Writing Right Out There In Public: Notes on the First Scene

[ecosophia]

Now, as to that first scene... 

The first scene I write isn't always the opening of the story, but recently that's been the case more often than not, and this is probably going to be the beginning of this novel, which I've tentatively titled The Road to Amalin. (The title will probably change half a dozen times before it's ready for a publisher.)  You can write scenes in any order you want; I've written novels beginning with the dramatic climax -- the last novel in my series The Weird of Hali will be written that way, as I've had 10,000 words before, during, and after the events that conclude the whole story arc written for more than a year now, and I'll be going back and filling in the rest once I finish book 6, which is now under way. 

But the scene I've written is almost certainly the beginning of this novel. 

I have certain prejudices about the beginning of a novel. I like to put the viewpoint character front and center from the first moment; I like to see at least one of the core relationships that will structure the story, right there at first; I like there to be plenty of cues that'll be followed up in the scenes ahead; and I like to leave the reader guessing. 

Let's talk for a moment about the difference between suspense and surprise. Suspense is what happens when you know what's going on in the story, and the question is whether the main character is going to succeed or not. Think of your basic bodice-ripper romance. You have Priscilla, the female lead; you have Lord Ironbuns, the male lead; you know, if you've read the genre, that the rest of the story is going to be about whether Priscilla bags Lord Ironbuns or whether her hopes are dashed by his villainous aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Squeam; and the author, if she knows her business, throws all kinds of obstacles in Priscilla's way, some of them functions of Priscilla's own character, some of them from outside, some of them signaled in advance, some of them sprung on the reader without warning, so that when Lord Ironbuns finally drops to one knee and proposes to Priscilla, your sigh of relief is as loud as hers. That's suspense. 

Surprise is what happens when you don't know what's going on in the story. You have Priscilla, okay, and there's Lord Ironbuns, but is this even going to be a romance novel, and if it is, is Lord Ironbuns going to be the male lead or is he Priscilla's long-lost elder brother, or is he possibly Priscilla's childhood friend Clarice Lilybottom in really convincing drag, or a ghost, or what? And what is the Dowager Duchess up to, anyway -- is she really as villainous as she seems, or is there something else going on? So Priscilla goes through the story, and Lord Ironbuns turns out to be the villain, and when the Dowager Duchess has her henchmen kidnap Priscilla it's to save her from a box of poisoned snuff, and Priscilla and Clarice are reunited at last and fall in love and decide to run off to Paris and scandalize everyone, and the reader is left going "Wow! I did not see that coming!" That's surprise. 

Suspense is fairly easy. Surprise is harder. If you're going to have surprise, you can't use a formulaic plot, and you can't let the reader know too much too soon. This means, among other things, that you can't lecture the reader. You know the kind of story that starts off with ten pages of description, so that the reader knows all about the history of the duchy of Squeam, and all the conflicts between the family members, and by the time the story finally starts the reader has dozed off? You can't do that if you want surprise.  

You also can't do the Prologue That Tells All. That's a pervasive bad habit in fantasy fiction, in particular.  So you have Blorg the Bad, Evil Lord of Evilness, and he's got a copy of Being a Dark Lord for Dummies, and he's preparing to do the usual thing and unleash his legions of horror on the lands of Lower Upper Southeast Central Earth, right? Just in case the reader might possibly miss what's going on, you do a prologue where Blorg the Bad is brooding in the Tower of Terror, plotting his imminent invasion. You don't have to give the details of the invasion; the reader turns the page and starts chapter one already knowing what the story is about, and from there it plods to its predictable end. You can have suspense in such a story, but you've flushed any chance of surprise down the gardyloo. 

I like surprise. I also like suspense, but I dislike formulaic plots, and I really really dislike long boring author lectures and the Prologue That Tells All. (When I use a prologue, my goal is to make sure the reader misunderstands everything he or she gets from it until the story's just about over.)  So my preference in the opening scene, and in every other scene thereafter, is to give the reader just enough information to understand what's happening at the moment, without signaling the broader context. So in my first scene, I've got Embery and Tay; he comes home, they talk, they have dinner, they settle down for the night. In the process, I've done certain things. 

