)!
This revelation may be elementary to some of you (all of you?), but we all learn at our own rate, and we all learn things in different orders, or are born instinctively knowing how to do certain things that others have to learn, but... the more I learn, the more I realize how stupid I am, how much I have to learn! Which is depressing in one way but exciting in another; this means there’s a lot of room for improvement and every time one of these lightbulbs goes off in my head, I’ll be that much better a writer than I was the day before.
Am I the only writer in the whole world who didn't know about this? Have you all been beginning every scene thinking, "OK, now I've got to show my character's intention here and then show how it was thwarted, or how she achieved what she wanted.." ??? Or do you just do this without thinking about it, because you've read so many stories it comes naturally?
This could really help me, might be a missing key in my writing. I mean I probably unconsciously do this most of the time, but maybe those scenes that aren’t working aren’t working because of this. I can think of a scene right now that would benefit from adding the character’s intentions at the launch (a word this book uses instead of “beginning”) of the scene, because the character does have something she wants to do at the opening of this scene but I don’t show it. I just have the MC coming into the room and being met by her mother, who wants to talk to her when she doesn’t want to be talked to, about something she does not want to talk about, and the mother shoves a list in front of her that she has no interest in reading or thinking about. If I first showed what it is the girl DID want to do when she came into this room, it would make the mother and what she wants the girl to attend to even more irritating, which would be good because I’m trying to ratchet up the tension and conflict.
Now I have to go through this story I'm working on-and every story I’ve got-and check it scene by scene to see if I’ve set my character’s intentions. I know there are exceptions to rules and no one can go exactly by the rules every time (last night I read a YA with my son-a novel recently published by a huge NY publisher and written by a many-times-published author-and it began with a dramatic scene that turned out two pages later to be a dream the main character was having!!!), but it will be interesting to see if my character's intentions are there at the start of most scenes and I've just been unconsciously doing it ...or if I have this bad habit of just having things happen to my main character and him/her reacting. This is what I'm afraid I'll find. But why should I be afraid? Now I can fix those things, those things I didn't even know to fix before (can you tell I'm excited?)!
This revelation may be elementary to some of you (all of you?), but we all learn at our own rate, and we all learn things in different orders, or are born instinctively knowing how to do certain things that others have to learn, but... the more I learn, the more I realize how stupid I am, how much I have to learn! Which is depressing in one way but exciting in another; this means there’s a lot of room for improvement and every time one of these lightbulbs goes off in my head, I’ll be that much better a writer than I was the day before.
Am I the only writer in the whole world who didn't know about this? Have you all been beginning every scene thinking, "OK, now I've got to show my character's intention here and then show how it was thwarted, or how she achieved what she wanted.." ??? Or do you just do this without thinking about it, because you've read so many stories it comes naturally?