Set Piece: Cure for a Sagging Story

The middle of a story is often my greatest challenge. Action starts with a bang and I expect the climax to be an even bigger bang; but between times, my narrative tends to sag. That’s when I need a set piece to move the story forward.

“Set piece” is a phrase from soccer that describes a maneuver to get the ball back into play after a foul. It uses the element of surprise to set the ball up for a goal. In fiction writing, a “set piece” poses a crisis for the protagonist or another leading character, which threatens to prevent the protagonist from reaching her goal. In fact, when the “set piece” is over, a reader may think the whole story is over, but the protagonist finds a way to press on. It raises the stakes for success. It requires the hero to invest more energy and ingenuity to succeed, so a reader turns the page to find out what happens next.

A typical genre novel needs a half dozen or so “set pieces” to propel the reader to a satisfying conclusion. Let’s say you’re writing a historical romance about a young woman living in an isolated Southern village when the Civil War begins. Although she has few local prospects for a husband, the war may change all that. If she waits for a handsome soldier to ride through her little hamlet, the middle of the story can be slow and boring. But here are some possible “set pieces”:

·       Our heroine discovers that a neighbor is a Union spy.
·       The Confederate army takes her family’s winter food stores.
·       She’s interested in a soldier who gets wounded in battle.
·       An army captain asks her to travel with them and assist the surgeon.
·       The heroine’s best friend and confidante dies of typhoid fever.
·       Her pastor’s wife accuses her of being preoccupied with trivial things.

…And so on. Each scene would pose a crisis for your protagonist. Any of them could thwart her long-term goal of finding a husband. All of them should cause her to reevaluate that goal in light of God’s calling.

Got a story that’s stalled? Think about using some “set pieces” to rejuvenate and move it forward.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. His most recent book is Hard Times (Warner Press: 2019). He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cinematic Secrets: Part 2

In my post last month, I explained how early filmmakers devised effective storytelling techniques that can help us tell our stories, too. For example, an early movie by Thomas Edison was likely to use one fixed camera and one scene to tell an entire story—much like a stage play in one act. Here's how a story might unfold using the primitive single-camera method:

Caleb had had enough of Ernestine's indecision, so he growled that he would have to make the old woman's choice for her. He stormed out of her kitchen and she heard his car rip through the gravel of her driveway as he roared toward town. She wondered aloud why her son wouldn’t let her pray about this. Why did he expect her to leave the only home she'd ever known to live in a rest home somewhere, among ailing strangers? Tears trickled down Ernestine’s cheek.

Even if we strengthen this tableau with dialogue and description, the story will be rather superficial, either in print or on film. So let's try telling the story in a sequence of scenes. Flesh out the plan of each scene with a scene-building worksheet (Click Here). 

[Scene 1: Ernestine’s kitchen]

[Cut to Scene 2: Inside Caleb’s car.]

[Cut to Scene 3: Office of Ernestine’s doctor.]

[Cut to Scene 4: Office of hospital social worker.]

[Cut to Scene 5: Back in Ernestine’s kitchen, late in the day.]

These scenes tell the story in chronological fashion. They also reveal a good deal about each character's persona through self-talk and rehearsal, which they would conceal in the presence of others.

This is the dual purpose of well-executed cinematic scenes: They keep a story moving, while allowing us to see what each character learns through dealing with life's challenges. Scenes make cinematic stories dynamic and true-to-life. They can do the same in our short stories and novels.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth and daughter Heather.

Cinematic Secrets

Hulu.com has created an ingenious 15-episode series called, “The Story of Film,” and I believe we can learn a great deal about our craft by watching it. The first two episodes reveal how filmmakers stumbled upon film techniques we now take for granted—the close-up, the flashback, depth perspective, etc.—and it’s not difficult to see how we can use the same techniques on paper.

Take the cut shot, for example. The earliest narrative films portrayed each scene from a single point of view, as an audience would see a stage play, but filmmakers soon realized this medium gave them the ability to switch or “cut” instantly from one point of view to another and back again.

An early example was the 1903 film, “A Day in the Life of a Fireman.” It showed a firetruck roaring up to a house afire, the firemen connecting hoses and setting up ladders, then one fireman smashing out a window on the second floor. Moments later, a fire ax breaks through another window on the second floor, the ground crew moves his ladder to that window, and the fireman emerges with an unconscious woman draped over his shoulder. Had this movie followed the stage convention of keeping the audience in the same position with the same point of view, that’s all we would have seen. Instead, the director used a series of cuts to tell the story in sequence:

* A fire truck roars up to a house afire.

* Cut to a woman’s bedroom filled with smoke. The woman struggles to her feet, then falls back on her bed, overcome with smoke.

