Kathryn’s post today is part of the “All the King’s Editors” series, in which WU contributors will edit manuscript pages submitted by members of the larger WU community and discuss the proposed changes. This educational format is intended to generate useful comments on what changes work, which may not work as well, and in either case, why.
The posts will appear on WU ~twice monthly. Each participating editor will have a unique approach, and speak only for him or herself. If you’re interested in submitting a sample for consideration, click HERE for instructions.
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Today’s submission is an excerpt from a second chapter. What happened in the first? I haven’t a clue. Has our point-of-view character, Luna, already set a story goal, and is she pursuing that goal in this chapter? I don’t know that either, although more explicitly goal-oriented behavior for Luna in this scene would (and should) clue me in. Clarifying the characters’ scene goals, and looking at how doing so can fuel higher octane writing, will be the focus of this developmental edit.
The main action in this opening is driving. The driving is not complicated by any story-relevant obstacle, so the action serves no purpose except as a container into which the writer can dump the character’s thoughts. This is a familiar part of the creative process: the writer casts around inside her character’s head for story motivation. The emotions she uproots are like an author’s note to self: these are the emotions that should drive the scene to come.
In order for the scene to grow in power, the author must go back and rewrite to make sure it is her character’s goals and motivations that are driving the scene. This is an important distinction. Story works because your reader bonds with your protagonist through her goals and motivations. Once it’s clear what Luna wants, we’ll orient to the story in a way that allows us to say, “Oh, Luna will love this” or, “Uh-oh, it’s not going so well for Luna right now.” Her desires allow our heartbeat to connect with hers, creating the all-important psychological tension that keeps us turning pages.
These explorations were clearly an important part of the process for this writer. While she stopped shy of determining what Luna wants by going to see Nico, she came up with some images that can be used to better advantage, such as the sunset and Luna’s concern for her appearance. She determined that Luna is having a tug-of-war between her head and her heart (or perhaps her mind and sheer sexual desire?—as yet unclear) in these pages. That’s good internal conflict, so let’s explore how we can externalize it so the story will leap out of Luna’s head and play out in scene, where it belongs.
Since we do not need to watch Luna drive in order to believe she got to her new location, I’d cut the entire first page here—all of the material between the red brackets, and above the asterisks I inserted to mark the suggested beginning.
As written:
[As Luna headed west on Ventura toward Amaru Yoga from Studio City, the drive felt both familiar and strange. (1) The flickering glare of the setting sun (2) made visibility challenging, even with sunglasses on. It had been well over a year since she’d set foot in his studio. (3) There were times she had wanted to drive past the building, see if his car was out front, and maybe catch a glimpse of him. But, like any addict, she knew she had to stay away, physically and mentally as well. But now, it was her destination, and she could feel the fire butterflies stirring. (4) Though they had been quieted over time, she knew they hadn’t been extinguished.
Nico had been released from the hospital only yesterday, and she thought how unsettling it must be to return to the place where he’d been shot. (5) She was relieved when he said Maya wouldn’t be there, that he needed to speak with her alone. She wondered if he had come to love Maya, who had remained devoted to him, even after confiding he didn’t love her the way he’d loved Elodie. Maybe, Luna thought anxiously, it was a mistake to see him. Looking back on all the years she’d been entangled with him, when his mood was darkest, he chose her over the other women. (6) He claimed they demanded too much from him.
Pulling into a parking space behind Amaru Yoga she cut the engine and flipped open the mirror on the sun visor to check her makeup. (7) With her finger she gently erased a smudge of mascara from beneath her eye. She left what remained of the natural tint on her lips, although she wasn’t sure he would extend his customary double-cheek kiss. She considered all the possible greetings they could enact, unsure which one might be the least contrived—almost laughing out loud at the thought of, how have you been? And, his answer, I nearly died.]
***I suggest starting here:
She was surprised to find the door locked and after knocking lightly to no response, she rang the bell just as Nico unlatched and opened the door. (8) He was expecting her, yet, he stood there staring as if she were a stranger selling encyclopedias. She remained awkwardly speechless waiting for him to invite her in. (9) He wore his customary slouchy black sweat pants hanging low on his hip. (10) Other than appearing pale and a bit thinner than when she’d last seen him, he didn’t look as though he had been at death’s door only two weeks prior. She spoke the first words that came to mind, “I’m glad you’re alive.”
Imagining this paragraph as the opening of the scene reveals its lack of focus. (8) How could you lead the reader into the scene with more confidence? Even indecisiveness needs to have an energetic push-and-pull if the reader is going to feel it.
