Word Count for Scenes

(NOTE: I know I said I'd address more about theme, but received the following question. Will continue theme discussion next time.)
Question:

I've been working through my scene tracker and planned 20 chapters, each with 3 scenes or a total of 60 scenes. I divided plot into the first 1/4 or 5 chapters, the next 1/2 15 chapters, and the final 1/4 or 5 chapters.

Last evening as I was writing I realized each scene would have to be about 1,000 words to get to 60,000 and right now they are only about 600. What is a good average for scenes? Are my scenes too word light (Oh no!)?

Thanks so much! I appreciate your thoughts!

Answer:

Sounds like you've done lots of pre-plotting, analyzing and preparing for this new story of yours. Congratulations!! 

Now it's time to forget about the structure and write. Well, that's not entirely true. Don't forget about all the work you've done. Use your guidelines as support as you write your way through the scenes, but don't get bogged down by the pre-plotting.

Some of us benefit from having a road map before setting off on a journey (new story). However, it's also nice to be able to wander off once in awhile if so inspired. So, it depends on if you're writing for fun and for the experience and the learning and the exploring OR if you're writing under a deadline. Under a deadline, keep to the pre-plot work to keep your writing on track. 

The scenes in the first draft generally grow in subsequent drafts as you add more elements -- authentic and thematic details, more emotion, deeper character development, snappier action.

Write your first draft all the way through without going back and without worrying about how long the scenes end up being. Once you reach the end, you'll have plenty of time to analyze what you have and make decisions for the next draft.

Great good luck!!!!

Plot Your Story's Theme

The Thematic Significance of your story is the thread that holds your story together. The more clearly you can define your thematic significance statement, the tighter your story. Once you have identified your Thematic Significance statement, your scene choices and word choices throughout your story will follow theme. The theme then serves as your compass, determining what fits and what doesn't.

Writers generally begin a new project writing in their strength:
Dramatic Action
Character Emotional Development
Thematic Significance

The writers who begin with an idea they want to explore or a concept they want to prove through their story are beginning with Thematic Significance. For the rest of us, the theme of our stories bubbles up from the story itself in later drafts. No matter what we write, the process of writing is an exploration into ourselves, our own personal themes.

Either way the theme comes to you, the themes we write about most often originate from our own personal past -- at least for the first several stories this is true. Our own belief system and the themes we live our lives by pop up in our stories when we least expect them. Unless, that is, we are aware of the themes we live by and are on the lookout for them.

HOMEWORK:
Make a list of the themes you find that seem to consistently come up in your writing.

Next post, I'll discuss how to take that list and shape those themes ideas into a Thematic Significance statement for your project.

Theme and Plot

I just finished reading The Geography of Bliss; One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner. Yes, it's a non-fiction book but because it borders on a memoir thus makes an interesting study for a compulsive plot consultant such as myself.

Selected as One of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post Book World, The Geography of Bliss is called a travelogue by the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, travel tales by Publishers Weekly (in a starred review). 

However, most of the other reviews label the book as an odyssey ("...a very funny odyssey" by New York Newsday), a journey, a quest -- all of  which sound suspiciously like the hero's journey to me. Only Kirkus Reviews got it right in my mind: "part travelogue, part personal-discovery memoir".

Yes, the book is a humorous read and, for one who rarely travels, a wonderful way to learn about other countries of the world, but what drove me deeper and deeper into the story was the main character -- Eric himself. No surprise there. That's what pulls us deeper and deeper into every great story --the character. 

As in every great story, the character opens up about himself superficially in the Beginning (1/4). 

On page 93 (the Universal Story form 1/4 mark -- the End of the Beginning), he writes that a "crack forms in [my] armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light." We know at that point that something inside him has shifted. He has left the old world behind and has truly entered the exotic, unusual world of the Middle. 

By the middle of the Middle we understand him more deeply and in that understanding truly care about him and his journey toward "personal-discovery."

The book is all about happiness -- what it is, where it is found, who is happiest, etc...

Thematically, the path is clear. Character Emotional Development-wise, we understand the inherent conflict in this story = the main character, the author, is a self-described mope looking for happiness. Perfect!

The theme of most memoirs and fiction and screenplays is not as clear-cut. However, the theme often comes from the author him or herself. Which makes exploring our own themes a worthy endeavor. Look for exercises to help you get closer to the themes you live your life by in my next post. 

How Much Plot is Too Much Plot?

Question: 

I know the entire story. I'm just not sure how much to tell.

Answer:

Tell only the parts that show more about: 

1) the character emotional development -- this info should come in stages, revealing deeper and deeper layers, the deeper and deeper the reader reads

2) the theme -- as the plot advances, the thematic significance of the story deepens

3) the dramatic action -- action becomes dramatic when filled with conflict, tension, suspense, and / or curiosity -- the sense of threat is both internally and externally driven

4) the details that make up with world the characters live in -- use only authentic and specific details and go for as much symbolism as possible

Tell nothing more. Show nothing less.

