A scene’s placement in the novel helps me determine what specific needs it has beyond the general requirements of setting, character, dramatic questions, conflict/tension, and causality. Every scene needs those elements. But there are certain scenes that have additional, specific requirements. Over the next two chapters, I’d like to examine these special scenes so that you can look at what those requirements are and how each example meets those requirements.
Opening scenes are tough because their number one requirement is to hook the reader. The writer has various tools to employ in order to hook, however: the promise of excitement or intrigue or conflict, an indication of theme, a problem that a character encounters, foreshadowing of things to come, the introduction of characters, the laying down of dramatic questions, and the primary event or the status quo or both.
If you review the complete opening scene of Careless in Red, which you can find in Chapter 8 of this book, you should be able to see a selection of specific elements.
Intrigue is established at once in the person of an unnamed man walking on the South-West Coast Path. He’s been walking for forty-three days and is virtually unaware of his surroundings. Who is this man, and what’s going on with him that he’s out there largely unprepared for such a walk?
The first dramatic question appears in the last sentence of that first paragraph, contained in the words, in an effort to avoid both the thought of the future and the memory of the past. Specifically the reader’s interest should be caught with the memory of the past, and her interest, one hopes, will be heightened by that incomplete information. It’s my belief that this makes the opening much more powerful than it would be had I begun with Lynley’s name and with what had previously occurred in his life to put him out there in this desolate place.
The theme is touched upon. One can recover or not recover from grief, and recovering is largely a matter of choice, grit, and determination.
A problem is encountered later during this first scene: The unnamed man sees what he thinks might be a body at the base of one of the sea cliffs. Out of the corner of his eye, he’s caught a flash of red that could well indicate someone’s fall, but he isn’t sure. Nonetheless, because it looks as if there is an outstretched arm at the bottom of the cliff, he decides to investigate since someone could be critically injured.
There is a foreshadowing of problems to come: If it is indeed a body (and this being a crime novel, we can assume it will be), he’s going to have to do something about it.
His status quo has been given: He’s a man walking and walking to get away from his memories. His status quo has also been disrupted by the primary event: He sees what he thinks may have been a body falling, and he also sees the result on the rocks below.
You might well ask if a writer has to have all of these elements in an opening scene. Of course not. Fashioning an opening scene isn’t like checking elements off a list. (Intrigue? Got it. Foreshadowing? Check. Place, mood, atmosphere? Yes, ma’am.) But an awareness of them and their availability to you as a writer will help you avoid writing in the dark.
For me, the key to a strong opening is knowing my characters first and placing them into a real setting second. The plot kernel and the character analyses are going to serve me well now. The first tells me generally where I’m heading while the second advises me how the individual characters are going to react along the way.
Plot point scenes—sometimes called turning point scenes—have their own requirements. Before we get into them, though, I’d like to take a look at where they occur, because it’s relatively simple: They occur wherever you want to put them. In your reading, though, you’ll generally find them in three spots. The first is in the vicinity of one quarter of the way through the novel; the second is the midpoint of the novel; the third is at the three-quarter point. The crucial piece of information here is that, like virtually everything else related to the creation of a novel, nothing is set in stone. The only rules are 1) There are no rules, and 2) If it works, keep it.
The question is, how do you know when you need a plot point? The answer is, you need a plot point when the story slows or stalls and when a careful examination of what you’ve done so far tells you that the problem is not one of playing your hand (i.e., accidentally revealing something) too soon.
How, then, does one create a plot point—or turning point—scene? Raymond Chandler always said that you bring a man with a gun into the room. My husband used to say “Kill someone else,” which is pretty much the same thing. But, actually, there are requirements of plot point scenes that can assist you in the creation of one.
Examine, if you will, the following plot point scene in Careless in Red:
It was, praise God or praise whomever one felt like praising when praise was called for, the last radiator. Not the last radiator as in the last radiator of all radiators in the hotel, but the last radiator as in the last radiator he would have to paint for the day. Given a half hour to clean the brushes and seal the paint tins—after years of practise while working for his father, Cadan knew he could stretch out any activity as long as was necessary—it would be time to leave for the day. Halle-fucking-lujah. His lower back was throbbing and his head was reacting to the fumes once again. Clearly, he wasn’t meant for this type of labour. Well, that was hardly a surprise.
Cadan squatted back on his heels and admired his handiwork. It was dead stupid of them to put down the fitted carpet before they had someone paint the radiators, he thought. But he’d managed to get the most recent spill cleaned up with a bit of industrious rubbing, and what he’d not got up he reckoned the curtains would hide. Besides, it had been his only serious spill of the day, and that was saying something.
