Thoughts on Scene and Narrative

The basic building block of an essay is the paragraph, but the basic building block of fiction and memoir is a scene. That’s because while essays are designed to engage the mind, fiction and memoir seeks to cast an encompassing illusion, what some critics call “the fictive dream.”

Consider how most of us have at one time or another been reading—perhaps a comic book, perhaps a novel by Judy Blume, perhaps War and Peace— when someone nearby or in a neighboring room has spoken to us. It often happens that we do not hear that person, and that is because the illusion that the book casts is more powerful than the immediate physical world we inhabit.

One immediate implication of this phenomenon for the writer is to deem anything in the text that augments the fictive illusion to be “good writing.” Anything that diminishes the illusion is “bad writing.” By and large, writing that calls attention to itself will diminish the illusion—if inadvertent, we’ll wish the writer knew how to spell or could at least keep the eye color of the heroine consistent, brown on page 10 and blue on page 12…this will never do. With overwriting, flowery diction, strained metaphors, we sense a writer lurking behind the text waving at us: “Look at me! See how terrific I am!” If we stop to admire the writer, the illusion of the story before us diminishes…bad writing. Authorial intrusions, a staple of 18th century fiction, similarly diminish the illusion. “Yes, dear Reader, little did Tom Jones know what lay in store for him in London, but as we shall see, little could have been done to prepare him for the depravity that awaited him.” Odd usage will stop the illusion cold—so lose any list of synonyms for the word “said,” and try not to have your characters expostulate or—heaven forbid—ejaculate their emotions onto the page. Finally, passages that belabor the obvious will leave a reader wondering whether the oven needs cleaning, certainly preferable to going on with reading a passage that tells us not only that years have passed, but that in each year four seasons went by, accompanied by 52 weeks and 13 lunar months, falling leaves, snow and glorious spring new growth…well, yes, but get on with the story.

The second immediate implication for the writer who acknowledges the importance of scenes is that she recognizes her obligation to supply the reader with sensory detail. Joseph Conrad in his “Preface” to The Nigger of the Narcissus suggested that an author who wanted to render a specific time and place was obliged to give the reader at least three senses, but that on of those senses in every case must be sight.

Student writers who want their writing to be vivid are advised to take this principle to heart. Show us the living room, let us hear the dialogue, note the aroma of cinnamon from the kitchen, have a character taste the sweetened tea and run her fingers along the polished mahogany tabletop. Put us there. Writers are people who dream dreams for other people. Dream a dream for us.

Narrative has the great efficiency of being able to tell the reader what the reader needs to know so we can swiftly get to the next scene. Too much narrative will dissolve the illusion—the voice of the writer becomes a beating drum and we fear a short answer test at the end of the long narrative passage. So the adage, “Show, don’t tell,” is generally good advice.

What to show ands what to tell? Ah, well, writing is called an Art for a reason, but here’s a principle that may help.

If we believe that storytelling as an art form needs to engage the reader in a dream that engages the heart and mind with matters of plot, character and theme, then it makes sense that in a scene all three of these matters need to advance. A scene that attends to just one of these—say, plot—will seem like thin gruel.

See, for example, the opening scene of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes is in a bar when Lady Brett Ashley arrives with an adoring group of men. The men are homosexuals. Jake has loved Brett for years, but has not seen her since she went off and married badly; worse, in the interval, Jake suffered a wound in the war that leave him incapable of sex without reducing his sexual desire. Jake is disgusted to see her in their company. Jake’s love for Brett, the impossibility of their consummating that love, Jake’s terror of homosexuals (with whom he could have sex), all presage a scene later in the novel when Brett, Jake and several men who also desire Brett go to Spain to see the bullfights. Jake, the expert, talks about the difference between steers and bulls, and Brett—the only “cow” in the gang—would rather be with the only steer in the gang. But instead, since she cannot really have the man she loves…well, you need to read it.

I am “telling” and the novel “shows.”