Welcome back boys, girls, and everyone in-between or outside that binary way of looking at gender roles! (Wow- that was a lot to say, yet, remarkably painless. See how easy it is, people? Be more like me. But only a little bit; I’m trying to brand myself here, and we don’t need to flood the market.) This week my internet has been acting up. Or, more accurately, down. I’m trying to stick to that magical schedule beast I teased in a previous post, but as of yet, I haven’t nailed it down quite as solidly as I’d like. Regardless, let the trumpets blast and the angels sing as I come down from on high yet again to spray my wisdom all over your face.
…You like that, don’t you bitch? Of course you do. It’s why you’re here.
Now that we’ve got all that self-aggrandizing preface stuff out of the way, let’s talk about today’s subject: How to fix a scene that’s just not working.
Fellow writers, we’ve all been there. We’ve had that one scene that we need to get down on the page, but every time you look at it, it just doesn’t work. So, instead of taking a deep breath and refocusing your energies, you throw a full wine bottle at your computer monitor, and scream at your favorite television show about how the characters will never love you back, and that your parents did a terrible job of raising you. Then, you run out into the street with no pants on, screaming into the night, until the security guard at your apartment complex hits you in the exposed genitals with his taser gun, and you wake up in the county jail the next morning wearing a sombrero, with no memory of how you got there.
…It’s a tale as old as time.
BUT! There’s hope. For where there’s a scene, there’s a way, and as a High-Brow Book Scientist, (patent pending,) I have a few handy ways to handle that stubborn scene you can’t live with, but can’t get rid of.
TIP #1: CHANGE THE LOCATION
One of the things that really cements a scene, obviously, is where that scene is taking place. You could have two characters sharing exposition in their house, back and forth, until everything that needs to be explained is said, and then they leave. That’s not very exciting though, is it?
I had a similar situation with a scene in one of my manuscripts. (Psst! Publishers! I have manuscripts you want!) I’d had the characters exchanging exposition in the protagonist’s apartment once already; doing it multiple times in the same story was no bueno. I had no idea at first how to make it more interesting, but it was all information to move the plot forward. For a couple days I struggled with making the scene better, and eventually threw my hands up and said to myself, “Well, this is boring. Maybe I should spice things up by writing about a fucking pancake jamboree, instead of the crafted plot I’m trying to write out here.”
“…Yes!” I suddenly told myself. “…I absolutely should put these characters in the middle of a fucking pancake jamboree!”
So, I took the same boring scene, and I moved it to breakfast at a local pancake house. Suddenly, that stupid pancake place made my scene a lot more interesting for no logical reason whatsoever; other than the fact that my characters were now pouring syrup and discussing plot points while enjoying delicious pancakes. It was out of the apartment, and in a whole new location, completely foreign to the story, characters, and more importantly, the reader.
Situations like these can be good. Do you have a boring-ass scene taking place in a very mundane location? One of those things needs to change, and sometimes the setting is the easier way to go. Are your characters having an argument? Ask yourself if they need to be having that argument where they’re at—is there a better place where the argument might actually be more entertaining? Perhaps in the middle of an action sequence? Or on the bus, in front of a bunch of strangers as they ride through the bad part of town? Who knows?
If you can move the scene, and the scene gets a lot better as a result, the problem may not be the scene itself; it may just be where you’re playing that scene out.
TIP #2: UH-OH! THE BAD GUYS ARE HERE!
This one is pretty simple, and linked to my previous story about the pancake house. See, originally the scene was just an exposition scene, and while moving it to a pancake place made the scene a lot more interesting than it was, it had the added bonus of giving my villains the opportunity to show up unexpectedly.
Give your antagonists a newfound chance to antagonize! Even if it’s as simple as having a rival pop in to remind the characters and the audience that they’re kind of a dick, that’s okay, too! As long as it makes sense for them to show up in some way, why not do it? Maybe we haven’t seen the villain in a while, anyway. Let them dick it up!
Author’s Note: “Let Them Dick It Up!” was the title of my failed one-man cuckolding stage play. The sex scenes were awkward to act out on my own, and it never made it to Broadway as I’d once dreamed. Granted, I was only in sixth grade when I’d written/produced/starred in it, so my writing/acting style had yet to really come into its own, and the play was riddled with the kind of rookie cuckolding mistakes that only a twelve-year-old boy could make at the time. I was also given many, many detentions for ruining our elementary school’s Mother’s Day recital.