Meaning of the Crisis & Climax Cont.

Continued from 8/22 blog post:

One of the most gratifying aspects of reading and going to the theater is the experience of living someone else's life (meaning to enter into the protagonist's skin) and surviving a Crisis. Stories give us the idea that we, too, can survive the dark night of the soul and know that moment when consciousness slays the ego. 

Suspense builds as we read or watch for what the character does next.

When we, in real life, get hit with a Crisis, we can either accept what is and move on OR we can return to unconsciousness, crippled by victimhood. 

In stories, the Crisis (the scene of most energetic intensity in the story so far) serves as a slap in the face, a wake-up call, the moment when the character becomes conscious of life's deeper meaning (thematic significance = look for more on this in the next blog post). 

Stories are about, at their core, their essence, character transformation. After the Crisis, in order for character transformation to occur, the character moves out of unconsciousness to a place of acceptance. 

The author decides whether the character will move from the Crisis to acceptance only, or whether she will move on into enjoyment and ultimately, if she sets a goal for herself, to enthusiasm. 

After the Crisis, the character is now consciously even more aware of all the sensory details around her, more alive, more alert. She is absolutely present in what she does. The reader senses the alert, alive stillness within the character in the background of the action. 

Her earlier goal -- outer purpose -- expands into something much bigger now that she is empowered by consciousness. This new strength, insight, power fills her with enjoyment in the next step towards transformation. Added to that enjoyment comes an intensity and creative power beyond her imagining.

Once the character is awakened -- thanks to the Crisis, -- she moves toward her outer goal and her enjoyment turns into enthusiasm. From this moment on, the story's energy field vibrates. Tension builds. Behind each step the character takes, the story grows in intensity and energy. 

The character is more involved in each step (moment-by-moment action) as she steadily moves toward her goal than she is at arriving to her goal. Stress falls away. Confident she will arrive at her goal, in the knowing, she savors each moment in aliveness, joy, and power.

"[The character] will feel like an arrow that is moving toward the target--and enjoying the journey." A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

The Climax is the "target" -- the moment when the character steps out of her ego and into pure alignment with the creative source. 

The Climax (the scene of highest energetic intensity much more so than that of the Crisis) is the place where the character is once again tested. In the Climax, the character is often confronted again by her greatest antagonist. Unlike earlier encounters, this time, however, the character is able to yield, walk around, embrace, or turn the opposing energy into a helpful one. Because of all the antagonists she has been confronted by and learned from along the way (the Middle = 1/2), at the Climax, the character is able to show us yet another way to live life in triumph. 

The reason the story can not continue for many pages moments or pages after the Climax is that when a goal is met the tension is gone. 

In the Resolution, the character surrenders to the return movement in a state of joy and the story ends. 

In a series, at the end of one story, the author promises a new wave of creative energy to come along with renewed enthusiasm.

(NOTE: I invite you to also consider the above elements of the Universal Story form as a template for your own individual writer's journey. In your knowing of the structure, you are able to bypass a Crisis yourself and rather, everyday write with a sense of consciousness more concerned with the next sentence than reaching the end, more concerned with sending out queries than attaining an agent, more concerned with your next story than reviews...)

Plot Question & Answer; Meaning of the Crisis

(NOTE: I often use this forum -- the Plot Whisperer -- to answer questions I receive from writers I've worked with. I know each writer's entire story and, since I do not believe in divulging writers' plots, I change the writer's question about her own specific story to the universal.

QUESTION:

At the Crisis point [between the protagonist and her father]... does she need to confront him any further at that point? Later in the Climax, [she shows -- in action -- the transformative power of her new-found wisdom]. MF

ANSWER: 

To confront her father at the Crisis, the dark night of the soul, the breakdown, the death of her innocence, she would be acting from her old personality, who she has always been. 

Rarely does the transformation come simultaneously in the same scene as the Crisis (if any of you have an example of this, please share...) 

The Crisis leads to transformation. 

Example: Rarely in real life do we change immediately upon being hit by a Crisis. Often, for us to change and transform our deeply entrenched habits, we need more than one Crisis -- the second being worse than the first. 

The first near-death experience affects you deeply and has the power to bring you to consciousness. Then, before you know it, you're "over it" and revert back to your old ways = your ego takes back its power over you and you descend back into unconscious behaviors and the cycle begins again.

Second near-death experience makes a deeper impression = true change begins.. sometimes. 

Sometimes, at this point, consciousness prevails over ego and transformation begins. 

Sometimes, we revert back to our old selves and the cycle starts again.

This is also true in stories.

MF, your protagonist does not need more than one wake-up call. She is young and smart and gets it. 

From the "hit" she gets at the Crisis, her transformation happens over several scenes (the End -- 1/4). Dissolving old habits and creating new, healthier ones takes practice. Often the new behavior shows itself only intermittently at first. True mastery comes over time and shows itself in all its glory at the Climax.

