Dramatic
If you followed me around in real life for 24 hours, you would be bored out of your mind. On the one hand, I think you would be stunned by how much work four children are and how much mess they can make (a lot . . . exponentially, each child adds a crazy amount of mess). I think you would wonder how one woman could write or work for so many hours straight. You'd probably yawn as I checked Facebook, read the NY Times. You would definitely snooze as I read in bed later. Or watched my beloved Law & Order. You'd be amused by my food choices in a given day (does she really subsist on bananas? That's IT? And coffee?)
You would DEFINITELY appreciate the comic relief provided by Dynamo Boy. You would think, "Man . . . she really DOESN'T make any of that up. Case in point, yesterday he stopped calling me mom and decided from now on, I shall be called Spanky McBurger. Why? I have no idea. And then there was his tap dancing routine to Lady Gaga. Naked. Enough said.
But mostly you would be bored.
Which got me thinking. I'm working on a new chapter in my work-in-progress, and in it, my heroine is shaving her head. It's a dystopic novel and she shaves her head because civilization is crumbling, and it's just simpler. But for a woman to shave her head . . . it's very dramatic. Most of the time, our hair is part of our femininity. I have shaved the head of a woman I love . . . she had cancer. And I was the only friend, I think, with the nerves to handle doing it. Though I have to say, my hands shook. Shaving a woman's head is dramatic.
Other scenes in my novel are about conveying the precise message I want in the best, most dramatic way possible. One night, in my work in progress, when the characters realize a friend is going to die soon (he's sick), they open a rare jar of caviar and a good bottle of vodka, and they toast and tell stories all night long. A funeral BEFORE he is dead, in essence, with him in attendance.
And even in the ordinary? If that is the point of the scene? Even that should tell "ordinary" in the best, most monotonous, MOST ordinary way.
Novels aren't real life. I feel like novelists spend our time searching for the perfect scenes, the most dramatic ones, the most memorable. We look for symbols (yeah, our English teacher was right. Symbolism!). We look for the best way to be dramatic.
Calling Tallulah Bankhead!
Thoughts? Got any bits of wip dramatics you care to share?
17 comments:
What came to mind for me was a scene from the film "Clear and Present Danger." At one point in the film Harrison Ford's character realizes there's computer documentation that ties in a CIA guy to an illegal operation in Columbia and he's trying to print it out at the same time the CIA guy in question is trying to delete the files and it's a race to see who gets it deleted and/or printed out first. And it's tense and dramatic and for God sakes, it's two guys waiting for paper to print out and a guy hammering computer keys. But it works. In fact, it works very, very well in a movie filled with gunfights and explosions.
So my thinking is that anything can probably be imbued with drama and tension if approached the right way and set up so we can understand the importance and/or significance of what's happening.
For a person waiting for a college acceptance letter or a check or a love letter, a trip to the mailbox can be filled with tension and suspense.
Mark:
Exactly. I mean, shaving your head really is just taking clippers to your scalp. It's all about finding the right elements in any given scene to convey your point. Picking those things is one of my favorite things about writing. :-)
I have a scene in the book I just submitted where Draken is sitting alone in the bath. Yawn.
Now, he does have a spirit living inside him, so there is a little dialogue. But he looks at this pendant around his neck with his queen's likeness and the spirit just says, basically, that Draken would sell his soul to save a beautiful woman in need.
It's pretty wellthe crux of Draken's personal issues and his outspoken ride-along is the only one with the guts to say it. It's a very simple scene, but very important and I think dramatic.
Not sure why I put him in the bath, though...
Starbucks:
I LOVE the idea that he's in the tub. :-) I really like glimpses like that. When my character is shaving her head, she's in the bathroom. It's an intimate moment, in a sense.
That Harrison Ford reference reminds me of the one movie I know of that reads like a book. Um, the name's on the tip of my toungue. *sigh*
His wife committed murder and is trying to frame him for it. He realizes what happened when he finds the bloody hammer. Then he washes it.
Watching a man wash a hammer is nothing compared to all the meaning behind the action. And the slow deliberate way he does it conveys so much.
Presumed Innocent. Geez.
Sarah:
Movies like that freak me out. I can't even imagine being framed. And yet innocent people go to jail all the time.
I have an outdoor hockey rink in a scene where the main character subconsciously hears the voice of someone he despises, his father. The irony/symbolism (I think) of it is that he's drawn to a comforting place from his past during an early spring thaw.
P.S. Hearing about your day simply exhausts me. :-)
kath:
Thinking about my day exhausts me too. LOL!!!
Naked tap dancing.
How could we ever think of that as boring.
Travis:
LOL! He does keep things interesting around here.
He's such a character. And I mean that in the most wonderful compliment sort of way.
At one point, my MC gets her waist-long hair tangled into a massive dreadlock and has to have most of it cut, leaving her with hair just above her shoulders.
Her hair was her identity and she'd just lost it. So although it was only a scene at a barber shop, there was so much more to it.
(and yes, the massive dreadlock did happen to me)
Nadine:
Wow . . . :-(
I once had one of those from being in a hospital bed for so long. I had to cut it out, too!
It was over two years ago so a lot of my hair has grown back :) It was a good learning lesson for many reasons.
In my WIP movie, the heroine is a Jewish princess doctor's wife (no relation, thank you very much). She breaks into her husband's mistress' apartment, takes all the stuff he bought the mistress, and leaves behind a bunch of outfits on the bed arranged in the "In Style Magazine" way when they try to show you how to put clothes together. (The mistress dresses like a slut.) It's mostly funny but a little tense.
No thoughts except thanks. I've been wondering how to convey the fact that Harvey is beyond certain his wife will die without doing the whole dramatic gasp, crawl, gasp, pain...thing. And I need to cement a death bed promise.
Robin:
I love that!!
Richmond:
:-) Glad it helped!
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