I thought I'd actually veer back onto the main road for a bit by writing a section on technique, and last night I saw a question on the Improve Your Writing Club forum that made me think some people might wonder about it too.
(Also, one day, I'll write about writing short sentences.)
(And not using too many brackets.)
(Kidding.)
(Sort of.)
AAAAAAaaaaaaanyway. The question was about writing the quiet scenes in a story. See, a lot of people struggle with writing them in a way that isn't boring. And it's an important thing to know, because quiet scenes are vital to a story's pacing.
I've already written about Pacing in Part 1 (Section 25), since the pace at which you're telling your story could end up being one of the major foundations to the story's tension. To recap, the function served by pacing is by revealing new information and events at just the right pace to keep the reader immersed.
Both slow and fast pacing can achieve this, as long as the pacing is neither too fast nor too slow. Slower paced stories tend to have more of what I call quiet scenes, but this does not mean that a slow-paced story is automatically more boring than a fast-paced one.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about tuning a guitar. The story will be the sound a guitar makes, while the individual strings would be the tension of the story. Guitars can be tuned into different chords, which all sound different from each other (and give the listener a different feeling) just like stories can be adjusted to feel different from each other. Adjusting the pacing is like tuning the guitar. For the chords to sound the way they're supposed to (or the story to feel like it's supposed to/immerse the reader), each string must individually hit the right note.
Sometimes, no matter how high you want the pace of your book to go, you're going to need to relax the pacing for some things in order to make everything in the story work right.
This is where those quiet scenes come in. They ease back the pacing in order to fulfill one or all of these broad functions:
To give both the reader and the characters a moment to catch up and reflect on what had happened up to that point.
I don't know about you, but I hate when something major happens (say, a beloved character dying), but the story never allows that moment for it to sink in.
Especially when that also means that essentially, it doesn't give the character time to react with the right amount of emotion to what had happened. Instead, it gives the reader a sense of Oh, my best friend in the whole wide world died, but I'm kind of busy here, so...
Or the whole world has fallen apart, but all the characters ever do is hop from one battle for survival to the other without actually taking stock of what has been lost.
Simply put, this doesn't work. If the reader isn't given the chance to feel with the character, he/she isn't as invested in the outcome, and people just don't feel as much when things just keep happening. So to keep a reader invested, there must be a moment or two in which the reader and character can come to terms with everything.
To provide a more effective means of sharing new information.
By more effective, I mean more likely to make the information stick in the reader's mind. Think about it this way... If you're sprinting down a street after... let's say a guy who stole your mother's hand-bag. What do you notice?
Mostly the guy. Mostly the handbag. Not a lot of detail otherwise.
In the same way, action scenes make readers concentrate on the action and should mostly make the characters do the same thing. They're hardly to stop and smell the flowers when someone's trying to kill them, right?
So action scenes are not the place for explanation, except for what is absolutely relevant to what is happening right now. (E.G. where is the character? Where is the opponent? Where is the action taking place and how does this affect the action?) A character's random memory of his dog (for example), no matter how relevant to the story at large, won't fit into this action unless you shoehorn it in. And even if you do, the reader will either be yanked from the story or will gloss over this information.
Which could be a useful thing to know if you're trying to hide a piece of information, but it's better to be subtle.
All things being equal, the best place to put information you want the reader to remember is in a quiet scene.
To establish and/or build rapport between the character and reader.
This actually sprouts out of the previous two points, but this might be the most important function I can think of for a quiet scene. Part 1, Section 7 does better to explain why, but to summarize, tension will always fade if the reader doesn't care about the character.
The quiet scenes are important to aid in this, since it's hard to connect to a character in the middle of a lot of action. (Yes yes, I know there's a so-called rule about starting in the middle of the action. I'm not going to go into this debate right now.) The important thing to realize is that action connects us to the events of the story. Characters give us reasons to keep turning pages.
In the end, this is what it comes down to. You want the reader to build a relationship with your characters. It's just not going to happen in the same way unless you have quiet scenes.
How to make quiet scenes work in a story.
So now we know what quiet scenes are for, so let me take a quick look at how to make them... not boring. Here's what I suggest you do...
Always always ALWAYS let the scene be about something.
Sounds obvious enough, but many writers make the mistake of writing a quiet scene just for the sake of it because they heard somewhere that it's needed.
If this happens, usually the scene will feel disconnected from the story, which will immediately make the reader feel restless. So don't keep a quiet scene in unless you can see where it fits given what has happened and what you know will happen.
This can sometimes be more tricky to decide than it sounds. Something as seemingly insignificant as someone thinking over a photograph totally unrelated to the action could be meaningful, if the scene is about showing where the character is emotionally.
In other words, this is a bit of a balancing act, but rule of thumb creating reader interest is not a reason for a slow scene.
Don't let it all happen in a white mist.
Put otherwise, don't get so deep into the point of view character's head that nothing happens outside of it. Because if nothing happens, the story's pacing stops for the duration of that scene. Which means... boring.
Which means you're giving your reader the perfect opportunity to put the book down. You do not want this to happen.
So. Always make sure that the reader and character remains conscious of what's going on around the character.
Then, it's generally a good idea to let something actually be happening in this scene. Not major action, mind you. But quiet moments can happen among moments of activity. Such as preparing for battle. Or traveling to a specific destination. Or even chilling out with the character's best friend.
Let the quiet scene carry the story forward.
The idea here is that the quiet scene won't be boring if something important seems to be happening within it.
By important I mean important to the character or story's arc. So a quiet scene about a character's daily routine is going to be boring. A quiet scene with a character moping for no good reason is boring.
BUT if those same scenes move the plot forward in some way, (For example by leading the character to make a major decision) the scenes would become important. And then, if you're focusing on the previous things I mentioned, it becomes easier to fool the reader into not even thinking about whether a given scene is boring.
Lastly use the right timing.
Again, this might seem obvious, but people obviously miss-time their quiet scenes in ways that drive readers up the wall. Such as by putting a long slow-paced scene where there needs to be action. Or by interrupting action in order to sink the character into some thoughts of memories that have no immediate bearing on the story.
Obviously, the information revealed in a slow scene sometimes only becomes relevant later. Which is fine. Just not when the character is facing certain death right now.
And there you have it. Thanks for reading! And I'm sorry for making you wait this long. Life sometimes goes insane and just doesn't let up.
As always, feel free to ask me questions about this section or writing in general. If your questions inspire me to write a section, I'll dedicate it to you.
Coming up in 100 Things:
Who do you trust?
Making Writing Work for You (MarissatheMarvelous)
Dealing with non-writers (MarissatheMarvelous)