In other words, your protagonist is not ready to respond in a transformed way at the Crisis -- that is reserved for the Climax -- of which, yours is perfect.

Fall Line-up; Writers to Watch, Their Books to Read

WRITERS TO WATCH (books with a Fall 2009 release date by authors who have credited my plot support as helpful to their publishing success): 

Sounds Like Crazy by Shana Mahaffey (Penguin) 

Love in Translation by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga (St. Martin's) 

The House by Anjuelle Floyd (Neptune Publications)

The Lodge by David Brandin (iU -- Editor's Choice Award) 

(If I neglected to mention your book, please let me know and I'll add you to the list.)

The Zen of Plot Twists

Even knowing what I do about the Universal Story form and plot, or perhaps because of what I know about the Universal Story form and plot, I marvel all the more at the creative ways authors push at the edges, play with the unexpected, build excitement, and provide plot twists.

Creative writing is an art. Writings' artists -- writers -- balk at structure and rail against limitations, discipline and order. (I've written extensively in earlier posts about the biology and rebellious nature of writers.) All the better, because stories at the best are about struggle. We as writers, too, are at our best when, well-informed of the expectations, we use the confines themselves to provide more struggle, deeper and more profound even than the story on the page.

Within the boundaries and rhythm of the Universal Story form, the writer is free to do anything. That's where the magic happens. Intuitive wisdom steeped in our shared past serves as a guide.

Writers seem to fall into three categories:

#1 Writers who find the rhythm within 

themselves and are able to consistently tap 

into that rhythm. 

#2 Writers who learn the rhythm over 

time and study, their writing 

at first awkward

in their self-consciousness. 

After several books, 

they settle into the rhythm naturally.

#3 The pity are those writers 

who stumble into the rhythm by chance and, 

when faced with the impermanence 

of their ability in subsequent stories, 

these writers' egos prevent them from studying the craft, 

preferring instead to settle for the one-book wonder.

For those of you who fall into category #2, a couple of tips:

This, too, shall pass.

1) Lull the reader in the moment of the scene, all the time knowing that this, too, shall pass. Invite the character and the reader or viewer to sink into the moment-by-moment action through the use of authentic sensory details. Do everything in your power to help them attach viscerally to the momentary happiness, despondency, safety, fear, success, disappointment, and despair.

2) You, on the other hand, by honoring the fleetingness of every situation, are able to stay in balance and create the unexpected. As the character reels through one event, you as the writer create an effect that cuts even deeper and raises the stakes ever higher. It's best if / when you can pull a detail planted earlier in the story into the effect to bite the character in the butt (plot twist)(one way to keep track of all the authentic, thematically significant details is by tracking your scenes as you write them on a Scene Tracker.)

The character and reader react to the cause. You, on the other hand, use the transience of all forms and the inevitability of change to your advantage.

3) The character identifies with the cause and the effect. You, on the other hand, cannot afford to identify with your writing, with the scene, with the outcome or you begin to fear the loss of your writing, the scene, the outcome. If you do, you build up anxiety about the next scene and stay too long in the comfort zone. An appreciation that this, too, shall pass brings detachment and allows you access to an inner dimension of the Universal Story form. You become freed from any imprisonment.

This, too, will pass. Suddenly there is space around the writing of the next scene. Within that space, you enjoy writing without attachment and are able to explore thematic universals and the eternal. 

Space consciousness allow you to detach from the clutter of your words and research and fear and frustration to work in harmony, rather than resistance, with the rhythm. Within an alert inner stillness in the background as the writer, you can create dramatic action in the story in the foreground.

An understanding that this, too, will pass applies to the writer and to the writing, and the character and the scenes within the story. The Zen-like practice of detachment allows writers access to plenty of plot twists.

Writer's Journey Mirrors Hero's Journey

The middle of the Middle is the territory of the antagonists both for the writer and for the protagonist, too.

Antagonists, internal and exterior, sabotage the protagonist from reaching her goals. The very same antagonists plague the writer as well. 

In the Middle, the writer begins to doubt herself. Her way becomes murky. She looks to others for validation. Old beliefs of not being smart enough, good enough, or productive enough turn from a murmur to a roar. She rails against never receiving the credit she believes she is due. Accepts all the old criticisms she throws at herself. She fears. She falters. Her passion for her project wanes. The antagonists begin to win. 

Rise up out of the lower energy systems and move to the "third eye", the place of wisdom -- of intuition.

Listen, not with your mind or through your ego, but to that deeper voice. Make time for yourself. Partner with the process. Pull your protagonist and yourself through the slog and toward the Climax. See your way clear.

Writing Your Second Book

Yesterday's blog -- First Draft Twitters -- was in response to a writer who has written one very successful book and is now slogging her way through draft one of book two.

I've found that for most writers Book Two is at least as difficult to get written, if not more, than Book One.

Doubts about ability, luck, the depth of the creative well crop up more in draft one of book two.

Same advice applies for draft one of any book -- just get it down. Can't finesse that which isn't written.