In this course aspiring writers will be introduced to perhaps the most elemental and often the most challenging element of story: plot. We will learn what keeps it moving, how it manipulates our feelings, expectations, and desires. We will examine the choices storytellers make to snag our imaginations, drag them into a fictional world, and keep them there. We will learn how to outline and structure a plot, discuss narrative arc, pacing and reversals and reveal the inevitable surprise: connecting the beginning, middle and end.
Shop Talk with Amity Gaige
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From the course by Wesleyan University
Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot
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From the lesson
A Scene in Motion
Scenes are the building blocks of storytelling. But what is a scene? And how does a scene move plot forward? In this module we'll learn about the difference between telling and showing, the five key elements each scene should have, offer some examples of effective scenes, and have a conversation about how setting and description can make a scene come alive.
Meet the Instructors
Brando SkyhorseVisiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
English
[MUSIC]
Hi, welcome to another Shop Talk.
I'm Brando Skyhorse and today I'm talking with
internationally published best selling novelist Amity Gaige, whose latest
work Schroder is available in paperback and was shortlisted for the Folio Prize.
Amity, good to have you here.
>> Nice to be with you, thank you.
>> Thank you.
So I know in your Coursera module you're going to be talking
a bit about setting and description.
And I think those are really interesting words that perhaps a lot of aspiring
writers are familiar with.
But maybe they're not quite familiar on what they mean because they're so
big and the concepts are so all-encompassing.
What is setting?
What do we mean when we talk about description?
>> It's a great question.
I'm going to define setting as just the place and time in which a story occurs.
And description is the material and
the words devoted to fleshing out that time and place.
And I find description to be a much much broader term.
So description is a foundation, I think of every aspect of a story.
So, say, plot for example, it's a description of events,
and character is a description of made up people.
So I feel like description is really foundational.
So setting is sort of a description of time and place.
>> So I know that a lot of my students are faced with the maximum, show don't tell.
And what people I think mean when they say this, they mean put it in a scene.
And so, in my Coursera module,
I talk about a checklist that writers can check off for what belongs in the scene.
So there's dialog, there's specific intimate details,
there's what I call the three R's, react, reflect, reveal.
All these sort of basic components that help a person visualize
what a writer sees in their head.
So where does setting and
description fit into that template of creating a scene for the reader?
>> Right, so what I say to my learners is trying to tell a good short story is
like trying to convey a dream.
>> That's interesting, yeah.
>> And as private and as weird and random as dreams can be,
when you try to tell that to someone who's listening to you, it's so hard, right?
It's so hard for them to see it, because they're not in your head.
>> Right, right.
>> And also, there's other problems like dreams are half-remembered,
and it's kind of similar when you're writing a short story or a novel.
Any work of fiction, It's really in your head as deep as a dream is.
So it's so much effort and so
much work on scene work to really transfer that dream from your head to the reader's.
And that's what show don't tell means to me.
>> Sure. >> It's can you write in scenes,
all of the atmosphere and the logic and
the sensory detail in your scene?
And can you deliver that to someone else?
Because if you can't, they can't really have the pleasure of reading.
They don't really get to enter your dream with you.
So scenes do that best, right?
Because what exactly as you describe them, they're these moment by moment,
play by play, recreations of interactions or events.
And you have to do them as carefully and as thoughtfully of the reader as you can.
What does the reader need to know, because that reader wasn't dreaming with me.
>> Yeah. >> So that's what that means.
>> Well I mean, that makes sense, too, in terms of thinking about the most potent
details about dreams are those sort of tiny little physical descriptions.
And I was speaking with another one of the Coursera instructors.
Anthony Door talks about how a lot of people want to write about big ideas.
Love, loss, heartbreak, etc.
But they don't ground their stories in the physical world.
And so getting those details, so you can write about heartbreak or
you can write about somebody that has a cherished valentine
in a desk drawer somewhere that they haven't looked at for 20 years.
And because of that physical detail you're just able to connect more specifically
with the large ideas.
As opposed to I want to write a story about somebody who broke my heart.
Because that usually results in a pretty bad story.
>> I know.
[LAUGH] Well, and you think that's going to be, in some ways, all you need,
is the sentiment, and the feeling, and the passion.
You do need that.
But really, to have your dream or your story understood,
you really need the physical details.
>> Sure. >> And
as Flannery O'Connor said, writing fiction is, she called it an incarnational art.
>> That's interesting.
>> Everything was physical.
And she said if you don't want to get dusty,
don't write fiction because we're made of dust.
