SETTING THE SCENE

MACRO EDITING - Part 3 in a 5 Part Series

It doesn't take a chapter or even a paragraph to write the perfect scene opener. 'It was a dark and stormy night,' comes to mind. All the senses are heightened and the reader is hooked. But then 1830 English novelist Edward Buler-Lytton (in his novel Paul Clifford) continued the sentence. It was a dark and stormy night: the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals . . . (and the sentence didn't stop there). In fact, there are now contests dedicated to writing the longest and most convoluted sentence possible; not quite the tact an aspiring novelist wants to emulate. 


The goal as a writer is to convey a story that transports the reader from their world into ours with enough dialogue, narrative, and description to guide them on that journey. It's our goal to foster their imagination so they identify with the story and characters . . . but how much is too much?

When reading your manuscript on this go-around of macro-edits, stop and think. If you're thoughts become:

DISTRACTED   Is it because the description is too long? If a wandering mind happens to you, it will surely happen for the reader. 

• Try shorter sentences or blending descriptions into the dialogue. For example: Little Red Riding Hood said as she ran through the woods to her grandmother's house. 
• Intersperse scene descriptions throughout the chapter instead of writing a litany at the beginning. 
• Think like a camera. Movie scripts begin with an establishing shot. Who could forget the space ship in the opening scene from Star Wars? The most popular beginning is either a panoramic or extreme close-up.  These set the tone for a movie and can do the same for a book.

CONFUSED      When we become too familiar with a topic, town, or personality, it's easy to omit information because we think everyone is viewing it from the same base.

• If the story line falters or the scene feels vague, you may have more explaining to do. Read the script out loud. What you hear sounds totally different than what you see on the printed page. If your tongue takes you down a new path, continue the thought. Write it down. We talked about searching for musicality when writing in the post, "Music in Words." This is one way to find it. 
• A scene description is "visual" dialogue that may:
• enhance emotion, 
• reveal a plot twist, 
• move the story forward.

SKEPTICAL  A story is not an essay or thesis. There are times that proper English may slow the action or discredit a character's personality. Part of setting a scene is being true to the cast that makes your story real.

• Contract words where possible. 
• Avoid cliche's . . . unless you are clever enough to form an original. 
• Add a little spice to the 'script, y'all. The operative word is little. 

Whatever your style or story, I wish you much success in your writing career.

To learn more about award-winning author, Jo Ann V. Glim:

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