TIP #3: WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?
A long time ago, I used to run a tabletop RPG session with my friends, playing a pen-and-paper version of the old Firefly series. It was a fun game to run, because one of my favorite elements to it was giving the characters a run of bad luck.
One example was that the players had been hired to rob a priceless gem from a safe on a deep-space cruise ship, which was on her maiden voyage. After getting on board and starting the plan, the crew discovered that an old rival was on board, too, as one of the inaugural voyage’s passengers. (See Tip #2.)
This, however, was not the complication I threw in. The players believed it to be, (because they’d gotten hip to my penchant for plot-fuckery long ago,) so I let them keep believing that. The actual complication was that the ship had been deliberately steered into a comet storm, and the players suddenly found themselves in a deep-space Titanic re-enactment. By the time they navigated the disaster and made it to the vault to steal the gem, the vault was empty. They discovered that the ship’s charming, friendly first officer had actually been the one to steer the ship into the storm, so that he could use the ensuing chaos to rob the vault himself, and escape in one of the life pods.
But that’s what made the plot so interesting to them- if everything had gone to plan, it would have been a far less exciting adventure. So, throw a monkey wrench in there! If your scene is dull and flat, look at it and ask yourself, “What’s the WORST thing that could happen right now?” What if the character’s car died in the bad part of town while on their way to the next scene? What if the person they’re secretly plotting against comes knocking at the front door mid-planning, or the main character’s love interest has a skiing accident right before prom? Or hey- what if the only person who knows the combination to a lock, or a password to the computer isn’t available?
Shake it up! Your protagonist can’t overcome anything if it all goes smoothly and according to plan, now can they?
TIP #4: HELL, NONE OF THIS IS WORKING- LET’S JUST KILL SOMEBODY!
While I’m no Game of Thrones fan personally, killing off characters was done so frequently on that show, it was a trend which had been beaten to death with a stick by the end. (Probably because they’d run out of characters to murder, and needed to use their killin’ stick on something.) But, despite my personal opinion of the show, when done in moderation, this is just good, old-fashioned problem-solving advice at its finest.
Author’s Note: This is not good, old-fashioned problem-solving advice for real life. I am not (openly) condoning murder as a problem-solving tool. However, I will say that there are a lot of people out there who double-park and/or jaywalk, and someone should be out there doing something about that.
The “Hell None Of This Is Working- Let’s Just Kill Somebody” method is something that gets overused a lot, so I’m reticent to suggest it as a story fixer, even if it does work. Also, don’t kill someone you’re just going to resurrect later. That’s weak sauce, too. (Seriously- name a comic book character who hasn’t “died” when sales dipped, and returned at some later point in their career.)
That being said, I have used this one myself. Look at your story, and the scene you are in. Do you find yourself looking for something to have one of the characters in the scene do? Are they just sort of… set dressing? Well, paint a target on that useless motherfucker, and get to snuffing! Maybe they’ve had their wine poisoned, or a gunshot from out of nowhere puts a breezy new window in their skull. Hit them with a bus in the middle of a sentence! Suddenly, that fancy dinner party has just gone up a bit on the old “interesting shit” scale, hasn’t it? (Especially if the bus thing were to happen. Seriously—what the hell is that bus even DOING at a dinner party? I’ll tell you what: MURDER.)
Seriously, though; this is one you should use sparingly. The last thing you want to do is take out a character, only to realize you need them later, and must now bring them back to life. Also, if you’re killing a character just for the shock value of killing them, don’t do it. That’s hollow. Killing a character should move the plot forward, or have serious ramifications. Just like in real life.
So, that’s it! Those four tips should help you spice up a flat scene, lickety split. There’s lots of other ways you can shake up a scene, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you how to fix your writing all day long—I have shitty writing of my own to fix. Now, get out there, review those flat scenes, and see if there’s anything that can be done about them!
High-Brow Book Scientist, signing off. See you next time, my loyal followers! (Seriously, you all need a name, or I’m just going to start calling you my Disciples.)
…Seriously, though. Don’t go around murdering people in real life. “The Blog Told Me To Do It” will never stand up in court.