>> Right, exactly.
>> And I love her kind of grouchy way of putting that.
>> Yeah, grouchy writers are fun, aren't they?
So not to switch gears to grouchy writers.
I know Eudora Welty, I've never met her, or never had any,
and so read her biographies.
>> [LAUGH] >> But
I was thinking a lot about this conversation, and
I tracked down this Eudora Welty quote here.
Which I wanted to read to you because I just think it's so interesting.
Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable,
if you took up its characters and plot, and made it happen somewhere else.
Fiction depends for its life on place.
Place is the crossroads of circumstance,
the proving ground of what happened, who's here, who's coming.
How does setting inform our understanding of those questions of what happened,
who's here, and who's coming?
>> It's a wonderful quote.
I feel like when you're writing a scene and
you're placing your character in a physical scene.
Brando walked into the room and he saw the bookshelves and
he heard the traffic and he felt the sun.
>> These are ways that you're describing the scene.
And later on as Brando continues and
he goes through his series of events that are the plot of the story.
Those details that you place in the scene, that you initially
placed in the scene in the service of convincingness just to set it and
make that dream feel real, become those very details that start to matter.
Sometimes when we talk about symbols I think all we're talking about,
a writer doesn't think of them as symbols.
>> Yeah. >> A writer thinks of them as details
that he or she put into the scene.
Sort of as a matter of fact, to color and
paint the scene and then they start to behave.
And they start to repeat.
In a different answer to that question,
there's the Chekhov quote in terms of plays.
Don't put a gun on the stage unless it's going to go off
at some point during the play.
That happens when you set your scene and you put the books in the room or
you put the traffic in and the sounds in the room.
They come back.
Later on in the scene they start to mean.
They start to have narrative function too like then Brenda walked outside and
waited for the bus.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah exactly.
That's a story I'm well acquainted with.
>> So I don't think that setting is remotely ornamental.
It's integral to the scene.
You start to describe it, and then it starts to behave.
And it starts to become inextricable from the other things that happen in the story.
>> So in thinking in terms of how important details are to description
in particular, I know that a lot of people watching this might ask both of us,
legitimately, where do they come from?
Where do details come from?
Do they come from the powers of observation?
Should we keep a notebook?
Where do you get your details from for your work?
>> One thing I love about being a writer is my active
participation with my imagination, which is technically infinite.
Right, I can imagine anything.
And I can imagine great quantities of things.
So generally whenever there is a deficit of detail I know that it's the writer or
the learner not waiting, not exploring that imagination.
>> I see, sure.
>> Because I think that everybody has those details in his or her imagination.
Because it is the most, one of the most powerful things we have as a human being.
And what other kind of animals don't have.
>> Right.
>> So, if you take the time, and it's what I call imaginative research, and
I talk about it in my module.
Is that you need to sit, in some ways you kind of meditate on the scene.
You can close your eyes, or you can keep them open.
You can even write it down, and you're just actually,
without even, without writing your story, you're imagining the world.
You're just walking through it, projecting your way into this world.
And the details will be there,
because your imagination is one of the most incredible things about you.
>> Yeah, I love the idea of imaginative research.
Basically visualizing what's in your mind's eye and
getting all of the details down pat.
Seeing the room, seeing the traffic as you've described,
seeing everything laid out and trying to record it as faithfully and
as diligently as you can in your story.
With the remaining time that we have,
can you give us the best advice that anyone has given you about setting or
description, be it a writing mentor or someone in your family?
I know that in my conversation with Salvatore Scibona, he said that the first
piece of advice that he got as a writer was from his grandmother.
I think he was working on a novel when he was six or seven years old.
And she said, well it needs more dialogue.
Which is a very punchy, effective way I think, so
do you have something similar that you can leave with us here?
>> There's a wonderful quote from Elizabeth Bowen and that is,
nothing happens nowhere.
You may think before you get to this course, when I think of I've
gotta set my story in a really exotic place, which you could do.
But really you already have a setting as soon as you have a story.
And that could be a room.
That could be a bedroom.
There are many kinds of rooms, right, and they're all so different.
The difference between a bedroom and a kitchen is large.
And so the woods is a setting.
An elevator is a setting, and nothing happens nowhere.
So just become aware of it.
If you're aware of it and you're generous with your description,
you give it to the reader.
Then it will be a fascinating one.
It doesn't have to be exact.
>> If you have a setting, you have a story.
Perfectly put.
Amity Gaige, thank you so much.
>> Thank you very much.
[MUSIC]
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