As written, this inaction feels like the author is unclear about her characters’ scene goals, and therefore doesn’t know how each character might take steps to achieve them.
What does Luna want? What does Nico want? How are their desires coming into conflict in the moment they see each other? The author needs to be clear on this before this scene starts to sizzle. In that moment before the door is opened, the imagery of the setting sun (2) might be useful, especially its dual possibilities: that final extinguishing of light vs. the romance of its beauty.
When the door is opened, Nico doesn’t react and Luna can’t speak. (9) This is a missed opportunity. A pause, however, can be used to suggest that this interaction is both familiar and strange (1), since after their long tangled history, it has been over a year (3) since she saw him. She is sizing him up—but he’d be doing the same. How he looks at her either will or will not inspire her concern for her appearance. (5)
Luna was summoned, yes—but why did she come? How is she feeling—wary yet intrigued, perhaps? Show her seeking what she needs. Nico’s sheer physical presence can disarm her, but show her pulling herself back together to achieve her scene goal. Maybe she’s here because of her addiction to Nico (4)—she has always come when he called. Don’t just tell us this, show us what this addiction feels like in her body and how it threatens to pull her off her scene goal. He’s had other women since, but now, in his darkest moment, he wants her (6). Why, and how could you hint at this?
My challenge: how could you introduce some of this inner tug-of-war in the way that she knocks on the door?
Her scene goal will add emotional significance to the actions on the page. If she raises her hand to knock but some sense of self-preservation pulls it back, the reader will understand her inner conflict. If Nico opens the door and she feels those inner butterflies stir, we’ll understand the power he has over her—he need only open the door and she’ll fall in. Does the inevitability of this bother her?
If he was shot and almost died, she wouldn’t just be noting his outfit (10)—she’d be looking for the bulk of a bandage beneath it, wouldn’t she? For most of us, talking to someone who was shot and left for dead yet survived would be a kind of surreal thing. I’d think she’d be looking to ground herself in the reality of it, especially if they have a history of intimacy.
He laughed, and smiled into her eyes, “So am I.”
What is Nico’s scene goal? Even if we don’t have access to his inner thoughts, his intention needs to be represented. He has summoned her. Why? I doubt it’s to play guitar for her (as he does later in the scene). Even if you don’t spill the beans right here, you could hint at it with an obtuse comeback that would intrigue by raising a question, such as, “Turns out it wasn’t the idea of death that bothered me.” As written, though, his non-reaction—looking at her as though she were selling encyclopedias, when we don’t know enough about him yet to intuit what his reaction to encyclopedias would be (I would be excited, lol)—is a missed opportunity to build characterization and deepen conflict.
She followed him through the studio, and into the kitchen. Casting her eyes over the room, she was flooded with fond memories of where he played guitar for her, and sang love songs in Spanish after they ate plates of empanadas he’d made from scratch. As was the custom, she sat on the counter stool facing the kitchen, the one she took when watching him cook. He put the tea kettle up to boil, the grey T-shirt he wore hung loosely shrouding his damaged body.
Nico has returned to the place where he was shot. (5) Wouldn’t Luna wonder where, as she walks through the place?
The setting will gain emotional importance if you tie her questions about what happened here to her memories, and add to that all-important push-and-pull I think you’re going for. Was the shooter looking at him in the mirror, the way she had when she took class from him? Or was he shot at the kitchen counter, where they ate empanadas? Had it been on the couch, where he sang to her in Spanish? In this way, we’d see that the shooting changed everything.
And why is he making her tea? If he tries, I can almost hear her say, “My god Nico, I didn’t drive all the way out here for a cup of tea. You almost died!” One of them can be cagey. But if they are both cagey, how can the reader enter the story and gain orientation to its important themes?
Later, he voluntarily raises his shirt so she can see his bandages. If her scene goal is to discover what happened to him, why not have her ask—“Can I see?” His reaction will add to the tension between them. Is he shy about raising his shirt? Plus, if she is jonesing for this guy like an addict, she’ll be looking at more than the bandage. This—more than fond memories of where he played the guitar—will spark some serious sense memories.
Also, I’m a bit confused as to the lay of the land here. Why is this scene set in a yoga studio? (If your answer is “you learned that in the last chapter,” that isn’t a good enough reason to place us there now.) Why do they have a kitchen, and why did he play guitar for her in…a kitchen? There is a sofa in the kitchen? Is this where he is sleeping? Might there be sheets tossed there that could make her feel uncomfortable? As written, you aren’t using the setting you’ve chosen to its best advantage. Is he a yoga teacher? If so, having his body “corseted” in this limiting way would be torture for someone who is used to twisting every which-way to feel alive. Is this his business? Seeing it “dark” could speak to the full impact of the shooting. Was she his student? As for the other women—does he prey on students? These inner thoughts could play against the things she says aloud, creating interest in this “getting reacquainted” dialogue.
