Better Understand Your Scenes Through Scorekeeping · 3:04pm Jun 20th, 2014
It has been said that real life isn't like a story. Life is a convoluted collection of actions with no guarantee of anything coming to anything. Stories are supposed to have a plot that connects a series of events and drives them towards a climax. Note the 'supposed to.' A lot of the time, authors do not write with more than a few plot points in mind, and when we're filling in the gaps, we forget about the idea of events entirely. Yes, things happen between plot points, but we don't bother to pick them out and examine them in depth. Out of outline, out of mind. As a result, we miss opportunities to wrap our minds around the beat by beat occurrences that make up the majority of action in our stories.
Enter scene analysis. This technique is useful for the author because it forces us to take a detailed look at the scenes we have written and ask ourselves what is happening, when does it happen, and who is concerned about it. A simple version is as follows: picture that each of your scenes is its own little sports game. You must determine the object of each game and when each character scores. We don't care about who wins, just when the points are scored.
The game is separate from each character's explicit goals or motivations. If everyone enters a scene with the goal of replacing Canterlot Castle with a bunny sanctuary, that's fine, but there's no action there to work with. However, if Fluttershy wants a pink bunny barn while Celestia favors white, then the characters have found themselves in a wrestling match with the winner choosing the final color. Look for games that are absolute, binary, and focused on the opponent. "I am right and you are wrong!" "You are one way, but you should be another!" "The bunny barn will be painted my color, not yours!"
Of course, it is not necessary for there to be an explicit 'game' declared by the characters, and in many cases to do so would break the scene. You might even take a step back and think of your characters as competing in some meta contest to fulfill the theme of your scene. If you're writing a comedy in which Rainbow is trying to give Twilight flying lessons, but she doesn't understand, then Twilight might be playing the game "I am adorkable, and you shall not teach me!" even though in character she really wants to learn. With a bit of creativity, you should be able to find a game in every scene.
In some cases, you may even be able to find multiple characters competing in more than one game. This is a situation to be careful about. The more games there are, the less focused the scene is. If Applejack and Zecora are haggling over zap apple seeds, while Fluttershy is coaxing Gilda to admit she actually has a crush on Angel, there's no one thread for the reader to follow. When multiple games come up, look for one overarching game that connects them. If you can't find one and the games don't otherwise interact to any interesting effect, you might want to move things around to keep the focus on what is most important. Books don't have commercial breaks, so flipping between channels is much less effective. That's not to say it can't be done, but it's not something to do lightly.
After you've determined the game, it is time to examine your scene for where each character 'scores.' Look for turning points in behavior: topic changes, shifting tone, periods of silence, explicitly conceding points, sudden influxes of rage, and so on. Whoever the action shifts in favor of scored the point. Don't worry too much about the numbers: it usually matters more who scored last than who had the most points. The important bit is to find the events in the competition most instrumental to getting each character what they wanted.
These points are a treasure trove of information. At the most basic level, they serve to segment your scene into mini-scenes and highlight the most notable action. If you know where each blip of interest is, then you can more precisely arrange the surrounding text to support each one. Beyond that, they can serve as a metric for several important aspects of your scene:
The number of points in your scene helps you get a handle on the pacing. Let's say you have a 5,000 word scene and can only find 3 points where you can definitively say someone 'scored.' This means little is actually happening in your scene and you should condense or add more action. Likewise, if you have a 1000 word scene and you somehow count 50 points, you're going way too fast. Look at the distribution of your points as well. Clumps of points means you've got stretches of status quo followed by bursts of action, while even spacing gives a scene the same pace throughout. Either scenario can be useful depending on what you want to go for.
How easy is it to pick out where someone scores? If you have trouble finding the points, a reader may have a hard time following your scene or may miss the significance. Ergo, they could end up bored and confused. Likewise, if your narration explicitly labels/explains most of the points, you may be over-narrating. Verbal announcers are welcome at sports games because listening and watching are two different things. In a book, the announcer words are mixed in with the story words, and they get in the way of each other if you aren't careful. Tread with care.
Do your characters realize when a point is scored? How do they react? If your characters aren't reacting to scoring points that they know about, then they're probably not invested in the game. If you're actually getting closer to something you want, it makes you feel good to the point that you want to let it out. Granted, if you're trying to keep a poker-face, then the feeling might end up as an obstacle, but it is a very real naturally occurring feeling, and thus you should deal with it regardless. Try to make sure that every character has some reaction to each point, even if it's subtle.
Who wins each point, and how does the action shift because of it? A back and forth game is exciting because anything can happen. A game where one team scores goal after goal with no answer is a chore to watch, even if your team is winning. This means if someone is winning multiple 'points' in a row, you need to do something with it. Build tension, make the loser more determined, let the winner gloat - just make sure something is progressing with each point. If you're not doing anything with the extra points, don't score them. Build scenes to end when the game is decided and the gloating is done, not when the clock finally runs out.
While your story-wide plot points need to be strong and well connected, it is ultimately the humble local struggles throughout every scene that drive the action along. Taking the time to look closer will make you more aware of exactly what is happening, when, and why. The finer grained your understanding of your action, the easier it is to harness and direct towards your ultimate goals.
This is extremely useful advice. It gives me a conceptual handle on why some dialogue scenes seem full of events, while others are just flat expositions. The event-filled dialogue scenes are the ones which have a social game going in it. Even straight exposition can be game-full, as one character wants to reveal some information but not other information, and another character wants to find out the things the other character doesn't want to reveal.
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Indeed. We actually play social games all the time, but I do not think we notice them. If we do, people usually shy away from treating them as such. Games cannot be serious business, after all, and being the funniest guy at the table is most srs of bsns
Or at the very least, putting a game in the background can give the audience something to do if the foreground business is necessary but not as eye-catching as the author may like. Subtext is awesome like that: you get bonus content without having to add many extra words!