Authors: Jordan Rosenfeld
"We can't keep
doing
this, Ruth, it isn't right."
"Why not?"
"You took a covenant before God. Keith is your husband, for better or worse, in sickness and in health."
"Tell me something I don't know!" Ruth stood, growing agitated. "Do you see me abandoning him? Am I walking out the door? No I'm staying. I'm staying to take care of a man who will never be healthy. Will never be normal. Will never be a real husband to me. I deserve
something,
Paul." She started to cry. "So don't give me this sanctimonious crap, okay? Because your wife died. You're free. I'm stuck. This is my forever." She dissolved into sobs.
Paul's eyes filled with tears. He stood and embraced her.
In that passage, the emotional content is hot and intense and the author matches the pace of the scene to that intensity—the conversation moves quickly, emotions are on full throttle, and there is very little narrative summary of any kind to distract from the intensity. Remember that drama always has a quality of urgency—it becomes dramatic through mounting energy, which you can convey through a swift pace and limited narrative summary.
Hot and Cold Emotions
Since drama centers so much on emotional content, here is a quick shorthand for the ways that emotions are exhibited. When emotions are hot (think passion, rage, betrayal), they tend to erupt and spill over. They lean toward the lurid and the melodramatic; they're big and loud. Too much hot emotional content in a dramatic scene will lead to melodrama (we'll explore melodrama in greater detail later in this chapter).
When emotions are cold (think shock, hurt, internalized grief), the drama seems quieter. The character handles the emotional intensity by clamping down, clenching, withdrawing, walking away. When your emotional content is too cool, however, the scene can lose power or fall flat. In every dramatic scene you want to strive to keep a balance of hot and cold.
OPENING A DRAMATIC SCENE
As we just saw, dramatic scenes do not have to launch into intense emotions right at the opening. You have some latitude in starting a scene of this kind, but it never hurts to build slowly towards the drama in order to make it more believable. While it is possible for your protagonist to open his front door and engage in a fight within a few sentences, you want to build plausibility, because these scenes are pivotal in changing your protagonist, and affecting his plotline.
Below is an example of a dramatic scene that opens slowly.
The Confessions of Max Tivoli,
by Andrew Sean Greer, is a literary novel with a fantastical twist: Its protagonist, Max Tivoli (alias Asgar) is born an old man who is doomed to get younger and younger until his death. The only thing that has ever mattered to him is his love for a young girl named Alice who, eventually, through subterfuge and complex arrangements, he manages to marry when she is much older. Of course, he must hide his condition and the truth from Alice, but one day, after she stumbles across a clue, he makes a fatal mistake and tells her the truth. She doesn't take it very well, calling him insane. Notice how, while the scene opens with Max in emotional trouble, it doesn't feel emotionally hot quite yet. But there's a sense of drama about to brew:
It was early evening, still light, and the curtains were open. Alice lay on the other bed, fully clothed in violet plisse crepe, net frill at her neckline, gloves on her stomach as if she had spent the day out. Her coat and hat lay on the foot of the bed. Whiskey on the table, two glasses, both nearly empty; apparently I had been drinking. I came to and she was talking: "I don't want anything that's here."
"Alice," I said. "I'm not myself today. There's something I could say right now that would make all the difference, isn't there? You would stay if I said it, Alice. But I'm not thinking well, I'm in a kind of cloud, so you have to think of it. Help me, Alice, what could I say? Let's think. I know it's about ten words, and not big ones. What are they?"
Your hand was on your hat. "We are strangers, Asgar. There's nothing
to say."
While Greer's dramatic scene opens slowly with seemingly benign details, such as Alice's clothing, there is a definite sense of foreboding and tension. Quickly the reader realizes that the details add up to something being not right—the empty glasses, and his lack of memory, suggest he's been heavily drinking; the way Alice is dressed as if she "spent the day out"—these details establish that drama is coming.
Dramatic tension, remember, is the
potential
for things to go wrong and the feeling that conflict is still to come in a scene. A dramatic scene, therefore, should achieve a lessening of one kind of tension as the drama plays out, while also creating new tension that comes as a result of new consequences.
When Max finally tells Alice the truth about his condition, it comes with a kind of relief—the reader has been waiting a long time for him to confess. But now a new set of circumstances has evolved: Alice thinks he's crazy and wants nothing more to do with him, provoking him to desperation and despair—here comes the new tension. Ultimately, in trying to keep her from leaving him, he forces himself upon her—and ultimately fathers their only child in the act.
In a dramatic scene, you want to conclude the tension set up by earlier scenes and establish new tension for future scenes. When you open a dramatic scene you are setting the stage for an emotional interaction to follow. Therefore, you want to narrow the focus down to the characters. It's hard to pull off emotional drama if the scene has a lot of background actions or descriptions of scenery, for instance. Dramatic scenes should open with:
• Small actions
•A sense of foreboding
•An emotional intention for your protagonist—remember that drama is about feelings
•An interaction between your protagonist and at least one other character
•An interaction between your protagonist and a larger force of opposition that threatens her intentions
DRIVING YOUR PROTAGONIST (AND THE PLOT) TOWARD CHANGE
After you've opened a dramatic scene, the rest of the scene should involve a series of escalating events and interactions that intensify your protagonist's feelings through emotional complications, thus driving your character toward change. Dramatic scenes put the pressure on your character to transform so that your plot can move forward.
You can create emotional complications in a number of ways, but here are some sure-fire examples:
• Confrontations.
