Free Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld Page A

terrible loss might bite into a piece of his favorite cake only to discover that, in his grief, he cannot taste a thing.
    • A character hoping to impress his gourmet lover with a home-cooked meal might see her true colors when, in rejecting his cooking, she also rejects his love.
    Taste provides a fabulous opportunity for feelings and interactions between your characters to arise. Through the simple act of lifting a fork to mouth, your characters can come to epiphanies, exalt in simple pleasures, and enact conflicts that enliven your scenes.
    Though the senses are separated out in this chapter to help you look at them individually, you will probably find that a majority of these sensory details will emerge naturally in combination when you begin writing scenes. Your own observations will deliver themselves up through your muse as you write. But when you go back through to do a revision, ask yourself if you have overwritten one of the senses and parsed out another, and take opportunities to add or subtract some for sensory balance.
    When you put down a book, what do you remember most? Just think about it for minute. Is it the lovely descriptions of city streets? Or the moody, powerful, potent characters who populate them? I'm sure it comes as no surprise that most of us identify most with the characters. Though passages of pretty scenery or buildings collapsing capture the reader's attention for a moment, maybe two, characters bring scenes to life and are the natural focal point. After all, scenes are the primary vehicles for developing these people, particularly your protagonist (and co-protagonists, when you have more than one).
    In every scene, you have to create opportunities for your characters to reveal and enrich themselves, and to drive their stories forward in connection with your plot. You also have to give your characters the chance to evolve and transform—and not by magic.
    If your characters are the same at the end of your narrative as they were at the beginning, you most likely didn't provide them enough opportunities to act, react, and change.
    While we'll look more at other character-related issues in part three, here we'll discuss the basics of character development, and motivation as a core element of the scene.
    CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
    The moment your characters are born in your imagination, you should ask: How do they behave in public? With family? Under pressure? Sometimes people act out when they're with family members; a normally compassionate character might have a prejudice that leads him to behave in a cruel or sadistic fashion around people of certain ethnicities; or your character might always be on his best behavior only around his priest or his girlfriend. Your characters won't behave the same in every social situation, and for the purpose of drama, you should try to build in moments where they misbehave, or act in ways that surprise others in response to unusual or unexpected events.
    How does your protagonist develop over the course of your narrative? Since you can't invite the reader into his entire history at the beginning of the narrative, you only have the elements of the scene to work with—the scene is sort of like improvisational theater. Look at the following formula.
    1. Each scene should provide your character with:
    • At least one plot situation or new piece of information to react or respond to. (Of course, you can have more than one, if needed.) Whatever you choose, it must drive the story forward and cause your characters to react (see chapter eight for types of plot information).
    • A catalyst or antagonist with whom the protagonist interacts. Other characters are catalysts—they facilitate change and reaction in your protagonist; or they are antagonists—they thwart, oppose, and delay the intentions of your protagonist. Through the interactions your protagonist has with these other characters comes the necessary leverage to develop them into complex people. When