◉ Novel Study
Back in an earlier post, I listed the components of fictional scenes—action, summary, dialogue, character description, setting, interiority, and backstory—and analyzed a scene from Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House to see how one author used the tools available to her. In the scene I analyzed, Patchett relies heavily on summary, character description, and interiority—largely tools of telling. These tools work well for a novel that is focused on uncovering a complex history of interpersonal relationships to understand how they are impacting the characters’ present lives.
Let’s now apply the same technique to a more action-oriented novel, Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties, to see how an author might use the same set of tools in a different combination. You can read my analysis of the novel’s opening in my post on its first chapter, but to recap, we’ve learned that Meddy is a wedding photographer, in business with her mother and aunts. On the eve of their biggest event ever, Meddy goes on a blind date with a man her mother has set her up with by impersonating her on a dating app. The early chapters have also established that Meddy loves her mother and aunts but also wishes for more independence from them, and that she had an intense college relationship with a man named Nathan—a relationship she has never really gotten over. Chapter seven shows us the aftermath of Meddy accidentally killing her date with a Taser after he tries to assault her (no spoiler here since this plot revelation is in the book description!).
As you can tell from the figure below, chapter seven is dominated by dialogue (40 percent) and action (25 percent), with a healthy serving of interiority (22 percent), a couple summary bridges (6 percent), and a sprinkling of backstory (4 percent) and character description (3 percent). In contrast, the scene from Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, which I analyzed in that post, was dominated by interiority (at 31 percent), with dialogue making up only 22 percent of the scene, and action a meager 9 percent. Compared to Patchett’s backward-looking, meditative scene, Sutanto’s scene is firmly grounded in the present moment. This fits their respective subjects and is solidified by their narration choices. Both novels have first-person (I) narrators, but Patchett’s uses past tense while Sutanto’s uses present tense.
Scene composition of Dial A for Aunties. Dialogue and action drive this scene, but interiority still claims more than a fifth of it.
Let’s look at some of the details of how the scene unfolds and see how Sutanto is using her palette to move the plot forward and bring us closer to the characters, especially her protagonist, Meddy. As the scene opens, Meddy is sitting in her garage, the body of her date in the trunk of her car, trying to understand how she got to this moment. Suddenly, her mother is there, and we get our first bit of dialogue:
She frowns at me. “What is it, Meddy? What’s wrong?”
I wasn’t planning on telling her anything. Of course I wasn’t—the last person I want to tell is Ma. She wouldn’t know what to do, or say, or—
“Ma, I killed him.”
This first exchange sets up the internal conflict that fuels the whole scene. Meddy wants to keep her mother (and aunts) at arm’s length but can’t stop herself from accepting their comfort and help—which they are all too ready to provide. There is intergenerational conflict here, doubled or tripled by the cultural gap between Meddy and her family.
Sutanto, however, plays the conflict for laughs throughout much of the scene, adding a deeper note only occasionally. For example, after surprising Meddy by announcing she’s called her aunts, who are on their way over, Ma tells her to cut up some mangoes for them, despite Meddy’s protests:
“Your aunties coming over, so late at night, coming to help us get rid of body, and we don’t even offer them any food? How can? Oh, we have dragon fruit, good, good. Big Aunt’s favorite. Wah, got pear too. Very good. Help me peel, don’t be so rude to your aunties, you will bring shame.”
“Oh, right, it’s the lack of fruit that’ll bring shame, not the dead body in the car.”
But, as happens again and again throughout the book, Ma turns out to be right, and the ritual of preparing and sharing the fruit provides a moment of comfort and bonding before the group has to confront the reality of the dead body and decide what to do next. Sutanto uses the fruit business to get the aunts into the scene and continue establishing the basics of their family dynamics.
At this point, Sutanto needs a bit of summary, after Big Aunt prompts Meddy to tell them what happened:
I don’t hesitate. There’s just something about Big Aunt, a mix of firm authority and motherly warmth that nobody can say no to. I’m feeling so guilty about having them rush here in the middle of the night—to help me with a dead body, no less—that I try relaying the story in Indonesian. But not even one sentence in, Second Aunt tells me my atrocious Indonesian is giving her a headache and I should just stick to English. With some relief, I tell them about my date with Jake, about how he insisted on driving me home, and the things he said.
My aunts and mother cover their mouths with horror and shake their heads.
“How could you set Meddy up with such a douchebag?” Fourth Aunt snaps at Ma.
Sutanto doesn’t waste the chance here to give us more insight into Meddy’s emotional state and her complex feelings about her relatives as well as the cultural and linguistic misunderstandings that led to the dead body in the trunk. Because we are getting fresh details, these few sentences of summary mixed with interiority don’t slow down the scene. Very quickly we are back to dialogue and the feeling of forward momentum.
In a laugh-out-loud-funny sequence, Meddy learns that her mother had been sexting with Jake, the date, without even realizing it:
I slam the phone down and stare at Ma. Fourth Aunt is literally lying on the floor, laughing.
“What? What is it?” Big Aunt says. “He sound like very nice boy, offer to cook eggplant for you.”
“Right?” Ma cries, gesturing wildly. “I read that and I think, wah, this boy is so lovely, so caring for my daughter, even ask her, is she thirsty?”
I bury my face in my hands. “Nooo! Ma, those emojis—the water droplets and the eggplant—they’re sexual innuendos!”
But the hilarity leads to a deeper message that this family, despite their many conflicts, are fiercely loyal. It’s now Meddy’s mother’s turn to feel guilty as she wonders if her naiveté led to Jake’s death—a question that is quickly answered by the rest of the group:
I open my mouth to answer, but my aunts beat me to it, shouting, “NO!” in unison.
“So what if you say you want eat eggplant?” Second Aunt says. “Maybe one day you want eat eggplant, but then another day you don’t want, is okay you change mind.”
“Yes, he is very bad boy, very bad,” Big Aunt says.
The overall emotional arc of the scene is from a Meddy who is alone and frightened in her car, unsure of her next move, to a Meddy who is affirmed, comforted, and supported by her family. When she resumes her story and alludes to Jake’s intended sexual assault once more, her aunts erupt in curse words in various languages and her mother declares, “It is good thing he already dead, otherwise I kill him.” It’s funny and cathartic all at once. And we know that there must be more such scenes to come because they are only at the beginning of the problems they are going to have to solve together—among them, getting rid of a dead body.
Takeaways
The components you use to build your scenes will vary according to the plot, themes, and genre of your book, and they will likely also vary by scene. There is no magic formula.
While different scenes and books will use more or less of some components, variety is always beneficial. Break up long sections of dialogue with action, interiority, and descriptive details to vary the pace.
Use tension between characters to add stakes to every conversation. Make dialogue do more than just convey information. You can use subtext and interiority to show gaps between what a character is saying and what they are thinking.
In comedic scenes, contrast a character’s internal thoughts with the external situation to heighten humor and reveal their true reactions.
Share background details or needed context via summary bridges between sections of dialogue. Sprinkle information throughout the scene rather than delivering it in one long ‘info dump.’
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Keep exploring
This is one novel’s breakdown from Novel Study — my series reverse-engineering how bestselling books actually work, opening to ending. The full method, with all the charts, is collected in the books.
This post is collected in Novel Study, Book 1 of the series.
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