Scene Weaving

Minangkabau Songket from West Sumatra - Lausanne Davis Carpenter

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My developmental editor suggested I expand the subplots of several Point of View characters. (More on that in a future article). Where I agree with him, I face a challenge: to backfill material driven by a goal to balance the overall manuscript rather than to show more of a particular event or plot. That’s pretty nebulous.

As I pondered the first of several potential areas to build out, many warning bells went off.

So I created the following boundaries:

• Don’t add anything just to increase screen time.

• Do not send the story on a tangent.

• You must end up in exactly the same place. (In this phase of writing this book, I am not willing to change the story significantly.)

• All new material must weave invisibly into the existing—every thread of story, information, interiority, character arc, etc.

Call it a ripple, domino, or butterfly effect, every single word added or removed at this point can wreak havoc 100 pages away. When you have to track all of this through 200K+ words over and over again…

So, as I braved the challenge, I asked myself the following questions and brainstormed in analog. (You know, pen and paper with lots of scratch-outs and arrows.)

• What is the context?

• How can I expand on what is already there?

• What have I summarized that might be better shown?

• What minor characters might I flesh out?

• Can I dig deeper into the thoughts, motives, choices of the POV character?

• What new moments will contribute to the depth and richness of the macro and micro story and themes?

Once I’d done lots of scribbling, I started writing to see what would happen. Lo-and-behold, a minor character popped out with some surprises! I had no idea she was…

And so, rough drafting, shuffling, drilling down, I had my new scenes. Yay!

Then a backwards search to make sure I’m not repeating information, etc.

On to the next segment…

Head bash on desk moment.

Now the next segment is full of redundancies, illogic, and dialogue out of sequence. Argh!

On it goes, absorbing the effect, smoothing out the wrinkles…for eternity.

Does it ever end? I guess that’s up to me. Hah!

I know some of you know the feeling. Do you have a project underway that you think you’ll never finish?

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Meanwhile, I’m out of pocket again, writing this while away from my desk, tea kettle, and kitties. Poor me! Please forgive the rough-and-ready nature. I left the WIP manuscript at home. I am about to start reviewing character #3 in my hierarchy of five POVs and decided a break would be wise. I’ve also been “missing” in the Substack community. Trying to focus. Hope to catch up on newsletter reading soon. I know you are all working hard!

Thanks for reading!

Lausanne