A first-class scene

Do you ever analyze a scene in a book?

There are several things that must contribute to this, but one of the most important is to
Define Conflict.  Who drives or motivates  the scene?  What does he want? Does he get it? if not, what stops him?  Can he change this?

Has the scene been well set? Do we (the reader) know  the value the character puts on the object he is trying to achieve? Will it change his life? Or merely make him more comfortable?  Is it worthy?

Throughout the scene keep checking what the character seems to be doing and what he is actually doing.

Note the closing of the scene. What has changed? There must be something that has changed.

The reader should be able to locate the turning point - where action becomes a reaction, and the shape or the pattern of events will change. 

It sounds easy enough. Now to go to my work in progress and check.....

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

What's a bolly?

The day before yesterday was blazing hot – 32 degrees C. Too hot to work by 11.30am, so we lazed about and dragged ourselves through the day.  Yesterday we woke to a grey overcast sky  and got to work right away after breakfast on hauling away all the overgrown shrubbery we had cut back from the drive over the last two days. The drive is now a good third wider, and dh is getting more confidence in driving the tractor. 

The temperature was reasonable  ~ 23 degrees indoors, so probably a bit more outside, especially when the sun shines. But there is hazy cloud cover, which gives some protection to delicate skins like ours! I'm happy to say that the channels I dug have drained some of the big puddles that are a result of the spring, which means less mud for Tim to splatter about. I enjoyed myself splodging about in wellies, wieldsing trowel and spade ~ perhaps I should have been a water engineer instead of a librarian.

I stayed up until 10.20pm last night finishing off the Jack Reacher novel. Persuader, first published in 2003 in the UK. This must be about the fourth Reacher novel I’ve read and I’ve only just noticed that they are written in the first person.

I looked at the first page again and it is only when I got to the last line that  that the personal pronoun “I” appears. Everything Reacher sees and thinks is described, and described in detail, but it is definitely first person narrative.

It gives me an interesting slant for the action sequences for Matho. I’m thinking I’ve maybe glossed over the action and ought to give more detail. Not that I can write reams about Glocks and Uzis as Child does ~ talk about info dumps! But there must be some detail about sixteenth century weapons I can latch onto. And it is about time I got down to doing some writing - Ive been here a week today.

The  picture is of the bolly, or half of it. Most old French houses in the region have one and they are a boon, because  the family can sit out there and enjoy the warm  weather without frying to a crisp in the sun. A bolly is all about shade, built out of green oak  and extends the size of the house. It's like an outside room. I took the picture on the first night here, and the bolly wasn't exactly the tidiest place, but today it is much neater! We sit there for our evening meal, and enjoy the view across the fields.The view you see in the pic leads to the drive.

Inciting Incidents

The inciting incident is the reason for everything that follows, so it needs to be well thought out. I used to be guilty of writing an attention-grabbing first page that would hopefully catch an agent’s eye. It never occurred to me that I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to how the rest of the story was going to flow from it. Now I find my first page incident has to work extra hard and be the springboard for the rest of the story.

It’s probably true that most authors first start writing in a haphazard way. In my first attempts, I used to think what would I do if…..Then I discovered that wasn’t anything like enough. What I should have been thinking was what would this character do if he’s in open country and hounds chase him…

Sometimes what happens is less important than how, to whom and why it happens. There should be insight, too, or else nothing is learned or gained. Actions cause Reaction, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Insights can come swiftly, or take their own sweet time. But however long the pause, there has to be a renewed action from the hero, which in turn often elicits a surprising reaction. This sequence of Action/Reaction builds into a Turning Point, and the reader should be empathising with the protagonist every step of the way as he nears his goal.

Action all the way

I’ve been reading blogs instead of writing them today (mainly because Roland Garros is rained off! And on Ginger's blog I found something to make me think.
Ginger says: 'Sometimes you see something on TV that prompts a comparison to writing novels. Authors are always supposed to start off with a hook that reels the reader in, and keep the story interesting, no matter how many twists and turns it takes.'

She goes on to relate the summary of a US medical show which sounds as if it exhausts every emotion in the viewer.
It reminded me of the reason I stopped watching Casualty and Holby City and the like. The story lines seem to me to be as similarly fast-paced as the American show, though I don’t think crocodiles have featured in them yet. My question is this: are these shows a Good Thing if they leave people wanting books that read as fast as the tv shows?

I'm not sure. I gave up watching Casulaty and Holby City when I started predicting the accidents, however unlikely, that were going to end up as the hospital's problem. Someone's cooking? - there'll be a fire. Climbing a ladder - he'll fall, and take three pedestrians with him. Driving - well, it's never a single crash now, but it's always a multiple vehicle pile-up on the motorway and someone always has to have a limb taken off....

Is this entertainment? It seems so.
I imagine, perhaps even hope, that a good many people are turned away by how often reality is sacrificed for a good story on tv. As book writers, rather than tv writers, we are encouraged to make things real for the reader. Agents demand characterisation as well as action, and the books that haunt our best seller lists and take national prizes often fill six hundred pages with episodic and slow-paced happenings that cannot really be called action.

It seems to me that the two mediums are vastly different, but somewhere in the middle there is a blurring. I’m hoping that the blurring stays just that and does not impinge the standards of one medium upon the other.
Any views on this?

The pic is the inside of the central block of Seaton Delaval Hall after the 1822 fire.