Sometimes I know a chapter is well-written but it still
isn’t working as well as it needs to. For me, this often happens when the
tension in the scene (or scenes) is primarily internal. It’s not that nothing is
happening. It’s just that I’ve written a bunch of character ruminating and
after awhile that gets tedious to read. It also tends to bring out a level of
repetition in my writing that I’d prefer to avoid because really, how many new
things can a character think about? I find myself writing the same loop of
thoughts.
So what’s a writer to do?
Well, revise, of course!
And in this case, dig in and re-think how the scene needs to
play out, how I can move out of the character’s head and ground the internal angst
with external action. Author Sara Zarr, whose workshop I attended at The
Writing Barn a few years ago, calls these Emotional Turnings. She taught us
that every emotional turning of a character needs to be rooted in some action
perceivable by the senses. It is grand and wise advice.
Yesterday, I used this advice to turn around a set of scenes
that had devolved into too much thinking. In this case, the key was a phone
call the MC makes to her best friend, a friend she hasn’t seen much since the
MC moved to the city, and has in fact been ignoring, mostly because the MC’s
life has been turned upside down by the death of her brother and the ensuing
breakup of her family. And then there’s been something very strange that has
happened and there’s a new boy and a bunch of angst and so the MC calls her
friend.
In the original version, she calls. There is witty banter,
but it’s mostly one-sided with the friend going on and on about her camp
counselor job and teaching archery and the MC thinks some witty things and then
the friend says she has to go without asking why the MC has called. Followed by
some pages of MC angsting.
Yeah. I know. It reads well technically. It does bring back
all the things that are going wrong in the MCs world and all the things she
wants but possibly will never have. But yeah. A lot of ruminating.
So I gave it a hard look. Poked around at this friendship
and this moment and the myopic-nature of people when their lives are taking
unexpected turns. And wondered what would happen if after the friend rattled on
about archery and said she had to go, the MC would say no. I need to tell you
something. And instead of saying something friend-like, the friend would
basically tell her to get lost. What does she think, calling after basically
ignoring her all this time. Call her self-centered or whatever. I hate giving
away an exact plot so this is the basic gist although not the specifics. The
point is, that the MC needs to be totally blindsided here. And then the MC
needs to react in a physical way and DO SOMETHING. Then and only then can she
think and then and only then will her thoughts have a real, physical world
catalyst. And the stakes are raised because in the process one last remaining safety net (the
friend) is ripped away rather than just hanging up the phone. (well, pressing
end, which is so much less dramatic, but whatever.)
See what I mean?
What do you do when you realize a scene lacks tension?