The physicality of Nico playing the guitar and singing for on the next page is questionable at best—the breath control would cause pain, let alone holding the guitar. But given the deeper emotional context we have mined for here, it makes no emotional sense. If he is so self-involved that he calls her all the way out to his yoga studio to be his audience, when he asks her to pass him the guitar, she might say, “Cut the crap, Nico. Why the hell did you ask me here?”
Determining your characters’ scene goals—ahead of time if you’re an outliner, or after an emotional fishing expedition, if you’re a pantser—is like filling up your story’s fuel tank. It is the key to writing high-octane scenes.
Action steps for rewriting the opening of this scene:
- Journal in each character’s first-person voice until you learn his/her scene goal and why it matters.
- Let those goals inform the actions the characters take, even (or especially!) at the expense of social niceties.
- Without referring to the less focused sentences you’ve already written, rewrite, using setting, dialogue, action, and inner thought to illustrate the way the characters’ intentions bring them into conflict.
Can you see how fixing sentences would not do this story justice? Can you see how the next draft will grow in power? Have you experienced this in your own work?
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About Kathryn Craft
Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her work as a freelance developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she leads writing workshops and retreats, and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers. Learn more on Kathryn's website.
The opening paragraphs, which you wisely recommend cutting, have a problem common to second chapters. Quite often, they open with travel…dull, low-tension travel…accompanied by exposition that rehashes worries and thoughts previously covered or that are already obvious to the reader.
Second chapters tend to shift down, lowering tension, forgoing drama as a more “normal” emotional tone is set and the steady backbeat of the story is established. Second chapters are too often like a break in a song: a rest or pause that eases tension.
As to scene goals, I agree that knowing characters’ needs is important; however, goals are felt the most when they’re not stated but seen. Artfully done, they are subtext more than surface topics.
Here is where this author is missing opportunities in the initial dialogue exchange. “I’m surprised to see you alive.” “So am I.” The smiles and tea kettle sap tension when it would be so easy to convey subtext. For instance, here are alternate things that Nico could say in response to Luna’s remark:
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Alive? You’ve got that wrong.”
“One day at a time. But it’s still early.”
“There are wounds people can’t see. Maybe fatal ones. Why are you here?”
Scene goals can be set on the fly. The trick, ask me, is knowing what they are and letting them seep through.
Agreed, agreed, agreed. Thanks for weighing in, Don.
As all of your possible examples show well, thinking about why Nico has called Luna to him will infuse his dialogue with interest beyond common chit-chat, establish subtext about their relationship, and get the story moving.
The main reason for overtly stating a scene goal, in my mind, is to watch it be dashed.
HI Kathryn:
I’m reminded of Max Byrd’s description of the first few paragraphs of many manuscript pages as “throat clearing,” i.e., getting ready to write the scene. The paragraphs you advise cutting fall into this category. They’re the author’s attempt to rev up and get into the scene, and read like “Notes to Self.”
Overall I think you nail it perfectly with “missed opportunity.” There’s so much room to reveal through conflict here–precissly by, as you advise, honing in on each character’s scene goals.
There’s incredible tension possible if Luna is hoping she’s been called because, after his near death experience, he realizes she’s the one he’s loved all along. But what if that’s not why he summoned her? What if they have incompatible agendas and expectations and they constantly interfere with the signals and both of them end up constantly misunderstanding the other.
I often use the first scene in A Streetcar Named Desire to show how a scene like this works well. Blanche needs Stella to say, “This is your home now.” But Stella can’t say that. All she can offer is, “You have to meet Stanley. My life is different now.” That subtext lies beneath every line, with the implicit demand: Tell me what I want to hear! But neither can.
That seems to be what is possible here. I think if the writer goes back with your suggestions in mind, she has an excellent opportunity for a great scene.
Last point: Why not start the entire story here?
The possibilities are quite exciting, aren’t they?
Love the Streetcar example!
I could totally see this novel starting as Luna is standing/approaching the door wondering why Nico has called her. Especially if she is imagining where in the studio he was shot.