First, you know something about Embery, who's our viewpoint character. You know that she's poor, she's a single mom, she does things with herbs, she doesn't agree with the local religion but doesn't dare say so openly even to her own son, and she was taught stories by an older woman, and is now passing them on to her son -- stories you don't tell in public and don't admit to knowing, stories that have to do with a place you don't talk about, a place called Amalin that has golden sunlight in contrast to the gray cold climate of Raithwold. You know that she's got a good relationship with Tay -- and you know that she's worried. The sound of that latch clattering makes her jump. 

Second, you know something about the setting. I decided, in this story, to rebel against the supposed law that all fantasy fiction must be set in or around the year 1066 -- you know, chainmail, straight double-edged swords, tunics, cloaks, castles, and so on endlessly. The Road to Amalin is set in an equivalent of 1700 or so, thus the iron stove, the teakettle, Tay's shirt and trousers, and so on. You know that it's not set in a familiar place -- the kingdom of Raithwold is on no earthly map, and in 1700 there were no big monasteries with iron bells sounding the call to prayer in rural Scotland. But it's familiar enough that it's not too hard to figure what's going on, and that sense of familiarity is going to be heightened over the next few scenes, as we move toward the events that will set the main arc of the story in motion. 

Third, you've been introduced to one of the central themes of the story, even though you don't know it yet. The first chapter, in my way of writing, brings all the main themes into play. The one you get in this scene is Amalin, the place you don't mention in public. Embery and Tay are going there, in the company of a very unusual guide; it's going to be a long, slow, difficult journey; and what happens to them on the way, and what happens to them when they get there, and what happens because they get there -- why, that's the story. You notice that the reader has absolutely no way to figure that out yet. All he or she has are some intriguing loose ends that are definitely leading onward. That's a good way to get surprise, and it's something I like very much when I read it in fiction, so I like putting it in the stories I write. 

So that's what's in my mind as I glance back over the first scene, and prepare to write the next one. Questions? By all means. 

Comments

[drhooves]

Those are some awesome notes. Thanks for the insight! Excellent points on suspense and surprise.

Sounds like the firm of Ironbottom & Lilybuns, Barristers, might be appropriate for driving social reforms in Lower Upper Southeast Central Earth...

Do you inject much humor in your fiction?

Now that you have an opening scene, do you know whether or not the story will have a prologue?

[(Anonymous)]

I recall Alfred Hitchcock's difference between surprise and suspense. According to him, suspense is when the audience sees a briefcase with a ticking bomb under the seat of a crowded commuter bus during rush hour, and the scene unfolds from there. Surprise is when the audience sees people peacefully boarding a bus, then it explodes.

Obviously he was making the argument for suspense. Maybe the ternary between the two is that surprise works better in the overall story, defying genre and formula, while suspense works very well in scenes and individual threads of the story, weaving them together in a surprising way? To use Hitchcock as his own example, Psycho would certainly count as an overall surprise composed of quite a few suspenseful scenes.

-Kyle

[ecosophia]

I tend to a very low-key kind of humor in my fiction, little bits of absurdity of the kind that life so often provides anyway. I'm not a fan of comedy -- so much of it is based on humiliation, which I don't find funny at all, and the knowing smirk with which so many comic authors write bores me very quickly. Farce, on the other hand -- the pursuit of the utterly absurd -- I find very funny indeed, but I've never tried my hand at it.

As for whether there'll be a prologue -- probably not, though we'll see. A story, in my view, should be able to stand on its own feet without using a prologue as a crutch. The only reason to use a prologue, again in my view, would be if I want to embed the story in a framing story -- say, somebody telling Embery's tale to somebody else -- and I'm only going to do that if I then plan on using an epilogue to completely redefine Embery's story in a way that will have a powerful effect on the reader. Most prologues are a waste of ink, paper, and the reader's time.

[ecosophia]

Hitchcock wrote and produced thrillers, and suspense is the heart of the thriller genre. If he'd been an author of mysteries, on the other hand, he'd have made an argument for surprise, because surprise is the heart of the mystery genre -- the most successful mysteries are those in which the final revelation of whodunit comes as a total surprise to the reader, even though a moment later the reader realizes that all the clues really do add up that way.

