The only difference between writing a scene as a novelist and writing a scene as a journalist ... is that journalists do not fabricate scenes; they report them. ~ Lauren Kessler

Week Two | Art of the Scene: Staying In The Story by Staying In Narrative Time

First, two bright spots:

1. Huge congratulations to Natalie Mead on her first ever literary journal publication! She wrote to me yesterday to say she had her gut punch of a hermit crab essay, which she started right here in WITD—Dog Adoption Application—accepted for publication. Friends, I loved that brilliant piece from the moment I first saw it, and yes, we’ve added it to the big, beautiful Born in WITD Directory of work that started here. Here’s what Natalie said:

   I'm excited to say that I got a piece of flash CNF published in Identity Theory magazine today. I posted the first draft of this piece as a comment on the hermit crab essay exercise in the Strange Containers series. This is my first publication in any literary journal, though not the first WITD exercise I've been submitting around. Thanks so much for the inspiration and guidance and I'd love to be included in the directory post!

2. But it’s not all about publishing, is it? It has to start with the writing itself, the process, how we feel inside it, and how it makes us feel in general. How much we’re able to hear the sound of our own voice. Toward that end, a member of WITD: THE SCHOOL (where we’ve been looking at fairy tale retellings and the elements of fairy tale writing that can amplify the power of contemporary writing) shared an absolutely extraordinary snippet yesterday and mentioned she’d had a breakthrough. I asked her to describe the breakthrough—like, what did she think happened that helped her create such a stunning piece of writing, and I want to share what she said in case it gives light to any of you who feel stuck or “not good enough”:

   Thank you for this assignment! writing has never come easier than through this fairy tale window. I feel so much permission to start with one word or sentence and then see what wants to come afterward. let the red carpet unroll itself, if you will. There is also something loosening in my psyche re. self consciousness in writing. These fairy tale assignments have allowed me to drop this halting inward gaze that asks how someone else will perceive or how I will come across on the page/screen and just let it flow > edit afterward. I didn't post any exercises for the first month—as I still felt “not good enough,” but I feel like these last two weeks have been my breakthrough point! I even posted to my personal Substack (!!) which I haven't been able to do in months. I've been craving to hit this creative flow for a long time. Thank you for the container! I'm happy and grateful to be here. xoxo

I hope to start including bright spots as often as I can, because we really need them right now. If you have a bright spot to share, please email writing@writinginthedark.org or post it as a comment.

And now, for this week’s Art of the Scene work ...

While scratching around for something related to movement in scenes (which I did not yet find, at least, not in the way I was hoping to), I found something even better: an outstanding essay on the power of scenes in all forms of writing, including journalism.¹ The essay (linked in footnotes) is by the nationally renowned, award-winning narrative nonfiction writer and journalist Lauren Kessler. It’s worth adding to your craft library. In part, Kessler says:

A scene puts the reader inside the story. It is both descriptive and evocative. It has tone. It has emotional content. We know, from our own reading and viewing, the key element of a scene: There is setting. There are characters. Something happens. Characters reveal themselves in some way. The story — the plot—is advanced in some way. That’s the guts of a scene….

Scenes are a wonderfully satisfying challenge to write. More important: They are essential to narrative and a powerfully compelling way to connect with readers.

The Ann Tyler scene² we’ll look at today deftly accomplishes all of the things Kessler names:

• puts the reader inside the story

• describes and evokes

• has tone and emotional content

• has characters and setting

• makes something happen

• shows characters revealing something

• advances the plot

I taught this Ann Tyler scene recently in my advanced fiction class at Moose Lake, where we took it apart and reassembled it together over the course of an hour or so, and we identified several extraordinary things about it, one of which is how it stays almost wholly in the exterior world and contains almost no backfill or summary.

For these reasons, it makes an incredible scene for us to study and emulate. But first, a few more thoughts about the connection between time and scenes.

In last Wednesday’s Week One post for our Art of the Scene intensive, we talked about this cut-to-the-bone definition of a scene:

A scene is unit of writing in which the writer puts us into a specific place at a specific time and shows us what’s happening over a specific span of real time passing.

Here’s an example of that kind of writing—moving through a span of real time