Many dramatic scenes revolve around a confrontation of some kind. The abused child confronts the parent; the betrayed lover confronts the mistress; the activist confronts the politician.
• Reunions.
Drama doesn't always have to revolve around conflict, but it should include a quality of tension. When people who have been kept apart (long-lost siblings, lovers) come together again, there is great potential for high emotion.
• Borrowed time.
When characters have a limited amount of time together, they often react differently—say what they really feel; act more impulsively—thus creating more drama.
• Crushed expectations.
More often than not, a character's emotional intensity comes from not getting what she wanted or expected.
•Threat of bodily harm or death.
The specter of intense pain or death has an uncanny way of forcing characters to change, and to have emotional reactions.
Sometimes the change your protagonist undergoes is good for him—the old adage that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Other times, the emotional drama that led your character to this moment of change might also equal his destruction—your particular writing style and your story's theme will dictate which kind of change your protagonist makes. One of the greatest examples of tragic character change brought on by emotional drama comes from Gustave Flaubert's novel
Madame Bovary.
Fanciful and petulant Emma Bovary is a romantic with a wild fantasy life and a penchant for the finer things in life. She is never satisfied with what she has—she is always striving after something better. She marries Charles Bovary, a doctor, but quickly becomes bored by him and takes a lover named Rodolphe. Their affair is tempestuous, and Rodolphe is arrogant and impatient. He strings Emma along. Meanwhile, in order to cater to her image of how her life should be, Emma gets herself (and her unwitting husband) into deep debt by buying fancy clothing and fine furniture. When her creditors come calling and she cannot pay, she turns to Rodolphe to save her, and the scene that follows, which is full of hot emotional drama, drives her toward a devastating change:
"You have been crying," he said. "Why is that?"
She broke into sobs.
Rodolphe interpreted the spasm as one of love that could no longer be controlled. She made no answer to his question and he took her silence for modesty entrenched within its last defenses.
"Forgive me!" he exclaimed. "No other woman can delight me as you do! I have been a fool, a villain! I love you, and will love you for ever. What is the matter? Tell me!"
He fell on his knees.
"It's just ... that I am facing ruin, Rodolphe. You
will
lend me three thousand francs, won't you?"
"But ... but ..." he said slowly, getting to his feet, while his face assumed a serious expression.
"You know," she hurried on, "that my husband had entrusted the whole of his fortune to a lawyer. Well, the lawyer has run away. We've borrowed. The patients weren't paying up and we haven't been able to realize all our property. ..."
Ah, thought Rodolphe, who had suddenly gone very pale. So
that's
the reason for this visit.
Without the slightest show of emotion, he said: "Dear lady, I haven't got such a sum."
He wasn't lying. Had the money been at hand, he would doubtless have given it to her, unpleasant though such fine gestures usually are. ...
For a moment or two she just looked at him.
"You haven't got it?"
Several times she repeated the same words.
"You haven't got it! ... I might have spared myself this final humiliation.
You never really loved me. You are just like all the others!"
All of Emma's hopes are dashed. She is finally confronted with the truth— she has gotten herself into a trouble so deep that none of her usual saviors can get her out. This scene is the pivotal moment in her storyline—she marches straight for her husband's pharmacy and eats a handful of arsenic powder, effectively committing suicide. Tragedy at its finest, heightened by drama along the way.
While drama often comes with negative emotional consequences— someone gets hurt, another gets betrayed or abandoned—your protagonist may also change for the better. When faced with the painful truth, a character may finally let go of an unhealthy relationship, or fit the missing piece into the puzzle of her tragic history. Drama can force a character to exhibit bravery and selflessness and a host of other positive qualities. What matters most is that at the end of a dramatic scene, your protagonist has had a new or enlightening emotional experience that causes her to behave, think, or feel differently.
By keeping in mind that character and plot are indelibly linked, when you drive your character toward change in a dramatic scene, you can also drive your plot to its next step. Dramatic scenes should never be gratuitous—the reason for intense emotional conflicts that change your character is to push the story forward, and get on to the next event and set of consequences.
So, when you write a dramatic scene, you also want to consider the plot consequences that will result. What will happen after a stunning revelation that your protagonist is not who he thinks he is? Where will he go when, after a dramatic fight, his mother kicks him out of the house? Remember: The emotional intensity you establish in your dramatic scene
must
lead to change, and thus consequences for your plot.
CLOSING A DRAMATIC SCENE
Because the nature of drama is to elicit emotional intensity, you don't need to end a dramatic scene with a pulse-pounding cliffhanger. You want to leave your protagonist in a sort of daze or moment of reflection. A lot has just happened to him—now he needs a beat to reflect or just pause, and so does the reader.
The scene in
Madame Bovary
that reaches such a dramatic crescendo that Emma is driven to eat arsenic powder ends like this:
She went home in a mood of sudden peace, almost like somebody with a calm sense of duty done.
And the dramatic scene where Max Tivoli reveals himself and forces himself upon Alice ends like this:
She simply stood there facing the door. In my nightmares, I work endlessly on a statue of my wife in just that pose, her back to me. I will never get to carve her face. Then, without turning, she walked out the door to meet her new life, and I had lost her forever this time.
Both scenes end with exposition, which distances the reader from the intensity. Unless your plan is to keep the drama high for more than one scene in a row (in which case you'll end the scene before the drama has concluded), you will want to cool down the intensity. To do this you can use exposition, as above, or end with a character's interior monologue about what has just happened, or employ scenic description of the setting that metaphorically or thematically addresses the content of the scene.