Flat Screen, Flat Scene: When a Scene Doesn't Work

I recently read part of the first draft of a novel where a 30^th-birthday dinner  was to end in conflict. This one didn't. The scene was well-written and the characters distinct, but the scene was flat as a newly tarred driveway. Why? No tension.

A scene can lack tension for various reasons. In this case, it was because none of the characters was allowed to react to the discomfiture of a main character when someone inadvertently reminds him he was away from his wife when she was dying of cancer. Actually, it may be more accurate to say everyone's reactions to the moment were subdued. It made the scene and the characters appear dull, one-dimensional.

Conflict should be palpable

The other reason there was no tension was that the protagonist's own emotions were muted. What did he really feel? How would he show that? How would others respond to his pain, especially his daughter-in-law, whose birthday they were celebrating? Would she feel empathy? Would others sense something is wrong but not be sure how to respond? What about the man's date—does she long to reach out to him but can't because he won't accept her love? What about his son? Does he feel guilt because he was with this mother when his father wasn't? Since he's a doctor, was he complicit in his mother's passing?

In this case, the universal lack of response drained the life out of the scene. Yet, characters—I like to call them people—long to get out of their shells if we'll let them. We don't need permission to write the truth; it will set us writers and our characters free.

Tip: The fix in a case like this is to revise by re-visualizing, re-visioning the scene, if we can use those words as Natalie Goldberg did in Writing Down the Bones. Start with a clean sheet of paper or a new document, and close your eyes. Allow the scene to materialize, and watch each person respond. This will deepen the scene and broaden it. For more on this technique, see the post "Stephen King to the Rescue: Using Imagery to Bring a Story to Life." And see the August issue of The Writer, the magazine archive piece by Stephen King called, "Use Imagery to Bring Your Story to Life."
    

Bitter and Sweet: Variations in Tone

Most writing manuals advise writers to keep the tone of their stories consistent. In itself, this is good advice. But what these guides usually mean is that writers often err in how they vary tone, so it can be best, especially for the emerging writer, to play it safe and keep a story's tone consistent. Yet, like all manmade rules, this one can be broken. Here's when and how.

First, let's define tone. It can help to think of tone in writing like the tone of your voice. With virtually limitless variations, you can convey a range of meanings and emotions — sarcasm, joy, sadness. And you can convey degree of meaning and emotion with volume. The same is true of writing.

To hone the definition, consider that tone helps create mood, per James Scott Bell in Revision & Self-Editing. A more complete definition comes from Noah Lukeman in The First Five Pages. As he points out, the distinction between sound and tone is subtle. Sound has to do with sentence structure (flow and rhythm), whereas tone "is the voice behind the work." As to how tone relates to style and voice, "A writer's style covers all of his work, while he may alter his narrative voice from project to project to suit each one. Voice is subordinate to style," as Peter Selgin pointed out on this blog.

So how do writers err when it comes to tone? Most often, like point of view shifts, writers vary the tone of a piece in the wrong place — like in the middle of a scene, early in the development of a character or in the overall story. Since tone creates mood, you can gradually vary the tone in a scene to increase suspense, or use it to show character development. The key in both instances is timing. In a scene or character, it's best to change tone gradually to show progression and avoid jarring the reader. In a story as a whole, tone has a lot to do with genre (think of TV shows with categories like comedy, drama, mystery). While many stories cross over from one genre to another, most maintain a consistent tone throughout.

This doesn't mean tone should never vary. Some examples where this can work is to  distinguish one character from another, to provide nuances in scenes, and to add depth and breadth to the story. Yet, as with tone of voice, less is often more. So be attentive to "sound" of your writing when you go back and read a piece, and especially as you return to edit.

Resource: Find Your Creative Muse