How to Write a Brilliant Novel: The Easy Step-By-Step Method of Crafting a Powerful Story (Go! Write Something Brilliant) (13 page)

(Note: I deleted a bit of backstory here that also described motivation.)

[Okay, now we’re moving into the Action scene.]

He sat up, hung his head in his hands. Laughter – was that Haley? -- drifted from the kitchen.

He stood, grabbed his jeans, and shucked them on. Then he crept toward the door.

The aroma of breakfast – eggs and sausage? roped him in, and he grabbed his shirt and edged out, into the hall.

[end scene]

Or, you could write an entire 1200-1500 word passage that is
just
a ReAction. It’s all about the rhythm of the novel. Just make sure you have the right flow to keep the reader hooked and moving with you through the book.

See—it’s not so hard to make a scene, right?

Action

• POV
  
• Action Objectives
  
• Goal
  
• Conflict
  
• Disaster
  

Reaction

• Setting
  
• ReAction
  
• Dilemma
  
• Decision
  

Setting is a powerful tool in storytelling. It evokes emotion and can be used as another character in the story. The overall setting is essential. it is the setting historical London during WWII? Is it a Kansas farm? Is it Montana? The setting will evoke emotions that draw in your reader. But a great book has more than setting. It also has
Storyworld
!

Storyworld starts, however, with setting, so let’s talk about that first.

How do you discover your
setting?

• Research:
  When
  you’re
  deciding
  where
  your
  story
  takes
  place,
  invest
  in
  researching that
  place.
  That’s
  why
  it’s
  good
  to
  start
  with
  a
  place
  you
  know,
  because
  while
  you’re learning all these other techniques, it’ll be easier to invest yourself in a familiar setting. But
  if you don’t know it, learn it. Visit the
  setting. I can’t
  stress this enough. Take pictures, talk to the people, watch people and their mannerisms that are particular to that place.
  
• Observe:
  While you’re researching, watch for the details that will make a story
  come to life. Sights, smells, interesting places for scenes to take place. I’ve had
  scenes in caves, the Moscow subway, the woods, small airplanes, a monastery,
  coffee shops, orphanages—even the mall in Washington DC. And I’ve been fortunate to have gone to all those places. But I’ve never been in a house on fire—and I
  had two scenes in
  The Perfect Match
  inside a burning house. So I talked to firefighters
  and read as much as I could from personal accounts. And, according to the firefighters
  I
  talked
  to,
  I
  got
  it
  right.
  So,
  it
  is
  possible
  to
  write
  a
  scene
  if
  you
  haven’t
  been to the location, if you’ve done the right
  research.
  

Use people as props. Look around you. Who could be in that scene w``ith your character? People are everywhere, and they can help make a scene unforgettable.

This excerpt is from my journal, something I wrote while waiting for a train on the pier in Vladivostok:

Pigeons waddle in the center of the square, over grey cobblestones, searching for treasures, their heads bobbing like royalty.

A couple wrapped in a love pretzel . . .

A sullen man with distant eyes, one of them so mangled from a recent run-in with a fist, it glowed red-blood. He gazed out over the harbor, flicking suspicious glances in my direction.

Across the square, two long-gone drunks search the ads in the paper as if reading the stock quotes. Two benches down, a couple women, their pudgy bodies squeezed into black leggings and fluorescent pink tee-shirts prop each other up, feigning sleep.

The
smells
of
diesel
fuel,
fresh
fish,
and
dust
laden
the
humid
breeze.

The sound of a welder grinds (hisses, snarls…I was searching for the right word) in the background amid the clank and whistles of a working shipyard.

In the far distance, the mangled voice of the train loudspeaker drones announcements.

Overhead, the sky is an enigmatic, mysterious gray, neither ominous nor hopeful, shedding (or casting) a dismal (or despondent) theme upon us travelers.

Obviously, I’m a people watcher, But if you can’t go to your setting, watch movies filmed there, get maps and travel books, read about the area via non-fiction or fiction books. Ask people who’ve been there about their impressions, or search the Internet for information. Consider consulting a Chamber of Commerce site.

• Mood:
  When you’re choosing your setting for your scene, find a place that will work to
  create
  conflict
  for
  the
  POV
  character,
  whether
  it’s
  the
  mood
  the
  scene
  evokes,
  or
  whether
  it
  provides physical opposition to your character’s goals. For example, in one scene in
  The Perfect
  Match, my character had to investigate a burned out building.. Her goal? To prove
  herself
  capable
  and
  independent
  so
  she
  could
  get the
  job
  of
  Fire
  Chief.
  However,
  the
  setting
  itself provided the conflict, because it was dangerous, and she found herself in a predicament that devastated her goals.
  

What is Storyworld?

Storyworld
is
the
sounds,
smells, tastes,
touch,
and
rich,
focused visual
details
that
convey
the impressions,
opinions,
and overall
state
of
emotion
of
the POV
character,
and
in
turn,
the reader.

Storyworld is more than setting, however. You need to know and understand your setting, but that’s just one aspect of Storyworld. I want you to start thinking of your Storyworld as the third character in your novel. Middle Earth. WW II London. Mitford. Narnia. Oz.