He declared, “We are out of here, Poohster.”
The parrot adjusted his balance on Cadan’s shoulder and replied with a squawk followed by, “Loose bolts on the fridge! Call the cops! Call the cops!” yet another of his curious remarks.
The door to the room swung open as Pooh flapped his wings, preparatory either to making a descent to the floor or to performing a less than welcome bodily function on Cadan’s shoulder. Cadan said, “Don’t you bloody dare, mate,” and a female voice said in concerned reply, “Who are you, please? What’re you doing here?”
The speaker turned out to be a woman in black, and Cadan reckoned that she was Santo Kerne’s mother, Dellen. He scrambled to his feet. Pooh said, “Polly wants a shag. Polly wants a shag,” displaying, not for the first time, the level of inapposition to which he was capable of sinking at a moment’s notice.
“What is that?” Dellen Kerne asked, clearly in reference to the bird.
“A parrot.”
She looked annoyed. “I can see it’s a parrot,” she told him. “I’m not stupid or blind. What sort of parrot and what’s he doing here and what’re you doing here, if it comes to that?”
“He’s a Mexican parrot.” Cadan could feel himself getting hot, but he knew the woman wouldn’t twig his discomfiture as his olive skin didn’t blush when blood suffused it. “His name is Pooh.”
“As in Winnie-the?”
“As in what he does best.”
A smile flickered round her lips. “Why don’t I know you? Why’ve I not seen you here before?”
Cadan introduced himself. “Ben . . . Mr. Kerne hired me yesterday. He probably forgot to tell you about me because of . . .” He saw the way he was headed too late to avoid heading there. He quirked his mouth and wanted to disappear, since—aside from painting radiators and dreaming about what could be done to the crazy golf course—his day had been spent in avoiding a run-in precisely like this: face-to-face with one of Santo Kerne’s parents in a moment when the magnitude of their loss was going to have to be acknowledged with an appropriate expression of sympathy. He said, “Sorry about Santo.”
She looked at him evenly. “Of course you are.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Cadan shifted on his feet. He had a paintbrush still in his hand and he wondered suddenly and idiotically what he was meant to do with it. Or with the tin of paint. They’d been brought to him and no one had said where to put them at the end of the workday. He’d not thought to ask.
“Did you know him?” Dellen Kerne said abruptly. “Did you know Santo?”
“A bit. Yeah.”
“And what did you think of him?”
This was rocky ground. Cadan didn’t know how to reply other than to say, “He bought a surfboard from my dad.” He didn’t mention Madlyn, didn’t want to mention Madlyn, and didn’t want to think why he didn’t want to mention Madlyn.
“I see. Yes. But that doesn’t actually answer the question, does it?” Dellen came farther into the room. She went to the fitted clothes cupboard for some reason. She opened it. She looked inside. She spoke, oddly, into the cupboard’s interior. She said, “Santo was a great deal like me. You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know him. And you didn’t know him, did you? Not actually.”
“Like I said. A bit. I saw him round. More when he was first learning to surf than later on.”
“Because you surf as well?”
“Me? No. Well, I mean I’ve been, of course. But it’s not like it’s the only . . . I mean, I’ve got other interests.”
She turned from the cupboard. “Do you? What are they? Sport, I expect. You look quite fit. And women as well. Young men your age generally have women as one of their main interests. Are you like other young men?” She frowned. “Can we open that window, Cadan? The smell of paint . . .”
Cadan wanted to say it was her hotel so she could do whatever she wanted to do, but he set down his paintbrush carefully, went to the window, and wrestled it open, which wasn’t easy. It needed adjusting or greasing or something. Whatever one did to rejuvenate windows.
She said, “Thank you. I’m going to have a cigarette now. Do you smoke? No? That’s a surprise. You have the look of a smoker.”
Cadan knew he was meant to ask what the look of a smoker was, and had she been somewhere between twenty and thirty years old, he would have done so. His attitude would have been that questions like that one, of a potentially metaphoric nature, could lead to interesting answers, which in turn could lead to interesting developments. But in this case, he kept his mouth shut and when she said, “You won’t be bothered if I smoke, will you?” he shook his head. He hoped she didn’t expect him to light her cigarette for her—because she did seem the sort of woman round whom men leapt like jackrabbits—since he had neither matches nor lighter with him. She was correct in her assessment of him, though. He was a smoker but he’d been cutting back recently, inanely telling himself it was tobacco and not drink that was the real root of his problems.
He saw that she’d brought a packet of cigarettes with her and she had matches as well, tucked into the packet. She lit up, drew in, and let smoke drift from her nostrils.
“Whose shit’s on fire?” Pooh remarked.
