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Saving a Dying scene

Inspirational writing advice: If you have a lagging scene, amp it up by imagining what could make the character's situation even worse--then do that!

For a year, maybe even more, I've struggled with writing this scene that I knew was very pivotal in my novel: a Christmas day family meal. Something was missing--it was really bugging me. I've rewritten it a few times, even shared it with others. I couldnt' identify what was wrong or how to fix it--until the other night.

The original purpose of the scene was to place all these people in close quarters at a dining table to ratchet up the stresses and strains between the people present--husband and wife strained to the breaking point with anger toward each other, a husband's burden to confess to his wife an affair, piqued painfully by the presence of her pregnant best friend who shares his indiscretion, and a mostly uninvited guest with possible romantic innuendo with one of the said wives. plus usual parent-adult child stuff. What I'd written didn't deal with any resolutions to any of those big conflicts--just small conversational arguments that can break out among people with very different beliefs and ideas. I liked the tension between the surface arguments--what was said out loud--and the under-the-surface conflicts and what people were thinking, but not saying.

In July I blogged about this problem in How to Write the Holiday Meal? and told myself, after exploring through writing the blog:
Should there be some high drama, or just the rumblings of all these little conflicts? Hmmm...that's a question I've never entertained before. Does someone snap? And if so, who? Ash could--he's under stress, even though he's normally so mellow. That'd be a surprise. Ginny could, easily, but I'm not really sure what that would accomplish in my story.


I revised heavily before Christmas, but I'd never really advanced anything for Ash, Mr. mellow, to snap about.

Then, the other night, I was just thinking--not trying to solve this problem, just thinking. I was thinking about another chapter, one that happens later, about when Ash's mother comes to see his new house--it's a pivotal point in the plot--the revelation of a secret neither Ash or his mother know is a secret, but that Ash's dad has been keeping. Suddenly, curled in the darkness of my bed, I thought,"What if Ash's mother came to that holiday meal and all the conflict of that later scene is added to what's already going on in the holiday meal scene?" My eyes flew open and I didn'tfall asleep for a while, my mind whirring with the possibilities.

I've mostly written it now. I had to change the timing a bit to accommodate other practical plot points--the holiday meal now occurs on New Year's Day, and I cut a couple characters entirely to add in Ash's mother and her boyfriend. As I began writing it, I began to see I would be writing the scene from more than one point of view. My original was from only Ginny's point of view (Ginny is Ash's wife) My new version starts with GInny's view, then switched to Ash's, then to his mother's. I realized it had to be in that order, from the least aware, to the most aware, so the reader can see how each person sees the situation very differnetly. If I started with Maizy, Ash's mother's point of view, it'd ruin our experience of Ginny's and Ash's POV because the secret would be out.

 As I unpacked all that each was thinking, I think I found narrative gold. There's so much dramatic tension now because while Maizy is silently living her turmoil of the secret her ex husband kept from her, Ash her son, completely oblivious to any of that, takes his mother's odd behavior as her disapproval directed at him--which then leads him to jump to the conclusion that his Dad told his mom what he shared in confidence--that he'd had an affair and had to tell is wife. I found my way to shake Mr. mellow. I get him to snap!

I recall reading some advice somewhere that a great way to amp up a scene is to just add more to it--think what more bad could happen and then make it happen. I also recall a writer saying to me once that the climax of a novel could happen for all story lines in a simultaneous moment. I never really saw how that could be true, at least in my novel. Now this scene may not be the novel's climax, but it sure is a high stress point, and I somehow stumbled on how to overlap two story line's crisis points and have them be set off simultaneously. It's very energizing!

Other writing I do:


Acidity in Your Diet Linked with Weight Loss Struggle, Depression and Degenerative Disease

Antidepressants: If They Work Due to the Placebo Effect, What is The Harm in That?

Chef Jamie Oliver Versus School Lunches: Where Do The Dietary Guidelines Come From Anyway?

How to Determine If Your Child is Ready to Begin Kindergarten

Second thoughts: Restructuring my novel didn't pan out the way I'd hoped...

In my last entry, I asked people two questions. Everyone who responded, either to me in person, or on my facebook page, all said the same thing: based on my first page, they did want to read more. (Now, I can imagine others may have had the opposite opinion but didn't want to share that opinion.)  


But if I can go by the yeses, then that's great news! (And thanks, those who responded. Your feedback gives me much-needed motivation to do this work that is years away from completion...)


