Read Online Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jordan Rosenfeld
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whatever your characters see. A fictional world takes shape to the reader through the eyes and experiences of your characters. Still, many writers fall into the habit of pointing out that a character sees something—"Jimmy saw a huge cloud of dust rise up on the horizon"—which is a habit I call double vision. The point of view establishes that Jimmy is the one seeing. Therefore, when you tell the reader that Jimmy saw, you are literally calling attention to the act of sight rather than to the huge cloud of dust on the horizon, which is the important point of action in the scene. You are saying to the reader: "Look, Jimmy is seeing!" Rather than, "Look at that huge dust cloud! Wowsers, I wonder what it could be!"
The more you can place readers inside the vision and point of view of your characters and remove the act of them seeing, the more directly the reader will interact with the sights, smells, and other senses in the scene.
Blindness
When a character loses sight, or never had it to begin with, the writer is no less obliged to describe the physical world, even though that world no longer exists through the character's eyes. Blindness gives way to all the other senses, which must take over. This is a powerful technique to use, as it not only forces the character to experience the settings in a unique way, it provides you with unique challenges.
Jose Saramago's stark novel Blindness has the entire world going blind in the course of a few days—except for one woman, a doctor's wife. The novel centers on a quarantined ward of people who are among the first to go blind. Chaos soon erupts as the ward fills to overflowing and is eventually abandoned by the government when they, too, go blind.
You can count me out, said the first blind man, I'm off to another ward, as far away as possible from this crook. ... He picked up his suitcase and, shuffling his feet so as not to trip and groping with his free hand, he went along the aisle separating the two rows of beds, Where are the other wards, he asked, but did not hear the reply if there was one, because suddenly he found himself beneath an onslaught of arms and legs. ...
Saramago relies heavily upon the next sense, touch, to delineate the world for the reader.
What the characters see, the reader sees. Remember to extract yourself, the author, from the picture, so that the reader is looking directly through your characters' eyes like he would through a pair of binoculars focused on a far-off stage.
TOUCH
Though the philosopher Rene Descartes would have us believe it is our thoughts that make us who we are ("I think, therefore I am"), touch is one of our first ways of knowing. Young babies do not think about their blocks and stuffed animals; they grab and grope, prod and poke their toys (and their parents) to learn about them. Touch is a bodily experience. Every character in your fiction will have a unique relationship to his body and to touch, and as the writer, you will need to determine these zones of comfort and contact and the meanings that are layered in.
Practical Touch
What are practical forms of touch? When a character rubs a piece of beach-weathered glass between his fingertips to feel its surface; touches the rough bark of a tree; inspects the edge of a knife for sharpness; runs his fingers over piano keys; or smooths out a bedspread. These forms of touch aren't necessarily significant to the character or the plot; they are actions taken between dialogue or other actions. However, practical touch is sort of like punctua-tion—you need a little bit in strategic places, because without it the scene would not be fully formed. But it shouldn't call attention to itself.
Practical touch can come in handy when you have a lot of uninterrupted dialogue between characters. A character could stop to touch the smooth surface of a marble countertop before launching an angry salvo, or grip a beer bottle tightly in his hand before defending his action. People tend to be
The more you can place readers inside the vision and point of view of your characters and remove the act of them seeing, the more directly the reader will interact with the sights, smells, and other senses in the scene.
Blindness
When a character loses sight, or never had it to begin with, the writer is no less obliged to describe the physical world, even though that world no longer exists through the character's eyes. Blindness gives way to all the other senses, which must take over. This is a powerful technique to use, as it not only forces the character to experience the settings in a unique way, it provides you with unique challenges.
Jose Saramago's stark novel Blindness has the entire world going blind in the course of a few days—except for one woman, a doctor's wife. The novel centers on a quarantined ward of people who are among the first to go blind. Chaos soon erupts as the ward fills to overflowing and is eventually abandoned by the government when they, too, go blind.
You can count me out, said the first blind man, I'm off to another ward, as far away as possible from this crook. ... He picked up his suitcase and, shuffling his feet so as not to trip and groping with his free hand, he went along the aisle separating the two rows of beds, Where are the other wards, he asked, but did not hear the reply if there was one, because suddenly he found himself beneath an onslaught of arms and legs. ...
Saramago relies heavily upon the next sense, touch, to delineate the world for the reader.
What the characters see, the reader sees. Remember to extract yourself, the author, from the picture, so that the reader is looking directly through your characters' eyes like he would through a pair of binoculars focused on a far-off stage.
TOUCH
Though the philosopher Rene Descartes would have us believe it is our thoughts that make us who we are ("I think, therefore I am"), touch is one of our first ways of knowing. Young babies do not think about their blocks and stuffed animals; they grab and grope, prod and poke their toys (and their parents) to learn about them. Touch is a bodily experience. Every character in your fiction will have a unique relationship to his body and to touch, and as the writer, you will need to determine these zones of comfort and contact and the meanings that are layered in.
Practical Touch
What are practical forms of touch? When a character rubs a piece of beach-weathered glass between his fingertips to feel its surface; touches the rough bark of a tree; inspects the edge of a knife for sharpness; runs his fingers over piano keys; or smooths out a bedspread. These forms of touch aren't necessarily significant to the character or the plot; they are actions taken between dialogue or other actions. However, practical touch is sort of like punctua-tion—you need a little bit in strategic places, because without it the scene would not be fully formed. But it shouldn't call attention to itself.
Practical touch can come in handy when you have a lot of uninterrupted dialogue between characters. A character could stop to touch the smooth surface of a marble countertop before launching an angry salvo, or grip a beer bottle tightly in his hand before defending his action. People tend to be
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