In a well-written novel, of course, surprise and suspense both have a role; both of them keep the reader turning the pages -- will Priscilla succeed in finding the mysterious letter that Lord Bollocks sent her father the night she was born, and what will be in it when she finds it? I tend to stress surprise, though, because when a genre becomes hackneyed -- and fantasy these days is stunningly hackneyed -- it tends to focus on suspense rather than surprise, because you can have suspense in a formulaic story.

[(Anonymous)]

Since you have been so generous in sharing your process with us so far, I thought I’d give you a bit of an update as to how things have been going for me. So I’ve written three scenes so far, which is actually a bit of a surprise to me, but there it is. The first one was so, so sucky, earnestly expository, and just plain ham-handedly literal that I figure I must be doing something right. In reflecting on that first scene, I think I picked up a few tips about how not to write, and sort of carried on from there. I went back to my original story seed ideas, drew some connections between the various phrases and came up with some entirely new characters and ideas that seemed to be an amalgamation of some of the initial ideas that came up. The subsequent scenes were ever so slightly less bad; just tolerably readable enough to give me the motivation to keep going. I mean, it can only get better, right?

I’m just wondering now about editing. I sort of get how the first draft should just ideally pour straight from one’s subconscious without the obstacle of critical thought getting in the way, but how about after that? In reading over your first scene, it seems pretty polished, so I’m wondering if you went back over it before posting it here. Also, you seem to have answered quite a lot of those initial questions you suggested we come up with in some detail in your scene, and it all seems quite well thought-out. Did it all just emerge that way as you were writing it out the first time, or did you reflect upon and then edit the first draft to make it more coherent, putting into place some of those initial elements you mentioned here once you figured them out?

Stefania

I love suspense!

[(Anonymous)]

Very nicely explained!

I treasure a charming little example of writing that is not exactly suspense, but unfolds slowly for the reader. Early in one of Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett's two Pointsman novels, the hero (a medieval-fantasy police detective) casually observes a building with gargoyles on the roof. A bit later, he is visiting a castle and glances out the window at "the gargoyles that infested the roof". Nice bit of third-person-narrator-voice commentary giving his opinion of Gothic architecture, right? A bit later still, he is walking down a street and sees in an alley some gargoyles squabbling over scraps of garbage ... Wait, WTF? Flip back to the earlier scenes, and you realize that this place has live gargoyles instead of pigeons, and the narrator's voice didn't say so, because it's so taken for granted in his world. - Dewey

[ecosophia]

No, I didn't go back over it; that's what came out when I started typing. That's partly because I spent a lot of time brooding over my initial questions, and had them in mind when I started writing; it's partly because I have very definite ideas about fiction, and of course it's partly because I've been writing professionally for 22 years. Not all my first scenes come out that smoothly!

Getting a sucky first scene or two out of the way is good. Take a while to look at the sucky scenes, pay attention to what makes them sucky, and then give it another try. Some people find it useful to write the Prologue That Tells All, and then file it away as reference material while they get to work on the actual story.

Re: I love suspense!

[ecosophia]

To my mind, that's an elegant bit of surprise -- it's set up properly, so that the reader doesn't see what's coming, and then pow! There are the gargoyles in the alley. Nicely handled.

[collapsingnow]

I've started my writing as well. I had two separate stories and a world building idea that just meshed together really well, and I now have the climactic scene written. I started writing it thinking I knew what it would be and then one of my characters surprised me. Is this normal?

For the record, the concepts are: "a former noble turned warlord risks death to get revenge," and "a newly assigned colonial governor realizes he's been sold a lie." The world building concept is "what happens if you have this super isolated society that advances to modern (or better) technology, and then suddenly realizes there's a broader world?"

I feel like there's a ton of stories to tell in that world.... Time to write this one and see what happens.

Writing

[scotlyn]

Well, thanks for starting this project. I am amazed. I have just put down probably the first 200 or so of the million words of bad writing that has to come out of my system, but there it is. Not only the first scene for this project, but the first fictional scene I have ever written. (Did I say I like essay writing? and fiction reading?) Still, these instructions have been doable, so far, and here's my wee scene to show for it. https://scotlyn.dreamwidth.org/

Also, I have no idea where this will go. So, I guess I'm a bit hooked on finding out.

