We all know we need strong scenes in our stories but what is the foundation those scenes are built upon? Emotional honesty.
I’m going back to the same book from last week for this week’s writing tip, Emotional Structure,Creating the Story Beneath the Plot A Guide for Screenwriters by Peter Dunne. These are a few sentences from the same section.
“We must write our scenes from an emotional point-of view. . . . . . . I want the audience to be more than interested in my story; I want them to be involved. I want them engrossed and feeling the things my characters are feeling. That being the case, I have to let them know how to feel by letting them know in what emotional turmoil my characters find themselves. ”
He talks about a scene where the main character is sneaking out of the house with her backpack. Without any emotional context, the reader doesn’t know if she is a victim of abuse or a delinquent about to go cause trouble somewhere. He goes on to say,
“So I have to make it clear in the scene which she is, delinquent or victim, and I have to do this by expressing her emotional state-of-mind through her behavior. Her actions therefore are not random, they are manifestations of her psychological plight. . . . . . .We can’t have characters doing things just because it’s convenient. There have to be strong, internal reasons for their behavior. The stronger the better.”
Think about a recent scene you have have written. Is it written from an emotional point-of-view? Is your character doing things for the write reasons?
I’m just writing an entirely new scene in my current revision–yes COMPLETELY NEW, and I know its light on the emotion right now. And since I’m resetting goals and themes at the same time, I know that won’t work.
In trying to get it down on paper, I know I’m skimming that part, but I will go back specifically for it. I envy what seems your ability to have the emotional depth in your early scene versions. 🙂
Mine don’t always have the emotional depth in the early versions but I think I am more in touch with the emotional side than the action side. My characters do way too much thinking about doing instead of actually doing.
And I have a hard time with more than one person in a scene at a time.
If I could only get paid for writing internal monologues. 🙂
I’m with you on the difficulty of including more than one person in a scene. It’s a struggle to include all six siblings, PLUS my mother and father and other adults, together in a chapter. Talk about choreography…:)
A relevant tip for me today. Last night, I was working on a scene where several kids meet for the first time. One of them is nervous about meeting a girl, and I put that in there because I know that he likes her, but then it occured to me that, throughout the rest of the book, the girl is impressed at how he doesn’t get nervous in conversations with adults. So I started to question whether he’d really be as nervous as I made him. Still sort of debating it, but meant to pound out the kinks when I worked on it tonight.
Thanks!