Day 04 – Meet the Half-Scene

For writers new to fiction there are 2 traps to shun, and “the half-scene” helps you avoid both:

* Telling your story as a single long summary of events.
Unless the summary is top-notch it will fail to engage the reader’s emotional involvement. Further, you cover the entire ground so quickly you begin to wonder if you ever had much of a story to begin with.

* Telling your entire story as a series of dramatic scenes.
I know, I know: show don’t tell. But if you write using nothing but scenes, your story will inch along at a glacial pace. You’ll be 50 or 60 pages in and still in the primary stages of developing characters and setting – and with no major plot point in sight.

The half scene is nothing more than a few action images, a couple of lines of dialogue. You isolate an iconic moment and break it out of summary. It’s the taste or a scene without all the baggage that comes with a full scene.

I’ve posted in greater depth about the power and usefulness of narrative summary and half-scene.

* Use specfic words and phrases.
Avoid general terms (fruit), go for nouns that project a specific image (apple).

* Use power verbs.
Also called action verbs, they contain the image of a specific action (curse), rather than a general class of actions (protest).

* Use descriptions or actions (again, specific).
Gestures, behavior to keep the reader’s emotional involvement fresh.

* Include nuggests of sensation in the flow of summary.
Like the stunning flash of a car bomb, the helpless scent of roses gone bad.

* Write with as much tone and attitude as is appropriate for the narrative voice.
Yours or your character’s, that is. This gives your summary personality–again, promoting emotional involvement.

But back to the half-scene:

Today’s mini-task: write one.
Start by quickly summarizing a series of related events, in 1-2 pages. Use your own possible story, of if you don’t have a story yet, take a situation from the news (or make one up).

Then pick a beat that seems to encapsulate the deepest meaning of the moment, and break it out as I described above.

30 minutes. GO.