David,
Very insightful! They don’t know what to say to each other. As you suggested, they have always had incompatible agendas and expectations and end up misunderstanding each other. An underlying theme of the book is about letting go of expectations. They were never lovers, he was her manipulative controlling yoga teacher who she tried to fix. Nico is ashamed. He lost everything, again. He yearns for approval and love, but his motivation has been external (wealth and celebrity). He is leaving on a “hero’s journey” – to discover his ikigai – his reason to live. I am exploring redemption in this book. I have always been a slow paced highly descriptive writer, and I aim for it. Luna knows she should not see him, even though he almost died. If I cut the entire paragraph up to her knocking on the door, how would you convey her anxiety over driving the route she avoided for over a year? I will revisit this. I haven’t finished the first draft, so lots of work ahead of me. Thank you for the pearls of wisdom.
You could lace in backstory as Luna and Nico dance around their incompatible agendas, doing through what they’re thinking but not saying, or by what they’re hinting at but not stating openly. Remember, you don’t need to frontload backstory, and it’s typically wise not to do so.
Lisa Cron has posted some wonderful pieces on backstory placement here at WU — just Google Lisa Cron and Writer Unboxed and links to her past postings will come up.
I also wrote an article titled “Backstory From the Front” published in Writers Digest July/August 2016 which Zoe M. McCarthy discussed in her blog post of July 28, 2016.
I hope that’s useful.
Yes, It is precisely what I have done. Little by little (not in the front) I have Nico’s back story – some of the most revealing as late as Chapter 10. At the end of this scene with Luna he leaves for Argentina. The entire book is in limited third person pov. Only Chapter 1 and 2 are from Luna’s perspective in the limited third. And the rest of the book is Nico’s pov also third person past tense. But I borrowed something from The Old Man and the Sea when he is thinking about things – I shift to first person with “he thought” always staying in past tense as Hemingway did. I have to say, I like it and I like that it is not used often anymore. But it personalizes the anxiety and yearning. In several places Nico is reminded of something Luna said. Even when he meets people along his journey (like the Odyssey) – I’m having fun and so much more to go! Thank you — I am so glad for your advice and inspiration. I’d love to know what you have been reading. I just finished Stoner! What an influence to me! That book will forever inform my writing. I am now reading Huxley’s The Doors of Perception – things to come in the book.
I liked the first paragraphs, they did set the scene for me and her thoughts gave me stuff to think about, it made me curious.
Would these work as an ending to the previous chapter?
That may be of personal taste, I loved the scenes on Blade Runner 2049 where Gosling just walked thru the scenery before reaching his objective. The driving felt like that to me.
It’s hard to address your question in specifics, not knowing the context of what went on in that first chapter. This kind of interior scene is best used, in my opinion, when something big has just happened and the main character needs to think through all of its implications. It’s early for that kind of scene here, though, and besides, that’s not how she’s using it. The story is not advancing while we’re in her head because she didn’t decide anything that she then put into play once the action starts—her actions make it clear she still doesn’t know why she’s there or how she should act.
I didn’t see Blade Runner so can’t address how this was used there, but the best use of a scene that is meant to predict how things are going to go is to manage reader expectation as it is about to be dashed. Otherwise, if you predict a scene and it plays out as expected, you’ve repeated yourself.
I’m sure the author will be glad that you liked it and that it gave you stuff to think about! But if she applied her character’s intentions to the actual story action and dialogue, you’d appreciate even more the way the resulting tension invited you as reader into the story.
My comment was partially incorrect. The inner thoughts were a bit cumbersome, specially with so many proper names, but I liked the flow, so I just didn’t mind it as I read (the middle paragraph). It didn’t stop me from reading further.
I loved the first lines and the last paragraph. I can relate to that. How many times I’ve been heading to a meeting that left me confused. Checking my hair before leaving the car, imagining how would the “hello” time unfold.
That’s what I meant in my comparison to BR2049, the moment before the expected action, not the navel gazing.
I don’t know enough about the story to add specific details that could ground it to the theme, but for your challenge…
I would place Luna at the door, she stands with her head leaning against it and closes her eyes for a few seconds, she lets out a deep breath , then quickly and resolutely turns to leave. Nico appears from around the side.
Thanks Tina. I love the physical sensation of her head leaning against the door. But you can now you can see the challenge of editing even a few pages without understanding their context! Was she answering a summons or accepting an invitation—we don’t even know that much.
Either way, your solution might be great if she had fought with herself about the sanity of showing up on the half-hour drive over, then saw some reminder of their trying relationship once she got to the door—it might have been repainted in a color she hated. But if she had just driven, say, four hours to get there, with her curiosity keeping her foot on the pedal, it would make less sense for her to turn around and leave without knocking. In this way, a change in one minor detail can change the entire course of a novel.