Wherever your story is set, it will have a character, a feeling to it that lends itself to the story, and works either with your characters, or against them.

A book without a Storyworld is like watching a movie without the setting, a play without props. Sure we’ll use our imaginations, but we have to work harder to do it. Set up your Storyworld correctly and your reader moves freely about the book.

Building a Storyworld is simply about gathering up your elements, and then putting them together, using a few tricks.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Let’s start with the basics: the Five Ws. Who, What, Where, When, Why. The reader needs to know
who
is in the scene,
what
is going on around them,
where
it is,
when
it is, , and a little about
why
they are there.

I’ll use my book
Nothing But Trouble
(Tyndale, May 2009) to show you how I built Storyworld.

Let’s start by making a list:

Who – PJ Sugar, bad girl turned good

Where – back in her home town, at her parents’ country club When – Memorial Day weekend

What – PJ’s driving up and wrestling the courage to go inside, other cars are also driving up and people are carrying presents

Why – for her sister’s wedding

But we’re just getting started. Once we’ve figured out each of these elements, we need to go deeper:

Who – What is the state of mind of the POV character walking into the scene? In one or two words, define how the POV character feels.

Where – What details stands out to the character? Why is this significant to the character?

When is it – What is the time of year, and how do we know that? We’re looking for details here.

What – What other activities are going on in the scene? What is your POV character doing?

Why – Why is she/he in this place?

Put it all together

Who:
PJ Sugar – feeling like a duck out of water, especially after being in a car for two days, but also because she’s been out of the high-society lifestyle her parents raised her in. She’s tense and grimy and uncomfortable and just wants to run.

Where:
She’s back in a place where she got into trouble. She notices the new addition to the kitchen (we’ll find out why later) and the changes made to the country club in her absence, as well as the similarities—the pool, for example. It’s a place of rich, albeit difficult, memories for her.

When:
June—so the lilacs are blooming, the flowers are out in pots on the verandah, the sprinklers are spraying the golf course.

What:
A Mercedes pulls up and a well-groomed guest gets out holding a beautifully wrapped gift (of course PJ doesn’t have one). Also, she’s driving a Bug, and in the parking lot are Beemers, Mercedes, and Lexus’s. PJ is brushing potato chip crumbs off her lap.

Why:
She’s here because her sister
begged
her to come and watch her son while she goes on her honeymoon. PJ returns because she longs to start over again.

So, now we have PJ’s state of mind and some of the details of the scene. But we’re not ready to build yet.

To really draw your Storyworld, you need to use your five senses to engage the reader’s emotions. Sight. Smell. Sound. Touch.Taste. When you walk into a room, all your senses are a part of your understanding of that scene.

Smell
is a huge memory tool, and, just like you, your character will remember them.

Sound
is essential. Rarely is there a place without some noise in it, yet we often don’t read about it or hear it in a scene. Imagine watching a movie without the sound.

Sight
, of course, is what a scene is usually built on, but remember those specific, mood- enhancing details.

Touch
is also important. Your character can rub her hand on the soft, worn leather of a desk chair or dig her fingers into the rough bark of an oak tree.

Taste
is active in our memory too. We taste things in our memory.Your heroine could taste her fear. She tasted her past, the memory of sitting in the kitchen with her mother, sneaking cookie dough out of the bowl.

Before you sit down to write, make a sensory list of everything you perceive in that scene. You’ll use it as a “cheat sheet” as you build the scene.

Let’s take a look at how to build the five senses into a scene:

This scene is from
Taming Rafe
, set in New York City in the summer:

Sitting in his pickup, staring at himself—all twenty feet of glowing hot neon in the center of Times Square—Rafe Noble realized what a fake he’d become. The image shone for thirty seconds, then flipped to an advertisement of
America, Now!
magazine, on which Rafe’s face graced this month’s cover.

They’d airbrushed the growl right off of him, made him look downright tame.
(His feelings about being there.)

The light changed, and he surged forward into traffic on Forty-Second Street. Heat slithered into the cab of his 1984 Ford pickup, the air conditioner barely able to stay ahead of the furnace outside.
(TOUCH)
It was the heat wave of the century in New York City, and he’d agreed to appear at some hoity-toity charity event.

How he hated this town and the smells of grilling lamb from the gyro stands, the cigarette smoke, the trash fermenting in the piles of black bags on the sidewalk, the bus exhaust fouling the air.
(SMELLS)
He hated the sounds of brakes squealing, the cabbies arguing for space, the cheeps of pigeons fighting for crumbs.
(SOUNDS)
The few times he’d been here, he’d cut his trips short, needing open spaces like th
e rest of the city needed air-conditioning.

The place had ne
arly choked him with the press of people packing the sidewalks, and he’d practically fled the city, gulping in the open space of his Texas ranch like a drowning man.
(TASTE)

He cut a left at the next light, then slammed on his brakes before he plowed over a couple of fast-walking suits arguing into their Blackberries.
(SIGHT, BUT ALSO A SOUND)

Using the five senses helps the story come alive, and puts the reader right into the scene.

Let’s go back to PJ sitting in her car, brushing potato chip crumbs from her lap.