[ecosophia]

It's when my characters start saying and doing things I didn't expect that I know I have a live story on my hands. Not only is it normal, it's a sign that things are taking off. Congratulations!

Re: Writing

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it. For me, the stories that lead off in directions I can't anticipate are always the most fun.

[collapsingnow]

It almost felt like he was saying to me, "no, I don't like that. This is better." Suddenly they went from characters to feeling very, very real. I guess, in a sense, they might be real, but I think that's something that is more a topic for the next magic Monday.

[ecosophia]

It's also relevant here, but I'll be posting something on characters a little further down the road, so that might be a good time for it.

Rock on

[(Anonymous)]

Love this. Inspiring.

[(Anonymous)]

Cracking up at your surprise novel. I think we can add farce to your other literary achievements after all.

I wrote a 990-word first scene, and I can't wait to keep going. Only 999,010 or so more sucky words to go to find out if I've got any good ones in there! I'm not sure where the plot is going, though I understand a little bit about how it will happen. My viewpoint character, a young girl whom everyone in her village underestimates, will be going about her daily life interacting with the intersecting paths of her neighbors, each of whom has a secret hope, fear, joy, or sorrow. The whole time she will be wondering who she can share her own secret with- she has found a message from her mother, who has been absent as long as she can remember, and whom no one will talk about. What's in the message? What happened to her mother? Why will no one talk about her, and how will all these secrets braid together? I'm working on it, and having fun in the process. Thanks for the gift of this writing experience.
--Heather in CA

[(Anonymous)]

There is also the other surprise crusher, the bckcover that tells it all, courtesy of many editors who seem to think that exposing the guts of a story is the best way to sell it.

Guillem.

Seeds, Prologues, Od Magic,

[(Anonymous)]

Hi John,

I've been following along with these posts and doing some of the exercises in a notebook. I really like the seed method, and can see how I can also apply it to my non-fiction, which I'm putting more effort into right now. One of the stories I'm contemplating is: "A deindustrial ranger disguised as a hobo investigates the disappearance of a freight train along the coast of the Great Lakes." ...but then there have been a few stories/books about disappearing trains, starting with A.C. Doyle. So wonder if I should keep seeding and coming up with combinations of ideas. Yet, I always seem to have side plots. For this one, the character takes the mission because he will also get the chance to search out a legendary lighthouse he heard about as a kid, one where there was a magical bell. And then there are the two runaway brothers who boarded the train in Kentucky to escape an abusive father. What happened to them? And how does it all fit together.

I tend to start with images of settings, objects and characters, and the images keep recurring but sometimes I don't know they will relate. I guess that is the beauty of the seed method, and writing: discovering those relationships.

As far as prologues go, when I'm browsing for a fantasy or SF book to read I tend to skip those that have prologues: they tend to be the ones that I get bored with before I'm fifty pages in.

It's cool you like Patricia McKillip. Me too! I think what she did with Od Magic is a much better idea of a "magic school" than what Rowling did with hers. Speaking of which, maybe my notion of a magic bell, came not only from reading folklore on the subject of magic bells, but from McKillip's novel "The Bell at Sealey Head". Well, maybe I can work on some more story combination ideas.

Best,

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: Rock on

[ecosophia]

Thank you.

[ecosophia]

You're welcome and thank you! Don't worry about where the plot is going -- you can figure that out as the story proceeds. Especially in the early part of the writing process, uncertainty is good -- you want the reader to be puzzled and intrigued, and if you're puzzled and intrigued, that's a good start. ;-)

[ecosophia]

There's nothing you can do about that, of course. Writers have no influence over cover art and cover blurbs. The one bit of protective camouflage you can do is make sure the big surprise isn't the only surprise, and -- if you're clever enough -- you can make the surprise that matters not the big obvious surprise, the one the blurb writers will splash all over the back, but something much quieter that completely reshapes the viewpoint character's world and leads to the emotional resolution of the story.