Cadan winced. “Sorry. He’s heard that from my sister a million times. He mimics her. He mimics everyone. Anyway, she hates smoking.” And then again, “Sorry,” because he didn’t want her to think he was being critical of her.
“You’re nervous,” Dellen said. “I’m making you that way. And the bird’s fine. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, after all.”
“Yeah. Well. Sometimes, though, I’d swear he does.”
“Like the remark about shagging?”
He blinked. “What?”
“‘Polly wants a shag,’” she reminded him. “It was the first thing he said when I came into the room. I don’t, actually. Want a shag, that is. But I’m curious why he said that. I expect you use that bird to collect women. Is that why you brought him with you?”
“He goes most everywhere with me.”
“That can’t be convenient.”
“We work things out.”
“Do you?” She observed the bird, but Cadan had the feeling she wasn’t really seeing Pooh. He couldn’t have said what she was seeing but her next remarks gave him at least an idea. “Santo and I were quite close. Are you close to your mother, Cadan?”
“No.” He didn’t add that it was impossible to be close to Wenna Rice Angarrack McCloud Jackson Smythe, aka the Bounder. She had never remained stationary long enough for closeness to be anywhere in the deck of cards she played.
“Santo and I were quite close,” Dellen said again. “We were very alike. Sensualists. Do you know what that is?” She gave him no chance to answer, not that he could have given her a definition, anyway. She said, “We live for sensation. For what we can see and hear and smell. For what we can taste. For what we can touch. And for what can touch us. We experience life in all its richness, without guilt and without fear. That’s what Santo was like. That’s what I taught Santo to be.”
“Right.” Cadan thought how he’d like to get out of the room, but he wasn’t certain how to effect a departure that wouldn’t look like running away. He told himself there was no real reason to turn tail and disappear through the doorway, but he had a feeling, nearly animal in nature, that danger was near.
Dellen said to him, “What sort are you, Cadan? Can I touch your bird or will he bite?”
He said, “He likes to be scratched on his head. Where you’d put his ears if birds had ears. I mean ears like ours because they can hear, obviously.”
“Like this?” She came close to Cadan, then. He could smell her scent. Musk, he thought. She used the nail of her index finger, which was painted red. Pooh accepted her ministrations, as he normally did. He purred like a cat, yet another sound he’d learned from a previous owner. Dellen smiled at the bird. She said to Cadan, “You didn’t answer me. What sort are you? Sensualist? Emotionalist? Intellectual?”
“Not bloody likely,” he replied. “Intellectual, I mean. I’m not intellectual.”
“Ah. Are you emotional? Bundle of feelings? Raw to the touch? Inside, I mean.”
He shook his head.
“Then you’re a sensualist, like me. Like Santo. I thought as much. You have that look about you. I expect it’s something your girlfriend appreciates. If you have one. Do you?”
“Not just now.”
“Pity. You’re quite attractive, Cadan. What do you do for sex?”
Cadan felt ever more the need to escape, yet she wasn’t doing a single thing except petting the bird and talking to him. Still, something was very off with the woman.
Then it came to him at a gallop that her son was dead. Not only dead but murdered. He was gone, kaput, given the chop, whatever. When a son died—or a daughter or a husband—wasn’t the mother supposed to rip up her clothes? tear at her hair? shed tears by the bucketful?
She said, “Because you must do something for sex, Cadan. A young virile man like you. You can’t mean me to think you live like a celibate priest.”
“I wait for summer,” he finally told her.
Her finger hesitated, less than an inch from Pooh’s green head. The bird sidestepped to get back within its range. “For summer?” Dellen said.
“Town’s full of girls then. Here on holiday.”
“Ah. You prefer the short-term relationship, then. Sex without strings.”
“Well,” he said. “Yeah. Works for me, that.”
“I expect it does. You scratch them and they scratch you and everyone’s happy with the arrangement. No questions asked. I know exactly what you mean. Although I expect that surprises you. A woman my age. Married, with children. Knowing what it means.”
He offered a half smile. It was insincere, just a way to acknowledge what she was saying without having to acknowledge what she was saying. He gave a look in the direction of the doorway. He said, “Well,” and tried to make his tone decisive, a way of saying, That’s that, then. Nice talking to you.
She said, “Why haven’t we met before this?”
“I just started—”
“No. I understand that. But I can’t sort out why we haven’t met before. You’re roughly Santo’s age—”
“Four years older, actually. He’s my—”
“—and you’re so like him as well. So I can’t sort out why you’ve never come round with him.”
“—sister’s age. Madlyn,” he said. “You probably know Madlyn. My sister. She and Santo were . . . Well, they were whatever you want to call it.”
