What's in a scene

For a few of the books in Novel Study, I analyzed the content of a scene, tagging every sentence. Here’s how I defined the categories:

The goal was to better understand the effects of the different components and how to wield each one. The goal was not to find some ideal formula you should apply to every scene, because I don’t think such a formula exists. However, I do think it’s useful to have this data snapshot as one way to understand how a scene works, and I also like that we’re building a library of comparisons. 

So let’s start our analysis of chapter six of Liz Moore's The God of the Woods by looking at that snapshot:

This is the highest interiority percentage I’ve seen yet (for the chapters I analyzed in Novel Study: Dutch House was 31%, Dial A for Aunties was 22%, and Secret Hour was 25%). If I’d chosen another chapter, I think the percentage would be even higher; interiority is Moore’s most-used tool in The God of the Woods. It’s important to note that though the novel is a thriller, it is also much longer and more literary than many popular thrillers. Freida McFadden’s newest thriller, The Crash, for example, is roughly 84,500 words compared to roughly 119,000 for God of the Woods. I think this high interiority percentage works well for this novel, but might not work as well for a thriller with a more focused plot and faster pacing.

I’ve chosen chapter six because it’s early enough in the novel that I don’t need to reveal any major spoilers, and also because it has high tension and a big cluster of new story questions. Let’s break it down now and see how it works.

Moore opens the novel in August 1975, just as thirteen-year-old camper Barbara is discovered missing from her bunk. (See my post on the opening.) Counselor Louise is the first one to realize she’s gone. After the first chapter, Moore jumps back in time a few months to introduce us to other characters. Chapter six is the first moment we return to the August timeline, witnessing the immediate aftermath of Barbara’s disappearance.

Wisely, Moore gets us right into the action with the first sentence of the chapter: “Louise is running.” Conventional writing advice would have you swap the present progressive tense to simple present: “Louise runs.” But I think this is a perfect example of when to use present progressive. “Louise is running” feels like a complete sentence; as readers, we also feel like we are dropped onto a treadmill alongside Louise, who is already running, so we need to scramble to catch up. 

“Louise runs,” on the other hand, feel incomplete on its own. Where or how or why is she running? Moore wants to keep us in suspense about those questions while she drops in a chunk of interiority (see A on the graphic below) that fills in our knowledge of Louise: She feels like running is her “natural state,” and her daily runs are the only times she can escape her worries. Most revealing: “On long runs she thinks of her body as somehow the mother of her brain—or the way a mother should be, anyway. The way other people’s mothers are.” We need to know this crucial bit of information about Louise to understand her past and future actions.

Standard writing advice is to start a scene as close as you can to the main action. And that’s often very good advice, prompting writers to trim off unneeded throat clearing and scene setting they needed in order to settle into the scene. But this bit of writing wisdom can also block writers from seeing other opportunities in a scene. In a case where readers expect to see an action or confrontation, you can actually use that expectation to increase suspense while also delivering something readers don’t expect, and that’s exactly what Moore does here.

After the bit of interiority about running, Moore delivers the where, how, and why: Louise is running “frantically, unseeingly” to the Director’s Cabin to report that Barbara is missing (B). Along the way we also get a chunk of summary, giving us a list of seven different places Louise has already checked for Barbara (C). Moore could have expanded any one of these settings (the latrines, the beach, the main house…) into a mini flashback that would have delivered more setting information and general interest. But none of those settings would have delivered the subplot she wants to reveal at this moment.

Instead, Moore slows the scene down as soon as Louise gets to the Director’s Cabin, building in extra tension. Louise has to make another decision when she reaches the cabin because T.J. doesn’t answer the door (D). It’s unlocked; “there are no locks at Camp Emerson.” (Interesting.) And here is where we find out something unexpected—a surprise new story question emerges because the relationship between Louise and T.J. is more complex than we’d thought. 

Louise decides to enter the cabin and, as she moves through the space, we learn that she “shares a history” with T.J. that she keeps hidden from the other counselors, and once spent a whole week staying in the cabin itself (E). Louise tiptoes down the hallway and realizes T.J. is showering. The way Louise notices T.J.’s body as she steps out of the shower raises further questions about their relationship—ones that aren’t answered in this chapter.

Only now, over halfway through the chapter, do we get the conversation we are expecting (F). Louise delivers the news about Barbara and T.J. asks the expected questions, including one that Louise has prepared for—whether she and Annabel, her teenage counselor in training, were in the cabin last night. The question and Louise’s response, which is a lie, is bracketed by two chunks of interiority that shape how we feel about this lie (G). Louise, we learn, is not “a habitual liar” but she’s sometimes had to lie in order to survive. She respects T.J. and lying to her makes her feel sick—especially since “she has confessed, on several occasions, certain things that she has never told another soul” (another little hint about the relationship between them).

T.J. appears to accept Louise’s lie and jumps into action, using the camp’s public address system to summon the rest of the counselors to her office (H). We’ve now gotten what we expected from the scene, but Moore has one more surprise left in store. Without preamble or explanation, T.J. asks if Louise has seen her fiancé, John Paul, that week (I). We don’t know why T.J. asks; nor do we know why Louise once again lies.

We leave the chapter, then, with more story questions than we had when we started it, which is exactly what you want at this point in a mystery or thriller.

What do you think? If you are reading or have read The God of the Woods, how is Moore's reliance on interiority affecting your reading experience? Is there anything about this breakdown of chapter six that surprised you? Would you have made different choices as an author or editor?