It can also work to put in a big flashy surprise early on, to attract the attention of the blurb writers, and then have the main surprise later on and revealed in a quieter, somewhat offhand way.

Re: Seeds, Prologues, Od Magic,

[ecosophia]

Just because a disappearing train has been done in the past doesn't mean it can't be done again, and make a story worth reading. Put it in a new setting, make the side plots interesting, have unfamiliar and fascinating characters dealing with it -- you've got a good novel.

Patricia McKillip, to my mind, is one of the most underrated fantasy authors around these days. Her plotting is crisp, her characters by and large compelling, she consistently avoids the dreary clichés that dominate the fantasy genre; with very few exceptions, you can pick up any of her novels at random and know in advance you're in for a cracking good read, which is something that can't be said about that many authors. Close attention to the way she handles storytelling will teach you a lot.

Re: I love suspense!

[(Anonymous)]

Doggonnit - in my subject line and post I said "suspense" when I actually love "surprise" - perhaps evidence that this is a distinction I need to pay more attention to. - Dewey

[(Anonymous)]

Just finished my second pass at writting a scene. In both cases I am trying to bite off too much, going to make a third pass here soon.

But, each time I am getting a bette sense for the main character.

Ray Wharton

[kayr]

Well, I have written my first scene and it has a surprise in it. Now I think I need to go back to my questions and add to the list.

On a side note, I too love Patricia McKillip as well. Very original. I also really like Phillip Pulman, but I have only read His Dark Materials novels. Love them and read or listen to them over and over. He is a good reader as well as a good author. The next time I go through their stories, I will try and pay more attention to what they are doing.

[drhooves]

Humor is dicey in writing - there's fine line between using it constructively, and it falling flat as a distraction - especially of the low-brow content so popular today. I was curious though, as your dry wit comes across often in your online work, and certainly is a plus.

As for a prologue, I've got a different take on it. If a work is simple entertainment, it's not needed, but for satire, social commentary or allegories, or even complex stories, it can be useful. A well-written prologue can help the reader understand the bigger picture, and I don't recall ever reading a "tell all" variety - though fantasy is not one of my favorite genres. A prologue can also provide a hint on what the story is about when browsing amongst the shelves, since dust jackets, back covers and forewords written by someone other than the author are almost always advertisements and sometimes misleading. Since few books use titled chapters these days, that means relying on the cover art and the first few paragraphs to find your way, and that leaves more room for error. I very rarely will not complete a book once started, and it's aggravating to get wrapped up in one that twists away from where it appeared to be going into some uninteresting path or topic.

I guess maybe I don't like surprises...:-) (though Ira Levin's "A Kiss Before Dying" has an awesome surprise in it)

[ecosophia]

I read very little mainstream fiction, so I may have missed good examples of the prologue there. That's interesting, that titled chapters have dropped out of use in the genres you read! They're still quite common in fantasy and SF. and I've generally used them (not always -- Twilight's Last Gleaming and Retrotopia have plain numbered chapters). It hadn't occurred to me, though, that they would help readers gauge whether a book would be of interest.

From Fuzzy

[(Anonymous)]

I had not heard of Patricia McKillip. Which of her novels do you readers think is a good one to start with?

When I did the 10 characters + 10 verbs + 10 items, one character I came up with was La Llorona (a Mexican ghost who wanders the world weeping for her children she murdered), and every time I come back to this project, that awful ‘70’s tune goes through my head—La-La-La-La-La-La Llorona! So beware. Here there be, not only dragons, but earworms.!

Re: From Fuzzy

[ecosophia]

I'd recommend her first fantasy novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, as the best place to start; it's closer to the fantasy mainstream in some ways, but still highlights her talents extremely well.

As for bad music, well, yes. I have a bad habit of mentally rewriting pop tunes to fit whatever theme happens to be on my mind: for example, the Lovecraftian reworking of Donovan's "Mellow Yellow"...

"Evening falls in Carcosa,
Black stars hang in the sky, (doom, doom, doom)
Watch the madness grow closer,
Hear its terrible cry --
They call me King in Yellow,
They call me King in Yellow,
They call me King in Yellow..."

Re: From Fuzzy

[(Anonymous)]

😄😄😃😄