The discussion on rasfc about scenes and Bickham continues, so I'm copying my thoughts here again for easier access.( The debate continues... )

Jonathan replied:
Fine. I'm sure it would work wonderfully well for quest novels, too.

To which I said:
It works extraordinarily well for David Lodge's Thinks... too, which is a literary novel about adultery in academia. At least I can analyse the book in Bickham terms, even though I'm sure he didn't use Bickham to structure his novel.

This is because what Bickham describes is not something he's just invented. It's a universal recipe for stories which he just happens to have presented in a restrictive (but accessible) form. His rigid definition enabled me to see the universal underlying pattern. That's how I could analyse Nicky's Hunted in Bickham terms even though she most definitely did not use his way of thinking when writing the story. It just came out that way because what we think of as a satisfactory story follows that pattern.

I think there's some confusion about what, exactly, the Bickham Scene/Sequel pattern applies to. One doesn't analyse the writing using Bickham; you analyse the underlying story. I was talking in another post about there being two layers to a story. After reading Patricia's reply, which indicated that I hadn't quite explained things as clearly as I meant to, I realised that I now see stories in 3 layers:( More analytical wittering... )

But I'll let Bickham have the last word.

"By giving you some further insights into the kind of strategic planning that goes into one kind of book, I may help you find your way more clearly to ideas about how you should best use scenes and sequels to achieve certain effects and produce the kind of book that exists in your mind somewhere as an ideal, whether you previously realised it or not." [My emphasis]

Tags: bickham, character goals, scenes, writing reflection
Current Mood: reflective

This is an expanded version of a post I made to rasfc this morning, put here for ease of reference.

green_knight had asked about my scene planning sheets, which had led to a discussion of scenes in general. Regular poster RL said a lot of sensible stuff about scenes and locations and relating scenes in play and films to scenes in books. She finished up with:

So (in some books) the curtain that on stage was REQUIRED by a change of
location -- got REPLACED by a change of location! Now often to show when
the important part of the event or conversation is over, that kind of book
moves to the next day or the next room or whatever.

That makes a lot of sense. Also it's fun to move to another location and show off a different part of the world and that doesn't cause any problems in a book. A playwright, on the other hand, has to think of the cost and labour involved in lots of scene changes (or think of minimalist stylised ways of indicating new locations on a more or less blank stage) and hence may reuse locations as much a possible. On the play writing course, we were made to think about location and keep these to a minimum, but the fiction writer can take the reader on a grand tour of as many locations as they like. ( More wittering about scenes, with an example from Moving a Mountain... )

Tags: bickham, scenes, writing reflection
Current Mood: blah