Five Ingredients of the Scene for the Fiction Writer, Introduction, Conclusion 3, by Emily Hanlon

CONCLUSION THREE: FICTION WRITERS DON’T NEED A LOT OF DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES


This series begins on this blog page on January 27 and continues on February 7, 2004

After a lifetime of writing and twenty-five years of teaching writing, I’ve boiled them down to five. Everything else builds on these five techniques. Everything else is artistic growth and subtlety that comes as you develop as a writer.

THE FIVE INGREDIENTS AS BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE SCENE:

1. Point of View
2. Dialogue
3. Dramatic tension/Action
4. Mood
5. Flashback

These five techniques are the building blocks of the scene. Most stories and ninety-nine percent of novels grow from scene.
The scene leads to chapters, the chapter leads to parts, and the parts to the completed novel. To my mind, everything else is a variation of this theme.

A WORD TO THE WISE:

These five techniques alone do not a fiction writer make. Fiction writing is more than a craft; it is a creative art. Learning these techniques will, however, go a long way toward filling up your writer’s Bag of Tricks. But most important, learning, embracing, owning technique gives you options as a writer, And having options makes it easier to fall down the rabbit hole into the cosmic landscape of your creative unconscious, which is where the passion and the juice lies. (To explore the falling down the rabbit hole as well as the passion and the juice, also see Emily’s book and tapes, The Art of Fiction Writing…)

MY GOAL:

My goal is to keep this book simple. Technique should not be complicated. The more simple, the more apt you are to discover the power and beauty of the techniques.

HEY, WHAT ABOUT WORDS AND STRUCTURE?

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t discussed either words or structure. And I won’t, except for this: suffice to say, we love words or we wouldn’t be writers. But if you focus on words when you are beginning your story, you will stay in your mind, which is where your ICK lives. (Ever spend a couple of hours, even days, trying to find precisely the right words. You spend half the time in the thesaurus or dictionary – not to mention thinking you are going to lose your mind!
Words do not drive a story. Characters drive a story. Words are the vehicles, gorgeous, tantalizing vehicles but vehicles none the less. So my advice to myself and to you: forget words. Your best writing in terms of language happens when you give yourself over to your characters and the joy and passion of your Inner Writer.

As for structure, that’s far too varied and complicated to boil down into anything simple. I don’t think about structure in my own novel until I have a fairly decent draft. So, if anyone tells you there’s a blueprint for structuring a novel, don’t believe them. Novels aren’t screenplays. And we’re not talking about formula writing. As far as I’m concerned, laying a structure on your book before you begin is like trying to fit a circle into a square hole. It is my experience that structure is a mystery that reveals itself. Once that happens, you begin to explore and play with it. So structure is important but beyond the venue of this book.
And now onto the work of the book. After exploring the five ingredients of the scene in detail, we’ll move on to ways to develop and refine them by weaving them into the concept of writing as a process. We will explore how to create a story from nothing but an image called up from the unconscious, how to mine your first drafts for the jewels that lie there, the difference between rewriting and editing and how to develop point of view, passion, story and suspense by interviewing your character.

By the time you finish, you will understand in a visceral way what Madeleine L’Engle meant when she said, “My characters pull me, push me, take me further than I want to go, fling open doors to rooms I don’t want to enter, throw me into interstellar space, and all this long before my mind is ready for it.” However, with the writer’s Bag of Tricks you’ll be carrying by then, you’ll have the tools to let your characters take the lead!

The Five Ingredients of the Scene, (which will appear in installments on this blog site over the next few months) is a companion to The Art of Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying ( a workbook and two audio tapes). The Five Ingredients of the Scene will explore technique and craft, the “rational” aspects of the creative process. This will be more powerful for you if you have learned to quiet your Inner Critic, have fallen down the rabbit hole and have become at home in your own creative unconscious. If you have not read The Art of Fiction Writing, I urge you to do so.

Click here to explore The Art of Fiction Writing.


Next Installment: An Exploration of Point of View...


© Emily Hanlon, www.thefictionwritersjourney.com, 2004
emily@emilyhanlon.com

This series on The Five Ingredients of the Scene for the Fiction Writer can be passed on to a friend but cannot be reprinted on another site with written permission from Emily Hanlon. Any reprint must have the copyright, a link back to my site: www.thefictionwritersjourney.com. My bio as well as other articles by Emily Hanlon can be found by clicking here.