Our assignment for this lesson was to take a story or a scene and identify the elements of scene and sequel– are they included? Were they used welll?  Could the scene or sequel be beefed with dialogue or action? Does this scene move the plot along?  After identifying the elements, does the scene read better? Like professional writing?

I decided to use one of the prompts that I wrote for a writing exercise last month, and was thinking of developing it into a full fledged story . This scene has two levels, so to speak, so I’ll sketch them both out.

The scene begins with characters Daniel and Sherry having a cigarette outside a bar, in the middle of a tense conversation.

GOAL: Daniel is asking Sherry about the murder of their father, if she was the one who shot him.

CONFLICT: Sherry won’t answer the question, stalls, makes Daniel ask again

DISASTER: Sherry answers, but it appears to have destroyed her emotionally to answer the question.

EMOTION: Daniel begins to feel sorry for Sherry because he’s dredged up a painful memory.

THOUGHT: Daniel realizes that her actions saved his life.

DECISION: The subtext is a quiet undertsanding that no one need to know that it was her that killed him.

ACTION: They leave the bar and get in Daniel’s car.

Level 2:

GOAL: Daniel is trying to get Sherry to admit she shot their father, and not [unnamed character ] who is serving a prison sentence for the murder.

CONFLICT: Sherry won’t answer the question directly or she stalls, making Daniel ask again, more pointedly.

DISASTER: Sherry answers, but the supporting explanation could be grounds for self defense, or even defense of him. .

EMOTION: Daniel begins to feel sorry for Sherry because he’s dragged her into a trap that he can’t get her out of.

THOUGHT: Daniel realizes that her actions saved his life and for a brief moment, shows pity and brotherly understanding.

DECISION: The subtext is that Daniel must move forward with his plan to trap her.

ACTION: Daniel drives Sherry to her house, where the rest of the plan falls into place.

The resulting scene:
[
[GOAL] Daniel watched Sherry light a second cigarette, the tip a glowing red ember against the pitch black of the alley. The sounds of the bar were muffled by the sounds of the busy street, feet away. She was avoiding his concentrated stare, and though he was patient, he wasn’t going to wait all night for an answer.

CONFLICT] “Why you askin’?” She handed him the cigarette and Daniel took it, sucked a long drag on it and handed it back.

“Maybe I just want to know. So Did you?”

DISASTER] “So. Yeah. I shot him, okay?” Sherry turned her head, so he couldn’t see her, couldn’t see the shine of tears coating her eyes or the pallor of pain and hurt and memories erase her vibrant glow. “Anything else you wanna know?”

Daniel stopped himself from asking the question he most wanted to ask, the question on the tip of his tongue and the front of his mind, that possessed his every waking moment. He really wanted to know why. And how. HOW she could have done it. But mostly why, but for some reason he couldn’t ask. The word stopped just short of flying out of his mouth and no matter how he tried to force it out, he looked more constipated than inquisitive, so he’d long since stopped trying to make himself ask.

There was something he did want to know, that would come out, and so he asked it. “Would you do it again?”

At first he thought she didn’t hear him and he was about to repeat himself but then she moved, ever so slightly. Her shoulders, they jerked and her stomach, it lurched and before he realized what was happening he had his arms around her and she sobbed into his neck, soaking the collar of his dress shirt.

“I didn’t want to do it in the first place,” he thought she said, through tears and fierce, violent sobs. “I told him, I told him to stop. He wouldn’t stop. I told him.”

Sherry pulled away, working her way out of Daniel’s grip and faced the wall. He didn’t know if he should reach out and comfort her or leave her be. He opted to leave her be, with one hand on her hip and the other covering her face, residual hiccups riding through her.

[EMOTION] “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

“What?”

“It wasn’t your fault. He was on you, beatin’ you for something you didn’t do. You were so young; you didn’t even know what was happening. And I don’t know why or when I decided to do it, I just… I just grabbed his gun and pointed. Got him on the first shot.” A dry, raspy chuckle bounced off of the wall and hit Daniel’s ear. “I should be some kind of hit man, or something.”

