Scene It

This week author and MFAC faculty member Marsha Qualey* examines the importance that scene can play in her own upcoming projects.  Read on as she reflects on a few poignant excerpts from Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book and how they have have informed her process.

I’ve got two writing projects going right now and for the first time that I can remember neither one is a new (conventional) novel. One of the projects involves revisiting a novel as I adapt it into a screenplay. The other is a possible graphic novel for young readers.

I am thinking a lot about scenes. Not that I didn’t before, but when writing my traditional novels it was always the connective tissue between scenes that consumed most of my attention and energy.

Sandra Scofield’s The Scene Book is rich in pithy reminders that help me keep to the task at hand. Here are a few that are bulletin-board worthy:

From “The Focal Point”
“[the focal point] is not the epiphany, that old standby moment when the sky opens and meaning shines down on the protagonist” (54).

(Huh. I once ended a scene exactly that way—with literal sunshine breaking through and the protagonist thinking, “Illumination.” Should I go back and see if there’s an actual focal point prior to the epiphany?)

From “Tension”
“Tension doesn’t have to be negative” (86).

(Scofield is writing about sex scenes here, but still, a good reminder)

From “Scene Openings”

“…the scene may be entirely fresh action, requiring a more fundamental orientation” (142). One way to provide this orientation, she later explains, is to “comment on character, setting, or event” (145).

(An editor once told me she hated scenes that opened with dialogue, and ever since I have been hesitant to do just that. Such is the power of our editors.)

From “Scene Activity and Character Response”

“A good scene lets us know the spatial relationship of people and things” (126).

(Hmm. Maybe that’s why my editor hated the dialogue-opened scenes—she’d seen too many that delayed grounding the reader in the physical setting.)

From my bulletin board to yours.

Marsha Qualey has been a faculty member in Hamline's MFAC program since it began. She is the author of several YA novels, one novel for adults, and several work-for-hire books for younger readers. For more information please visit her website.

Gone Graphic

We're getting ready for the July residency, especially for the northward migration of faculty we haven't seen since last summer. Among those will be Gene Luen Yang, who will be doing a session on how to write a graphic novel. I've seen Gene do a fifteen minute version of this, and I'm delighted to be getting a full hour on the topic.

Meanwhile, I've been keeping up with all the new graphic novels vicariously--reading a few, relying on other people to report back. One such person is Natalie Rosinsky. She writes a column on graphic novels for Teen Literature Network. It's a wonderful resource.

The most recent column focuses on graphic novels in which public events intersect with private lives. Much of my own writing has been about just that, and I can't wait to get my hands on quite a few of these books.

***

PS: I'll be putting up the next Inkpot Interview soon.

Gene Luen Yang

Our low residency session here at Hamline is in full swing, and today we had a marvelous presentation by Gene L. Yang, author of American Born Chinese and other graphic novels and comic books. He talked quite a bit about his writing process and the things he focused on while crafting his stories. Character, page turns, arc--all of it just as important to a comic book and graphic novel as it is to a picture book or traditional middle grade novel. The lecture hall was buzzing with excitement.

Marsha Wilson Chall, one of our faculty members, reminisced about buying comic books as a child, and whether that had any influence on her becoming a picture book author. I too remember trips to the drugstore to buy comics. Maybe a fascination with Archie and Veronica is the real reason I turned to writing YA fiction.