I also asked: 

Which of these descriptions of the whole story sounds like a better read?

1) The story of 2 couples who are connected, Maizy and Curt, and Ash and Ginny, all telling their viewpoints of the events in their lives in the year 2008-2009; Maizy and Curt's memories flash back to 1978-1979 occasionally.

2) The book alternates between the story of Curt and Maizy in 1979, and the story of Ash and Ginny in 2008, both being told independently of the other, and as if each is the present (though you'll know by the dates that one happened earlier than the other). Instead of seeing an older Maizy and Curt remembering their young life, you'll see their young life, and you'll also see how Ginny and Ash view Maizy and Curt in 20008. While the 2 stories don't comment on each other, the reader will be able to make connections and draw parallels as they figure out how the two stories are intertwined.

Fewer people responded to this question, but I got 2 against one saying they preferred option 2. And I was really leaning toward option 2. It's daunting, and requires considerable rewriting to what I have done already, but it was also an intoxicating idea--I was excited that it could improve my story and let me do what I'd really wanted to do from the beginning: get you inside the heads of young Maizy and Curt, so you, the reader, could feel what they felt, even if you didn't agree with or like their responses to their circumstances.

So I've spent the past 10 days or so working on that overhaul, but I didn't delete the version I'd already written; instead, I made a copy and started remaking the copy. In trying to write the 1977 storyline about young Maizy and Curt, I've run into some problems that have me rethinking already:

1) I don't want to write a romance novel. But if I follow this new idea of telling both couples' mid-late 20s (age) stories, then that's what my novel will start out like: a romance. All the steamy parts all grouped together in the beginning of the book, most of the points of view putting you in the head of a character who is falling in love, or in the torment of an attraction, etc. I am not really comfortable writing a romance novel. I see my story as a drama that inevitably has parts of it that feature romance and seduction. 
I kinda like some features of telling Maizy and Cur'ts story through their nearly-60-year-old memories. They temper it, shed wisdom on their choices, and their story comes through quite differently. The parts of it that are very hard and uncomfortable for me to write are easier for me as the writer if I transmit them this way. 
Now that might just be cowardly of me--I shouldn't not tell a story cuz it's hard or uncomfortable--or even because I think it would block me from trying to publish in the Christian market. So by far, a more worthy reason I prefer telling Maizy and Curt's romance from their older points of view is that I like how I can space it out however I like--the flashbacks can happen anywhere in the novel that I see fit--so my book wouldn't be overloaded with all romance in the opening.

2) The stories have completely different pacing. Ginny and Ash's story is going to cover about a year. But in writing Maizy and Curt's story chronologically, starting from their mid-20s, I see how it's such a fast pace comparatively. 3 months or 3 years pass between scenes. I'm not sure that's a good pairing. How weird would it be for the reader to alternate between the two stories, the first one at a comparatively snail's pace, the time between scenes sometimes just minutes or hours, then the other storyline runs through the years, not getting nearly as deep in the emotional developments of the day to day and week to week happenings. 

My perception is that it makes the story of Maziy and Curt too shallow, because I don't delve as deeply into their thoughts and lives. Which leads me to 3.

3) Trying this new structure begs me to write more for the Maziy and Curt story. The stories are very unequal in length, but my novel is already full 2x the length of a first-time novel that sells. Writing Maizy and Cur'ts story chronologically seems to require me to invent and explain a lot more, to fill in the gaps--but I need to be thinking how to cut my book, not expand it.

So at this point, and based only on my own worries, I don't think I can change the structure of my book. I think it's best to stick with telling Asher and Ginny's story in the present, but letting Maizy and Curt, as characters in their late 50s, tell their story through memories.

But some good things did come of the attempt to change the structure. I had to write many more scenes for Maizy and Curt, and in doing so, I learned a lot more about them. Even if some of those scenes never get to stay in the novel, I know what happened, and their lives are more fully fleshed out. And that should inevitably lead to me writing them more completely as 50-sometihng-year-olds.


Other things I publish:
Postpartum Depression, Psychological Distress Predicted by Previous Traumatic Birth

Autism Rates Rise; University of Toledo Poises Itself to be Primary Resource for Deluge of Adults with Autism

Fast Food, Junk Food and Obesity Subsidized by Federal Government

The American Diet--Are We All Made of Corn?