“Or something.” A few more seconds of silence, and then a quiet, “thank you. Really. You saved my life.”

Sherry turned, then. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks stained with mascara, more of her lipstick on her now discarded cigarette than on her thin lips. “Well then, you owe me,” she said. “Uhm. So, Can I get a lift?”

[THOUGHT] “I suppose,” Daniel answered, nodding toward the street where his car was parked. They walked in silence, a quiet understanding between them. No one had to know what was said there, in the dark alley behind the bar, while sharing a Marlboro Light.

[ACTION] Daniel unlocked the passenger door and tucked her inside the matchbox sized compact car. She wasn’t a large woman, but she barely fit, and had to push the seat back in order to be comfortable. He jogged around to the driver’s side, got in and started the car, the rickety jalopy shuddering to life.

“You’re not gonna say nothin’, right?”

“Naw, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t even know how to explain it.”

“Good. I got a good life now. Don’t want him messing it up from the grave, you know? He deserved that bullet.”

“I guess he did,” said Daniel, taking the on-ramp to the freeway, in the direction of Sherry’s house.

He squirmed in his seat, against the bulge pressing into his back– the battery pack. It was uncomfortable. The tape along his chest was itchy and he couldn’t wait to rip the microphone off.

Just a few more minutes. A few more exits, a few miles of leafy Evergreen trees planted along the lonely two lane highway. A few bland, flickering streetlights on tall, rusty steel poles, and they would arrive at her small, understated suburb on the north end of town. And then a few blocks until she would fall right into the trap. He almost felt sorry for leading her to it, and slowed the car down. Gave her a few more minutes of freedom, before he would selfishly trade her life for his own. ]

I hope I did this correctly! Or in the general neighborhood of correct. :\

As far as improvements, it has helped me to see where the scene was weak, and I beefed it up a little. I think the dialog helps the story along as well. it would be really sparse and boring without it, plus I sort of read them with harsh New York, maybe Brooklyn accents so there’s a lot of gesturing and shrugging, etc. I think it reads pretty well!

Tonight’s lesson was relatively easy, in a way. Generally about setting and how it sets the mood and helps the theme along. And what helps the setting along is use of detail and doing your research. I have declared myself to be the Queen of Research. Not really. I just alwys need a realistic standpoint to come from, so I’ll look something up in a hot second.

So back to setting and detail– it’s something I think I am pretty good at, but not offhand and not all the time.  And sometimes some well known authors irk their readers with overuse of descriptionary (is that a word? Is now) terms. I was just talking with a classmate about this and said that my mom cannot STAND to read Toni Morrison. She says she doesn’t want to read about all the hues of the flowers in bloom— get to the darn story!! I think a well written story, novel, memoir, is one that tells you just enough to paint the picture, and no more. I personally like to leave a little mystery.

The exercice in the lesson was to take a briefly described setting and keep adding to it and keep adding to it until you have a well fleshed out scene, for example (courtesy Steve Alcorn, Advanced Fiction Writing):

There was a path through the trees and into some bushes.

Now more specific:

There was a path through the trees and into a clump of bracken and spruce.

Let’s create action, even in the inanimate:

A path wound among the trees and into a clump of bracken and spruce.

We’ll add adjectives that convey mood:

A path of matted pine needles wound among the trees and into a shadowy clump of bracken and snow-laden spruce.

Let’s explore the other senses:

A path of matted pine needles wound among the trees and into a shadowy clump of bracken and snow-laden spruce. An icy wind carried the sharp tang of pine and the damp decay of the forest floor.

Add the potential for change over time:

A path of matted pine needles wound among the trees and into a shadowy clump of bracken and snow-laden spruce. An icy wind carried the sharp tang of pine and the damp decay of the forest floor. The swaying of the tallest pines indicated a change in the weather and more snow to come.

Use active verbs:

A path of matted pine needles wound among the trees. Fifty feet into the forest it disappeared into a shadowy clump of bracken and snow-laden spruce. An icy wind carried the sharp tang of pine and the damp decay of the forest floor. The tops of the tallest pines whispered of a change in the weather and more snow to come.

