So I’ve been getting a few messages lately to the effect of “I’m not sure how to keep my descriptions interesting” or “I don’t know how to make this scene sound more interesting.” So while I could answer each of them one by one, it’s been a while since I’ve personally made a post on this blog and it’s a common problem anyway, so here’s some advice on constructing an engaging scene that I find to be helpful in my writing.
Learn how to juggle dialogue and descriptions. One of the biggest problems I see in beginning writers is they don’t yet know how to simultaneously describe a scene (what it looks like, what the characters are doing, etc.) and also keep dialogue between characters going. The trick here is not to lump all of your description in one big long paragraph and then have a long stretch of dialogue; instead, make the two weave in together so that you’re doing both at the same time and cutting out any unnecessary rambling.
Make sure you’re not adding unnecessary dialogue or details. If a scene drags, it might be because you’re spending too long on one bit of the story that doesn’t really matter. A scene where your characters are learning about the country they’re going to is fine, but don’t bog the reader down with a bunch of superfluous information about their economic structure or what the trees look like in autumn. Similarly, writing dialogue can be fun, but having your characters ramble at each other and not really get anywhere is just as boring. Everything you write needs to be moving the plot forward and be absolutely necessary for the reader’s understanding of the book.
If the content is what’s boring, try introducing a major event. Again, every scene needs to exist for a specific reason. If you feel like your prose isn’t what’s the problem, maybe ask yourself if the scene itself is dragging because it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. A scene in which all of your characters sit around and talk can be good for character development, but it may not feel like enough action is going on to justify it. Try adding in some sort of major event, or even ending the scene sooner so you can get to the major event that it necessitates.
If the scene isn’t working out, kill your darlings. Following up on that last point, if you’ve tried that and can’t figure out how to work an event into the scene or how to make it better, sometimes you just have to let it go. This is especially true if you’re only keeping the scene around because you really like it, even if you can’t figure out how to make it work. If I’m on the brink of deleting an entire scene from my project, usually I’ll copy/paste it into a new file, save it separately, and then cut it from my project. That way, if I decide I need to keep it, I can always pull it back up without having to worry.
Helpful links:
Writer’s Digest’s 10 Ways to Launch Strong Scenes
Writer’s Edit’s 6 Quick Tips For Writing Gripping Scenes
I made this little graphic to show my process of keeping my characters in-character throughout the story. If you have something that you want your character to do (an action), then you need to make sure it’s backed up by an inciting incident (which I call a motivation) that would realistically convince them to commit the action, and you need to make sure the action that they take is backed up by the character’s personality and beliefs (their inspiration). Hopefully this makes sense to people and it helps some of you with writing your character’s story.
Here’s some other resources I found:
HOW TO CREATE CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS THAT WILL RIVET YOUR READERS by Kristen Kieffer
TV Tropes’ Motivation Index
4 Ways to Motivate Characters and Plot on Writers Digest
(I’m sorry this blog has been somewhat inactive lately. I recently transferred to a much bigger college campus and it’s been hectic getting settled in.)
Written by @elleleuthold. I made up the title because it didn’t have one.
I apologize for taking so long to post this, I had a few exams this week that took up my time.
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This is a short story I wrote in response to a prompt by @writing-prompt-s which said: “In the post apocalyptic wasteland, “genies” are actually still functioning AI’s that provide their “masters” advanced knowledge. You’ve just unearthed one while scavenging.” (original post here) If you like, you can find more of my work at @elleleuthold. Enjoy!
You touched it by accident. It looked like just another piece of long-forgotten scrap in the rubble, defunct of purpose without an ancient battery and fifteen accessories, but now it’s moving. What had been a sort of elongated cylinder is unfolding itself, expanding and growing one translucent layer of filmy darkness at a time.
“What the hell is it?” Lei asks. She leans in for a closer look, holding up her little cutting torch as if it can ward off an attack.
Not that you can think of a way this could attack, exactly, but you can remember Yan and Nima’s story about the undetonated landmine two wards over, and Chandra’s unfortunate discovery of the laz-blade that looked like a harmless pen, so you’re backing away slowly.
“Lei, come on,” you say, reaching for her.
“I’m only looking,” she protests as as you drag her back behind the crumbling remains of a cinder-block wall. “You don’t have to treat me like a kid, you know, I passed my explo trials same as you.”
You refrain from commenting. Anything you say will only lead to hours of pouting and pointless arguments and irritability and a horribly uncomfortable trip back to the settlement. Jedda Anisa and Ju-laoshi put you in charge and Lei knows it. You’re older, you’ve been out on more missions, and you’re the one they’ll blame if anything happens to her.
She wrenches her arm out of your grip but doesn’t try to pull away again. Maybe she’s remembering Chandra too, or one of the countless other stories you’ve both been fed since you started walking and poking your fingers into dark corners. There’s always plenty of fear to fill your belly with, no matter how scarce food gets.
The whatever-it-is settles, somehow, sealing together into a dark and perfectly smooth sphere about the size of your head. A light pulses inside it, but nothing else happens.
“Maybe it’s charging,” Lei whispers.
“For what?” you ask, and she shrugs.
“But it’s a good sign, right? I mean, the sun-powered stuff doesn’t usually explode, right?”
“I guess,” you admit. Not-exploding is one thing, actually useful is another. You can’t imagine why anyone would go to so much trouble to make what looks like an overly complicated night light. What could it possibly do for anyone?
