Dispatch from The Quest: Scott Reynolds
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of Scene. Today’s dispatch: Scott Reynolds ponders how best to approach the process of writing scenes:
The scene’s the thing, wherein I’ll… do… something something.
Well. That ran out of steam fast. I thought I really had something there.
This week on el Quest, we’re talking about scene. You’ve probably heard the phrase “screenwriting is scene writing” bandied about. That’s a true fact. Scenes are the bones. Or ligaments. Maybe slug lines are ligaments. I’ve lost the plot here. The point is, the scene is the basic unit of measure in nearly every form of storytelling I can think of.
Basic unit of improv is a scene. Basic unit of sketch comedy is a scene. Screenplays: scene. I’d say between writing and performing I’ve been responsible for creating thousands of scenes in my life. So you’d think I’d be better at it by now.
A lot of the stuff we covered this week is old hat. Get in late, get out early. Every scene should have a purpose. Every scene should move things forward or dole out key information. Every character in a scene should be there for a reason.
Yeah. Duh. Thanks.
Except… when I look back at every scene, every sketch, every improv game I’ve ever done, including yesterday, I see where I could get in later or get out earlier. I see where it isn’t moving things forward in the best way, if at all. I see scenes constructed just to get out a joke with nothing else to prop it up. In short, knowing all that stuff doesn’t mean I always (ever) practice it.
What was really eye-opening to me this week is really reviewing what goes into a good scene. Like… REALLY getting into it. Really examining scenes and seeing how to improve them, and seeing how masterful scenes are constructed.
“But Scott!”, I said to myself. “I’m an ARTIST. I can’t be thinking of RULES and FORMULAE while I’m just trying to let my scene FLOW FROM ME AS IF MANDATED BY THE MUSES. Don’t STIFLE ME.”
“Hey, bro”, I said to myself, because I call myself “bro” just to annoy me. “I’m not trying to stifle anything. Let it flow, let yourself go, slow and low that is the tempo.” I rip off Beastie Boys lyrics when I’m taking to myself and everyone else in the world.
This dialogue with myself is hard to write and we did dialogue last week so I’ve moved on. The thing I’m discovering more and more, both through the Quest and through my other comedy pursuits is that the more you work on the structural stuff, the more you internalize it, and the less it gets in your way. I’m still going to write from the gut, but then I’m going to review that scene with the rules in mind and make adjustments. Over time, that gets easier and easier.
So I guess the big takeaway for me this week is even the stuff I already “know”, I need to keep it at the front of my mind, at least when rewriting, and review it with purpose from time to time, until it becomes completely internal and natural.
That was a lot of commas in that last sentence, so I’m just going to go hang my head now.
We discussed this at length: It’s great to have all these questions to ask and tools for crafting scenes, but when do we use them? If we focus on them so much in prepping a scene, don’t we run the risk of stifling our creativity? Even acknowledging the fact that every writer is different and some may prefer to work out a scene in detail before writing it, we agreed that in general, the members of The Quest should write scenes in their first draft from a more intuitive place. The fact is each of us has heard, read, or seen tens of thousands of stories and God knows how many scenes, so we should have some nearly innate sense of how they work. So let’s feel free to take a whack at it. Then use the analytical tools we discussed in the Core VI: Scene lectures to refine, sharpen and improve our scenes.
Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.
About Scott: Brooklyn based writer and comedian who bailed on software to focus on writing words that humans could read. Twitter: @scottadhoc.
Comment Archive