Finally, place your protagonist in the scene, and show it through his or her senses:

From her vantage at the edge of the forest, she could see the path of matted pine needles winding among the trees. Fifty feet in, it disappeared into a shadowy clump of bracken and snow-laden spruce. The icy wind reddened her cheeks, carrying the sharp tang of pine and something earthy, maybe the damp decay of the forest floor. High above, the wind swayed the tops of the tallest pines, whispering of a change in the weather and more snow to come.

The resulting paragraph is a little wordier than I would write, but a marked improvement. I don’t think I really struggle with detail and setting when writing, though I like to be aware of techniques in case I get stuck.

So the assignment was to write a few sentences describing something and then add to it to create a fully fleshed out description. I used the opening scene from my LifeTime Movie Drama Challenge piece, The Nanny, so anyone who reads this blog who is part of that challenge should STOP READING! :) because this story isn’t due till August.

Here we gooooo…

Eastside Hospital for the Mentally Unstable loomed more like a prison than a hospital. Drab, grey walls. Long, forlorn hallways were dotted with doors that always remained shut. But she could hear the moans and screams and guttural cursing and, if she listened closely, the bargains with God or the devil. Or both. Dim bulbs flickered inside bug encrusted light fixtures. The linoleum floor was mopped everyday but was still dull and caked with layers of wax, the dirt ground deep into the tiles, so deep that no matter how often the floors were mopped, they still looked dirty.

Amber thought it was kind of a metaphor. No matter how you dressed her up, or how many pills the nurses and doctors shoved down her throat, she was still dirty—ill, crazy, off her rocker, not all there. Whatever the popular term was, these days, for mentally ill. The windows had bars. She thought it was cliché, before being admitted to an actual mental hospital, but there they were. Thick, black, iron bars on every window, and sometimes the beds had bars, along the side. And if someone couldn’t maintain control, or threatened to kill themselves, they tied them up and strapped them in bed, leaving them to pull and twist in vain. That was torture.

Amber didn’t like that.

Amber McBride didn’t like much of anything, namely to be back in this place, and thankfully, it was not to stay. The five years since she’d last been a patient had been tumultuous and dramatic and a personal struggle. Sometimes she felt every second and sometimes the time seemed to float by. No matter, five years had passed since her involuntary stay. Since she had to be secured to a bed, flailing and gnashing at the worn leather straps. Since she had been held prisoner in one of those cold, grey, unsympathetic boxes along a long hallway, with bars on the windows and a steel door with an opening only large enough for a smudged plate of square glass as her only connection to the outside world.

Amber shivered, but wasn’t cold. “Let’s get this over with,” she mumbled to herself.

I kind of cheated this week. I started this forever ago and abandoned it, and tonight I was looking through some old stuff and it popped up, so I thought I would revise and add to it and try to fit this week’s line in it because– well hell. That is a hard line. So here we go.

###
Her eyes slowly adjusted to the pre-dawn darkness and objects about the room started to take shape. Her head shifted slightly toward the source of a mysterious sound in the room, the one that startled her awake and made her heart race. No matter how often this happened, she’d never get used to him being there at random times during the night.

In a few minutes, he would drop his arm from where it was usually slung casually across his forehead, roll over, swing his legs to the floor, and quietly, gently, get out of the bed. She would hear sounds of him padding about the room, barefoot, looking for the clothes he had flung hours earlier in a path to the bed. Then sounds of him putting them on—thick denim being yanked onto muscular, hairy legs, a loud zipper, a button. A shirt being pulled over his head, searching in the dark for the arm holes. Socks, then a dip in the bed as he sat to pull his shoes on. He would pick up his sweatshirt, the one that zipped up the front, and then tiptoe around to her side of the bed, lean down and brush dry, chapped lips across her cheek, tap her rump and whisper ‘thanks’ when her eyes fluttered open briefly. Then he would stealthily move about the house, checking for his wallet, jingling his keys, and walk out. She would hear him test the lock a few times to make sure she was locked inside. He always tested the lock.

[read the rest at the archive]