Etiqueta: What is a scene?

Scene 1 Take 2

It seems that for once, I won’t hate its very own and bureaucratic habit of his in which the dictionary orders you to go from here to there; in your quest for knowledge without it clarifying absolutely nothing. Dictionaries are a pool filled by wisdom… a very dark and twisted wisdom but the same they’re the Mimirs of words’ kingdom.

Do you remember what an ACT is? No?

Act. m.  Heroic deed

Or such are the words of Mr. Larousse. Heroic deed. Given such clue, we’re in green light to pursue the clue Nuval Yoah Harari mentions about the actantial worth of characters: only the facts of kings matter.

               Narrative happenings are born with the heroic deed. To rescue the lass. Decapitate the dragon. The act as an artificial subdivisión was born later; when little by little the idea[1] that worth telling facts were not just kingly or knightly ones, started to percolate. And even then, daily stuff (nonetheless the existence of something called slice of life) is not heroic. Unless it means to survive extraordinarily to the incitation event irrupting EVERYDAY life.

               From this moment I can start summing two and two. Heroic deed + a set of decorations. In this, I’ve cornered the elusive unicorn called scene. No matter if what I’m holding inside my fingers is nothing but shiny mane hairs due to the fact the beast escaped.

               Since it comes[2] (it might seem obvious but it might not be, evolution is a business involving a lot of things which used to be there and now aren’t or very few trustable rests still stand) from the theatre, we can agree physical limitations circumscribe a plot to happen only in a single place or a limited set of places; reducing our choices to a limited physical space.

Therefore, a scene happens in a single place and stage change is automatically a scene change and the beginning of another; where the most important thing id this physical change. I won’t discard there being scenes happening in two physical spaces  —despite them being ultra complicated to accomplish given space-time continuity and I don’t want to bring anyone from Back to the future here!

Is the scene limited to physical space? Maybe. It might be posible to limite it to mental/emotional states. Something like phone calls, monologues, schizophrenic hallucinations. A vision is interrupted and we change scene, the telephone call makes place for another and the monologue is interrupted or ended. Thus, interruption and change of <<place>> or <<space time continuity>>.

All right, I’ve summed two plus two. Can we add another number to the possibilities in a scene definition?

An “event considered as a spectacle worthy of attention” is a new possibility. There are activities, daily life or not, that matter to us. They matter because they make us get up in the morning instead of staying tucked in our warm beds.

They matter because they tell us things. They matter since, disregarding the mental sewers, the dark cringe corners of mean wishes and strange ideas next to blue prairies; they tell us who we are. Like letters or half sincere posting in Facebook we laugh of due they’re full of meaning.

This is it. My brain is running in the backstage the app “I must finish that crimson stupid thing[3]” or “I need to write more paragraphs about that witch” or “Oh no, I must read more narratology”. Being things as they are, I must settle a period about. Till next nonsense.

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[1] Can we unsafely say Shakespeare and Cervantes started to introduce the idea in The merry wives of Windsor and Don Quixote?

[2] Plus, I can be wrong.

[3] Stupid novel… It’s not stupid but sometimes it irks me. I’m still fixing it cause the sentences were too long and devoid of commas and semicolons. I need to breathe looooongly to read it aloud.

Scene 1 Take 1

               If you aren’t younger than me, you know what I’m talking about. DVDs divide the content of a movie in scenes at the menu (almost always). Sometimes with the super inflated number of none the less than 40 scenes and some others, with less than 25. Such a happening, gives us the feeling of understanding what a scene is without a need for me to define them. We can even think examples…almost for certain.

               However… whenever we go to the writing domains, the concept of scene becomes more complicated. It’s so difficult to grab it by the hair. How to know where to start it and where to end it? How many scenes are a good number of scenes and how many are too much or too little?

               On sight of this, I’ve got no other than doing the tough and disagreeable job of defining a word before getting its LINE…. Or getting myself even more confused than before.

               Scene

               Ours… well mine (since nobody else uses it here) is a second hand Webster from 1977 and it says:

Scene. (sēn) [<Gr. skēnē, stage]

1. the stage where an event occurs 2. the setting of a play, story, etc. 3. a division of a play , usually part of an act 4. a unit of action in a motion picture, story, etc. 5. same as scenery (sense 1) 6.a view of people and places 7. a display of strong feeling [to make a scene] 8. [Colloq.] the locale for a specified activity

Which seems a bit lacking, in comparison to my banqueted Larousse (prior 1970 probably). My loyal Larousse includes:

Suceso considerado como un espectáculo digno de atención: una escena conmovedora. / Something considered as a spectacle worth mentioning: a lovely scene

And before I go on, another word jumps out to out attention: ACT. What is an act?

Act. (akt) n. [<agree, to do] 1. a thing done 2. a doing 3. a law 4. a main division of a drama or opera….

Which again, lacks something somehow:

Hecho heroico. /Heroic deed

Robert McKee  

Opposing the dictionary, Robert McKee in “The script. Story”, defines a scene as “an action happens through a conflict in a time and space more or less continuous; that changes one of the values of the character’s life in a perceptible way. In an ideal situation, each scene becomes a NARRATIVE EVENT”

This man leaves me astounded. According to whom do the values change? From the point of view of the character, the villain, my own or the possible reader? A conflict per scene? What is a narrative event?

Sarah Domet

Sarah Domet in ’90 days to your novel’ doesn’t even try to. Of course, she writes novels and isn’t teaching how to write movie scripts. She gives us examples, but goes to say that no author is able to define a scene. Oh, but she does stablish a scene as an unity with its own intro, climax and ending. She says it like this[1]:

<<Think of your favorite movie. Or better yet, your favorite book. What was your favorite part?>

Here she names some parts of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Lovely Bones, Uncle

Tom’s Cabin,  Braveheart and Spider-Man

<<All these “parts” mentioned above are actually just a single scene from each of these works. But what is a scene? How does one define it? Scene writing is often difficult to discuss — for both new and seasoned writers — because a scene combines all elements of fiction in harmony with one another. It isn’t just one aspect of craft — it’s all of them put together, artfully and thoughtfully, to achieve the same kind of balance you hope for in that extravagant dish you prepare for your dinner guests. And how much of any single element (dialogue, setting, description, etc.) you need is going to depend on the particular purpose of the scene within the larger scope of your novel.

Did you get anything from all this defining?! Not even older (as in experienced) writers can define it. But it seems so worthy, it seems there can’t be plot without scenes.

I’m not really sure if Eisnten said it really but it is said he said: if you can explain something to your grandmother, then you understand it… NOT THAT THERE ARE ACTUALLY PEOPLE WHO CAN EXPLAIN QUANTUM MECHANICS. And yet, quarks do exist…

Like it or not, comment or not, subscribe or not. This is the unknown dimension of the narrative particles…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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[1] Quotation or total copy-paste. As you might see it.