Please, Make a Scene

I purchased our home before I got married.  It’s two stories with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen, and a garage.  After moving in, the furniture on the bottom floor consisted of only a dining room set, an old reclining chair, and a television set.  On the top floor was a bed and a dresser.  The other three upstairs bedrooms remained empty. The garage contained my automobile, a hammer, and maybe some nails.

Some months later, a friend came over to check out the place.  She was appalled.  She declared that my living conditions were unsatisfactory, unacceptable, and required immediate remedial action.  She said, “We’re going to a furniture store right now, and you’re going to furnish this poor house.”

And that’s what we did.  I purchased living room sets, coffee tables, beds for the spare rooms, a few paintings for the walls, and even some drink coasters for future guests.

My home felt better after that.

I've heard that interior decorators can make a good living.  Does the homeowner tell the interior decorator, “I’m going away for a week.  Let me know how it turns out.”

Probably not. This is because the homeowner wants the home décor to match her desired ambiance, mood, and theme.

You’re the interior decorator

The lady you hire to make your home pop is you.  You provide only what you want your readers to experience to fit your story’s,

• Ambiance

• Mood

• Theme

An effective scene is created by completing the following two steps:

• Is the scene in a barn, an operating room, or at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff? Write down everything you see in your mind, including the cracks in the walls and the ground, the condition of the paint, the bugs, the texture of the dirt, and the people standing nearby.  Don’t forget the air temperature, humidity, and smell.  Throw in whether the people are eager, tired, or injured.

• Then, delete anything that doesn’t contribute to the story’s ambience, mood, or theme.

If you don’t yet know your story’s ambience, mood, or theme, then write anything you want.  It won’t matter because you’ll go back later after you’ve written your story and adjust the scene’s details as necessary.

Your characters' reactions

How Johnny reacts to his conditions helps set the story's ambience, theme, and mood. He could trip over a curb and throw a fit or display no reaction at all. Your story's narrator is also one of the characters. Are the curbs described as sharp and hard, or have they been rounded by with great care?

The Pedestrian

Ray Bradbury wrote hundreds of short stories.  One of them is called The Pedestrian.  I’ve provided below the first sentence of his story:

“To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.”

-- Ray Bradbury, from The Pedestrian

Bradbury creates a rich scene in one sentence.  What information does Bradbury provide?

1. The city is silent at eight o’clock in the evening.  Why?

2. The concrete sidewalks are buckled and have grassy seams.  Why?

3. Mr. Leonard dearly loves to go on walks.  Why point this out right up front?  Is there something wrong with his going on walks?

Mr. Bradbury’s first scene creates questions in his readers’ minds.

Bradbury doesn’t describe how Mr. Mead looks, how big the city is, or what vehicles are on the road because that information isn’t necessary for the story and doesn’t contribute to its ambiance, mood, and theme.

How about Bradbury’s second paragraph of The Pedestrian:

“Sometimes he would walk for hours and miles and return only at midnight to his house.  And on his way, he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows.  Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.”

-- Ray Bradbury, from The Pedestrian

Cottages and homes are tomblike?  Is this not ambiance, mood, and theme screaming at us?

Read his next paragraph:

“Mr. Leonard Mead would pause, cock his head, listen, look, and march on, his feet making no noise on the lumpy walk.  For long ago, he had wisely changed to sneakers when strolling at night, because the dogs in intermittent squads would parallel his journey with barkings if he wore hard heels, and lights might click on and faces appear and an entire street be startled by the passing of a lone figure, himself, in the early November evening.”

 -- Ray Bradbury, from The Pedestrian

Notice he never uses any of the following words. Yet, these feelings are expressed richly throughout his story:

• Isolation

• Rejection

• Judgment

• Loneliness

• Oppression

• Abandonment

• Hopelessness

I long to write like Ray Bradbury.  It may not be until the sidewalks in front of my house are cracked, and the city I live in is silent.

A good scene makes the moment linger

Another benefit of effective scene building is that it takes up space on the page, which means it serves to slow the pace.  This gives the reader time to savor the moment, bask in the experience, and adjust to the water temperature.

Try writing how a one-year-old sees the world

We have a one-year-old grandson.  He cannot yet speak, but he feels everything.

• He doesn’t say he’s tired, but his entire body stops working.

• He wants the red shiny toy.  He can try to reach for it, but it’s too far away.

• He feels alone, but all his toys are looking at him, and he doesn’t understand why.

• He sees big people smiling at him, but he doesn’t always know what that means.

• He needs his diaper changed, but all he knows is his bottom half feels different.

The point is, try describing the situation as if you don’t know the words.  For example,

1. At the beach, no matter how hard she tries, she can’t keep the sand from getting between her toes. And the sand is hot even though the water is cold.

2. If he’s trapped in a wooden box, he thinks that wooden boards shouldn’t press against him like that, and it’s dark.

3. It’s two-thirty at night, but it feels like ten-thirty in the morning, except it’s dark outside.

4. Even though the water is only two inches deep, I could still drown because there may be a spot nearby where it’s deeper. Or I’ll sink into the sand to my neck.

5. The room is so big I’ll get lost even if I move just a little.  Big people keep moving things around, so it always looks different.  Sometimes the floor is hard, and sometimes it’s soft.

The wording can be refined later.  But this gets you away from using “commercial billboard” words like frustration, discomfort, insomnia, insecurity, and fear of being trapped or of drowning.

Disobey your mother 

What did your mother always tell you?  “Don’t make a scene.”  She was wrong.  Make as many as you please.  Make them glorious and wonderful so your aunts and uncles will talk about them for the next dozen family reunions.

Then they’ll understand why you turned out to be a famous author.