Writing Stellar Scenes: Part 7—Reactions
Welcome to part seven of my series on scene writing!
If you’re just joining in, here’s a quick recap of where we’ve been: I started with an introduction to the basics of scene writing. You can read that here. Now, I’m working through the eight essential elements of a scene. So far, I’ve covered five: character, setting, character goals, the event/situation and the action.
For a quick review, here are all eight elements of a scene:
1. Character – who will be there?
2. Setting – where are they?
3. Goal – what do the characters want to accomplish?
4. Event or Situation – what is happening?
5. Action – What will each character do or say?
6. Emotion (Reaction) – How will each character react to what is done/said? Why?
7. (Incomplete) Resolution – How will the event/situation end? What will make readers want to keep reading onward?
8. Purpose – How does this scene move the story forward, develop characters, and/or add to the conflict?
Let’s jump in. Today is all about element #6—emotions!
If you want to pull readers into the story, don’t make your POV character’s emotions a mystery. Letting us know what they are thinking & feeling will help us understand their world and their relationships with others.
Essential Scene Element #6: Emotion
If you’re a card carrying member of the cult of “show, don’t tell”, this post probably isn’t for you.
Today, we’re talking about the good stuff. The stuff we can only get from novels.
What is it?
Interiority.
Also known as all the things happening inside your main character’s head!
Now, to be clear, any character can have a reaction in a scene. The non-POV characters in your novel will have their own reactions, but on the whole, those reactions are easier to write because we’re focusing on external cues that your POV character can see and hear.
In this post, I’m focusing on the reactions that happen within your character. Why? Those reactions are so much harder to write—especially when you have that old mantra “show, don’t tell” rattling around in your head. Oftentimes, narrating a character’s thoughts and reactions can feel an awful lot like telling.
I once heard someone at a writer’s conference tell a panel of literary agents that she’d been told never to share her characters’ thoughts and she wanted to know if that advice was correct. The literary agents sat there in stunned silence for a second, until one finally spoke up and told us that the entire point of reading a novel is know what’s happening inside the character’s head.
I’m going to repeat that: the entire point of reading a novel is to get inside another person’s head.
That’s what books offer us that movies, TV shows, and plays can’t.
That’s why the publishing industry has managed to survive in the streaming era. We don’t get to read minds in real life (thank god) but we do when we read. When we crack open a novel, we finally get to see all the messy stuff happening underneath the surface of another person and we’re better for it.
So, with that out of the way, here are some key principles for writing effective interior dialogue for your characters. Let’s go!
#1 - Keep your character focused on the event or situation of the scene.
This one is crucial. This one relates to a fundamental concept of scene writing: scenes should happen in real time. In other words, you should follow the character moment-by-moment, narrating the action and dialogue as it occurs. Your POV character’s thoughts are no different—keep them focused on what’s happening moment-by-moment in the story. Even when there’s world building information to convey. Actually, especially when there’s world building information to convey. If it’s not relevant to the immediate action of the scene, we do not need that information in the scene. Save it for the moment when we do need it or find a way to slip that information into dialogue.
#2 - Make sure your character’s thoughts reveal the meaning of what’s happening around them.
Cluing readers into the stakes of the narrative is one of your most important jobs as a writer. The events of the story only matter to the extent that they matter to the characters. There could be a gun fight happening outside the main character’s living room window, but if they’re still sitting calmly watching the evening news, readers aren’t going to care about the danger inside. Instead, they’ll assume this is just a normal part of the main character’s world.
For fantasy & science-fiction writers, it’s even more important to clue readers’ into the main character’s feelings about the world around them. When reading realistic fiction, readers can bring their own assumptions and experiences into the narrative, but in a fantastical world, everything is new.
When you shift the cultural norms or the fundamental laws of physics, you run the risk of alienating readers by taking away their frame of reference. How do we fix that? We show how the main character reacts to the world. We let readers know when something bears remarking on because it’s unusual and when something is just part of the hum-drum milieu.
If the character doesn’t react to a gun fight or a dragon landing in their backyard, we know those things are normal for this world. If they dive behind the couch at the first sound of gunshots or draw their sword to face the dragon, that tells us something different. Pay attention to when the characters react and when they don’t so that you send the right message to your readers and let us know how to feel about each aspect of the world you’ve created.
#3 - Allow your characters to show their biases, beliefs, and opinions.
It’s good for your characters to be opinionated.
For the record, this is not carte-blanche to put offensive dogma in your character’s mouth and get away scot-free. When it comes to marginalized people groups, you should absolutely be sensitive and aim to do no harm in your writing.
But when it comes to exposition, don’t give us the neutral, history professor version of your world building. Let your readers’ opinions, world view, and beliefs tinge the description. The same goes for character descriptions. Let us know how they really feel about their family, friends and coworkers. For better or worse, their judgments will help make the characters in the story feel real—after all, whether you love them or hate them, the people in your life you feel strongest about are usually the most interesting.
Not only will showcasing the main character’s perceptions help us understand the world and social dynamics, it will make those moments of exposition more interesting to readers. No more bland info-dumps! Give us the no-filter, no holding back version. The more your characters’ voice is present, the more exposition you can get away with (though, if you’re tempted to give us the last one thousand years of history, see point #1 and don’t. Just don’t.).
Thanks for joining me in another installment of this scene writing series! I hope you’ll come back next week for our discussion of scene element #7—(incomplete) scene resolutions!
Until then, happy writing!
Still not sure how to approach this whole scene writing thing?
Olivia can help!