“What?” Dellen asked blankly. “What did you call her?”
“Madlyn. Madlyn Angarrack. They—she and Santo—they were together for . . . I don’t know . . . Eighteen months? Two years? Whatever. She’s my sister. Madlyn’s my sister.”
Dellen stared at him. Then she stared past him, but she appeared to be looking at nothing at all. She said in a different voice altogether, “How very odd. She’s called Madlyn, you say?”
“Yeah. Madlyn Angarrack.”
“And she and Santo were . . . what, exactly?”
“Boyfriend and girlfriend. Partners. Lovers. Whatever.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head, confused, wondering why she’d think he was joking. “They met when he came to get a board from my dad. Madlyn taught him to surf. Santo, that is. Well, obviously, not my dad. That’s how they got to know each other. And then . . . well, I s’pose you could say they started hanging about together and things went from there.”
“And you called her Madlyn?” Dellen asked.
“Yeah. Madlyn.”
“Together for eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months or so. Yeah. That’s it.”
“Then why did I never meet her?” she said.
Plot point scenes contain new information, new facts, new agendas, or new characters who will come “onstage” to alter the direction of the narrative. In the example you’ve just read, Cadan is meeting Dellen Kerne for the first time. And for the first time, the reader has a chance to see Dellen in action with men, specifically what she does to throw them off guard.
Plot point scenes also contain discovery. The reader learns that Dellen has no idea that Santo was involved with someone called Madlyn Angarrack, despite what we know about Santo’s erstwhile relationship with her.
Something occurs during plot point scenes to propel the story forward. Here, we see Dellen’s attempt to seduce Cadan. We’re learning that when she’s in a bad mental state, she’s nearly on autopilot when it comes to men. Seduction is part of how she copes with stress, and there’s nothing more stressful than confronting the death of one’s child. We can expect more to come from Dellen, and now we see the form it might take.
The writer can consider other options in the creation of plot point scenes as well.
First, she can have something occur that requires a new setting, launching the characters into a situation with which they have to contend. Taking a page from literary history, if we examine Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, we learn soon enough that the wife and daughters of the late Mr. Dashwood are contending with the revelation that they are now unwelcome in their own home, which has been inherited by Mr. Dashwood’s son by a previous marriage and the son’s rapacious wife. Therefore, they must and they do find a new place to live. In this entirely new setting, they meet the scoundrel Mr. Willoughby and the heroic Colonel Brandon.
Second, there can be a pivot in a scene that propels the action forward. A misunderstanding occurs; a heart is broken; a lie is believed. In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy proposes marriage to Elizabeth Bennett in the most teeth-grating, skin-crawling fashion imaginable. In anger, she very rightly refuses him. But in this process she insults Mr. Darcy, wounding him as much as he has insulted and wounded her. He leaves; she bursts into tears. In a few pages, however, she’s going to learn something that will remove the veil from her eyes regarding Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham, and her own family. This comes from a letter Mr. Darcy has written her, recounting his family’s sad and painful history dealing with Mr. Wickham’s talent for seduction. We have more information now, which is going to be extremely useful as the novel progresses.
Third, something can occur which requires a completely sudden change of setting (albeit not a permanent one as in the previous example). In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett has gone with her aunt and uncle to Derbyshire. There, at his family home—Pemberley—she is able to make peace with Mr. Darcy. It looks as if love might prevail, but all at once she receives a letter telling her that her sister Lydia has eloped with the scoundrel Mr. Wickham. Chaos reigns at Longbourn, her home. This necessitates her removal back to Longbourn post haste, quite possibly throwing to the wind her rapprochement with Mr. Darcy.
Finally, a THAD reveals something that also propels the action forward. In the scene with Cadan, everything Dellen does—from lighting a cigarette to petting the parrot—adds to our storehouse of knowledge about her. It also propels Cadan’s later decision not to have anything to do with her, at least if he can hold on to that thought long enough to get some distance. In this scene as well, groundwork is being laid for future information. Seeing Dellen in action encourages the reader’s belief in revelations that illuminate her character, her relationship with her husband, and her conflict with her daughter.
Using what you previously wrote addressing a character’s status quo and the primary event which upsets the status quo, try your hand at creating the opening of a novel. In addition to either the primary event or the status quo, include two other elements that can be present in the opening of a novel (setting, outer landscape of character, inner landscape of character, THAD, etc.).
Here’s the first sentence: Of the three objects, he chose the lantern.
Using that sentence, create the opening scene of a novel. It can be as long or as short as you would like it to be, as long as it includes the problem, a dramatic question, and either the status quo or the primary event. It can include anything else as well.