Anatomy of a Novel #10

Mounting tension vs. scene setting - is this a duel?

The Soane’s Museum in London is all about maximalism.

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I was deep into draft #3 of my novel, Madame B. when my agent said something that has stuck with me since.

“What does she want in this scene?” she asked, referring to my protagonist, Nanette.

To be honest, the question irritated me a bit. It’s a party scene that builds to a big crescendo and, frankly, I was pretty pleased with the pace I’d set.

It takes place during their first week on Ibiza, when Nanette and her husband Daniel attend a blowout party hosted by the publisher of Daniel’s disastrous, unfinished magnum opus (the scene is at ~ page 30). It’s 1965 and things are about to get hairy.

There’s tension enough, I thought, because of Daniel’s obviously fraught relationship with his work - the very reason they’re on the island in the first place. My goal in that moment was to introduce a variety of characters who are particular to that specific place and that particular time and to build toward an unexpected scene climax (which impacts the trajectory of the book as a whole).

The party is raucous and sexy and surprising, and I was going for maximalism. For intensity and immersion.

After all, sometimes you have to set a scene, right? You have to create a sense of atmosphere and place readers squarely in space and time. At that stage of the story, I’m still just getting things going, I thought (defensively).

“But Nanette should want something in every scene,” said my agent. “Every single scene.”

“Really?” I said, trying to disguise my impatience.

“Really,” she said.

This is Es Vedra in Ibiza, where Nanette does something unexpected that changes her life. She definitely wants something in this scene!

What do you think?

Why not pick up the book you’re reading right now and consider the last scene you read: does the protagonist WANT something in that scene, however minor it may be?

There are so many rules about how to write good fiction, and we all know rules are meant to be broken. But when should they be followed? Would following this rule about a constant accumulation of small and large desires in each and every scene make readers turn pages more readily? And does literary fiction always follow this “rule”?

Ultimately, I added a simple desire to that party scene: Nanette tries to corner Ralph the publisher to see if she can get some intel on what her husband’s up to. He’s been acting erratically and she’s wondering what he’s hiding. It was a minor edit, just a tweak here and there. Nothing about the general trajectory of the scene itself changed.

The funny thing is, this one addition DID shake things up in a good way. It introduced a small but real charge that contributes to a sense of rising tension. I started thinking more about building “suspense” and how, why and when this happens.

Making readers turn pages

I’ve been in Europe with my parents (which explains the above picture from the Soane’s Museum - its history is fascinating, by the way). On my very first day, I wandered about the High Street popping into all the local charity shops (one of my favorite activities in London - I often find great vintage stuff).

Looking for books, I went into Oxfam; I’d been thinking about tension and suspense and the British author Sarah Waters had come to mind. I lazily scanned the shelves under “W.”

Lo and behold I found a £2 copy of her 2009 novel, The Little Stranger - this felt like providence. I’d read it years ago and loved it - while I’m generally not a fan of the supernatural, this book is a masterpiece of suspense. It’s filled with steadily rising dread and the twist at the end took me totally by surprise.

Knowing the resolution while re-reading was a great way to remind myself about how to create, sustain and escalate tension. If you’re at all interested in early 20th century British history, class conflict and crafting suspense, I recommend you read this book without reading more of a summary than the one below. Enjoy the surprises (and definitely don’t read anything about the movie, which is full of spoilers)!

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The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.

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Heading home

I’m on the plane now, heading back to Key West after five months away. In just a few days, I’ll be in my new writing space (yay!), which is a little concrete shed surrounded by tropical plants in the garden of a cottage a few blocks from my home.

I’ll be working on figuring out what to do about my Sho Fu Den story… My interest in looking at class and immigration in America in the early 1920s has been driving all my ideas about plot, but now that alarm bells are ringing about my chosen topic, that might have to change.

Or does it???