Saw these at The Neiman Narrative Digest, from a Laurie Hertzel speech early this year. She's the enterprise editor at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and she's good.
Tip one: Write with a Camera Angle To make a scene vivid, think like a movie maker. Don't try to describe everything; aim your camera. What do you want to zoom in on? Do you want to show the subject closely, intimately, slow down and build tension? Or do you want to pull back, show more sweep, use a wider camera angle, so to speak -- pan around the room or the park or the murder scene or wherever the scene is taking place -- and show a fuller view?
Tip two: Use Both Scene and Summary Keep in mind that print journalists have a tool that movie makers and TV producers don't have. Except for the rare instances when they use voice-over narration, movies and TV shows are exclusively scene. Scene is their only tool because they rely completely on what can be shown through sight and sound. But print writers have another tool. They can use summary. It's useful to know the structural difference, so you can decide if something is worthy of a scene or if it can be dispatched in summary. A shorthand way to look at the difference between scene and summary is to think of the difference between "showing" and "telling." You tell in summary. You show in scene. Scene is used when you want to put the reader in the moment, walking right beside you, seeing everything you see, immersed in a specific moment with specific action. Scenes are told in real time. You see the events as they are unfolding. They have specific locations. You can picture them taking place. They have action and characters and dialogue and detail. To report well for scene, you have to really burrow in with great detail. Summaries cover spans of time. They stitch scenes together, getting you from one to the next. The summary is usually shorter. It's less specific, more general and global. It helps skip you ahead in time, and fills the reader in on stuff he needs to know but doesn't necessarily need to see in detail. If you have a minor event that leads up to an important scene, use summary for the first event and then let the important event unwind as a scene.
Tip Three: Use Telling Details and Metaphor Even when you're going moment-by-moment, you're still choosing which details you want to include in the story. Make sure they have meaning. You want telling details, not random details.
Tip Four: Vary Your Pace. You don't want all of your scenes to move at the same steady pace. You don't want to give every fact and action the same emphasis as all the other facts and actions. Slow down for crucial and dramatic moments. Let the moment unfold with some tension.
Tip five: Move forward and backward in time. A single scene, by and large, progresses chronologically. That is, a scene begins at a specific point in time and moves forward, moment by moment, to another specific point. Sometimes a writer includes a flashback to give history and/or context. A really skilled writer might move forward in time. As long as you are absolutely clear as to what you're doing, as long as you are skillful enough not to lose the reader, you can do this. It's hard.
Tip Six: Know Where to End Your Scene. There has to be a sense of completion, but you don't want it to feel too complete; you want the reader to keep reading.
Leave a comment