The light intensifies, then stops blinking.
Then the thing screams, a high-pitched and staccato burst of sound, and you clamp your hands over your ears in an attempt to shut it out. Lei is saying something, her mouth is definitely moving, but you can’t make out any words, just the extended wail of the sphere in its little hollow.
Silence.
“What was that,” Lei asks, and you shake your head. None of the Devices you’ve ever heard of did anything like this.
“What snaphthilsn yilerfno,” says the sphere.
Lei turns to you, wide eyed, but you don’t have any answers. An extra hour or two of reading every week doesn’t make you an expert on spoken communication.
“We should leave,” you decide. Machines that talk are definitely on Jedda Anisa’s list of Things To Avoid.
“Bopleddooort gerufl what kiwachi you,” says the sphere.
“I don’t want to leave,” Lei says. “Look at it! It’s talking! It can tell us what it’s for!”
“It could be talking to satellite weapons systems,” you say, grabbing at her hand again. “Come on, there’s only a few hours of daylight left, we should get home. Maybe one of the teachers can tell us what to do.”
“What snklur do you wish porokkkl,” says the sphere.
“Wishes?” Lei asks. She grins, lit up and eager like you haven’t seen her since her brother walked out into the wastes and didn’t come back.
“Lei,” you start, but she’s already bounding over to the thing, caution forgotten.
“Do you grant wishes?” she asks it. “Is that what you’re for? Are the stories true and–”
“It’s not fucking magic!” you yell. “This isn’t a fairy tale, and you know it. It’s a talking bit of tech we know nothing about, and it’s not a djinni, or a wizard, or a magic ring, and no matter what you do it can’t bring the dead back. It can’t fix the sky, or clean water, or grow food, no matter how much you say I wish everything was better, I wish we could just go back to how it was, it’s never going to happen because the world doesn’t work that way.”
You realize you’re shouting, your arms thrown out in frustration. Lei is glaring murder at you, the twist of her mouth and set of her shoulders all injured pride and choked-back pain.
You sigh and drop your arms.
“Sorry,” you say. “But you know what everyone would say if we told them–”
“Plosrn,” says the sphere. “Clean water, grow food. oflipr air kawat, yes, I can ferubl that.”
You can feel the push and pull of your lungs, but you can’t seem to breathe. Like the bad days, when the smog rolls in thicker than soup in your mouth, seeping through your nose and painting your throat raw so you gag with it, choking and coughing until your stomach cramps and there are tears on your cheeks.
Like that, but there’s no smog today. No one’s allowed outside the settlement on those days. And yet here you are, stomach cramping, eyesight blurring, no breath in your lungs.
“What did you say?” The words feel torn out of you.
“Clean water, grow food, oflipr air kawat,” the sphere repeats. “Olemy.”
It drifts away over the cracked concrete slabs and twisted rebar and scraggly little gray grasses, out toward the deep wastes. You blink hard against the blurriness and try to look closer, but it’s not really doing anything but leaving.
“We have to follow it,” Lei says. She’s gripping your arm. You don’t know when she started that, but you can feel the bony clench of her hand even through two jackets and three layers of shirts. “You know we do.”
You manage to nod and stumble after the thing. Food and clean water are always priorities, but you’re barely paying attention to that. You’d thought you’d given up on hope years ago, when the old windmill broke and took the radio down with it and your mother said I’m sorry, this isn’t the world I wanted for you. But there’s a lightness in your chest, a quiet space in your mind that doesn’t feel empty, like hunger, or dragging, like despair. It’s the glow of watchtower light when you’re racing a storm and the sound of one hundred and thirty seven voices raised in song, welcoming you home.
You almost trip over the sphere when it stops. Lei runs into your back and clings to your shoulders. 1500 meters, some part of you notes. That’s how far you are from the buggy, with its extra water and ration packs, and the breather tank, and the emergency shelter and your javelins. It’s a full thousand meters further into the wastes than you’ve ever been before.
The sphere is chirping to itself, nothing resembling language this time. The light inside flickers, and then… a doorway opens into the earth. The sphere passes through it, and a moment later light pours forth, brighter than the lamps back home and tinged faintly blue.
A vault, you think, barely daring to voice the words even in your mind. Lei is praying in your ear, her breath on your cheek, and then the chant is tumbling over your own lips, a rolling invocation as you take one step, and then another, and then you’re inside.
It’s pristine. The only dust is what’s blown in with you since the seal broke. No scurrying rats, no nesting wasps, no creeping mold. You walk through the little entryway, scanning signs and labels on cabinets, shelves and stacks of old vacuum trunks. You can’t read it all—Old Arabic mixed with Pinyin and Cyrillic, and some others you don’t recognize—but you can read enough. You press your hand flat against a crate marked Seeds as if it can ground you in this place, because you already know you’re going to remember this forever. This is a Moment, as your sister likes to call them. The exact second of discovery that changes your world forever.
There are filtration units on a shelf to your right. Air scrubbers further down the row. And you can’t see the far wall, just shelf after shelf of supplies and tools and plastic-wrapped treasures. The sphere is bobbing along more than fifty feet away, a miracle you’d never thought would come.
Lei holds your free hand tightly, and you squeeze back, harder than you should, hard enough to bruise, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“See,” she says, smiling like the sunrise, “It grants wishes after all.”
And you pull her close, so full with brimming light you can’t form words, and you laugh until you cry.
