Hello, writers. As we’ve been talking lately about showing-and-telling, it seemed like a good time to mention going in-scene.
Most narrative, whether fiction or non-, contains a series of up-close scenes, where we’re privy to conversations, thoughts, smells, tastes, and action all described in a way that gives them immediacy. These are alternated with scenes that pull back, summarize, show time passing, give us the big picture but not the minute-by-minute action.
You can’t write a whole book in-scene. It would take too long and readers would get bored as your characters slept, went to the bathroom, etc.
I once read a whole book that never went in-scene. It was a bestseller, one of those books that had questions for book group discussion in the back. (I hate those.) But it never, once, went in scene. Summary, summary, summary. Over the next few months such-and-such happened. During the following year this-and-that happened. There was no chance to get emotionally involved in the story. Or intellectually involved in the story. Or any kind of involved in the story. There was barely a story.
It can be hard for writers to figure out is when we need to go in-scene and when we should pull back. I usually end up getting told that there’s too much in-scene stuff, which is slowing my story down, and that there needs to be more summary.
By the way, here’s an example of summary:
Edna’s marriage to Phillip was more than frustrating, it was mental agony. Probably her greatest accomplishment of those two years was managing never to brain him with the bedside lamp.
Whereas this would be in-scene:
Phillip shuddered. “Do we have to sleep with all these armadillos?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” said Edna. “They don’t snore, and they don’t shed.”
“They give me the creeps.”
“I don’t see why they would. Really, you complain about the tiniest things.”
Tonight’s challenge is in two parts.
For the last weeks our good friends the Callow Youth and his/her Stout Companion have been approaching a Dark Tower, where they must face the Dread Least Grebe, armed only with the Duffel Bag of Least Resistance and the advice of their mentor, Froop.
But how did they get there? I assume it was a perilous journey. There may have been swamps, rickety bridges, steep-walled defiles through treacherous mountains full of brigands and bad-‘uns, dark pathways with a steep drop-off on one side. Or on both sides, even.
Anyway.
1. Describe their journey to the tower in summary. Don’t go in-scene. Try to limit yourself to 100 words.
2. Now show a single incident of the journey in-scene. Give it immediacy; put us there. Try to limit yourself to 100 words.
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