* Cut to the exterior, where one fireman smashes out a window on the second floor.

* Cut to another smoke-filled bedroom, where the fireman breaks through its window and looks around.

* Cut to the woman’s bedroom, where the fireman enters from the right and finds the victim unconscious. He tears down the window drapes and smashes out its window.

* Cut to the exterior, where the fireman’s ax breaks through a second window and his ground crew repositions his ladder there.

* Cut to the woman’s bedroom, where the fireman hoists the victim onto his shoulder and exits the window.

* Cut to the exterior, where the fireman clambers down the ladder with the woman over his shoulder.

* Cut to the woman’s bedroom, where the smoke sudden thickens and bursts into flame. They’ve escaped just in time!

* Cut to the exterior, where the fireman lays the unconscious woman on the grass, shakes her, pours water on her face, and she revives. (What do you expect? It’s 1905. They didn’t know CPR back then.)

Every cut shot is equivalent to the word then: “He did this, then he did that, then he did that,” and so on. A movie audience now accepts this storytelling technique, and virtually every movie made since 1905 has used it.

Here’s another one. A film shows a grocery wagon driver pull up in front of an apartment building, where the deliveryman goes in with a big basket of food.

* Cut to an interior shot, where he begins climbing the first flight of stairs.

* Cut to the exterior, where his horse eyes an open sack of feed leaning against the building. The horse draws the cart onto the sidewalk and begins to eat.

* Cut to the interior, where the delivery man climbs another flight of stairs.

* Cut to the exterior, where the horse really chows down on the open feed sack.

* Cut to the interior, where the delivery man climbs another flight of stairs.

* Cut to the exterior, where the ravenous horse drags his wagon over the curb, tipping it and spilling several bottles of milk onto the sidewalk.

And so on. In this case, every cut shot is equivalent to the word meanwhile. It’s a far more effective way of telling the story than simply showing a lengthy take of the delivery man climbing many flights of stairs, then showing another lengthy take of the hungry horse and the ruined groceries.

One more. In D.W. Griffith’s 3-hour 1916 epic film, Intolerance, he shows how human prejudice has led to the persecution and death of heroic figures throughout history. He does it with a series of cut shots. He shows how worshipers of two Babylonian gods slaughtered one another, then cuts to Jesus performing miracles with jealous Jewish leaders conspiring against him, then cuts to persecuted Protestants during the Reformation, etc. 

In this case, each cut shot is equivalent to the word, likewise. By juxtaposing these scenes from different periods of history that illustrate the same human tendency to be intolerant of other people, Griffith makes his point. We can do the same, especially in an epic story that spans several generations of the same family.

Such cinematic techniques are powerful ways to convey a message. Thanks to documentaries like “The Story of Film,” we can see how they work and apply them to our own storytelling.

Scene and Structure: Jack M. Bickham

By Kelly Bridgewater

For the past two months, I have included two of my favorite writing books. Story Trumps Structure by Steven James and On Writing by Stephen King. Today, I want to talk about a book that I am still working with on a daily basis and hopefully soon, I will master. Most writers do not enjoy mathematics in school or in daily life. But I’m an exception. I really enjoyed Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus. Besides reading in class, I loved figuring out math problems, not story problems; I can’t do those.

From Amazon

As a budding writer, I have a hard time understanding how a scene goes together. Why internal dialogue? Why do you need to know the other character’s facial and body expressions to understand the story? When reading, I understand it completely. But as the writer, I have a hard time including that in my writing. I create the emotions from the main character’s perspective for each scene, but the Stimulus-Internalization-Response sequence confuses me. I have a really hard time with Deep POV too. I have read and studied Jill Elizabeth Nelson’s book on the subject. But once I sit down to include it in my writing, it doesn’t happen.

In Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham, I have many, many underline parts and post-it notes. I have even done the exercises over and over. I have taken the exercises to Susan May Warren and Steven James’ books, trying to figure out how this works. The analytical side of my brain doesn’t comprehend how this flows together. As I enter contests, the biggest comment I receive from the judges is that I don’t do Deep POV well, but I can’t get my brain to understand this. I need someone to mentor me in this because I sure can’t understand this.

Anyways, Bickham includes weaving subplots into the main story line. He uses examples from popular literature. Even if you aren’t familiar with the story, you will be able to understand his examples.

Some writers may find this book to complex, but I really enjoy reading and studying this book. It is more detailed and explained than most writers probably want when reading a writer book to improve their craft. I just wish there was more like this.

Did you enjoy math in school? Have any suggestions or clues to help this Deep POV struggling writer to figure this out? I would gladly start a discussion on this and take advice.