In which she considers the scene
Feb. 5th, 2011 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborahSome years ago I was read Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and was blown away by the structure: it wasn't organised chronologically so much as by an interlinking of topics, one thing recalling something that happened a generation before, or presaging something that would happen a generation later. Yesterday I read The House in Via Manno which does something similar, and I'm still fascinated by the technique.
Patricia Wrede has been writing about the Lego blocks of writing and today finishes with the scene [ETA: try this corrected link]. And, reading this, it seems to me that one fundamental aspect of the scene is that it proceeds in chronological order.
This isn't the case with sentences (which follow grammatical order) or even necessarily paragraphs (which can for effect show a reaction before the thing reacted to) and it's certainly not the case for books (as discussed above).
But a scene, by and large, moves smoothly forward in time, and even if it refers to memories of past events or the narrator's thoughts about the future, it's still in the chronological order in which it occurs to the point of view character; we aren't actually leaving this time.
Looking back at her post and thinking more, I think I'd add that a scene is fixed in one place and from one point of view. Her other "wh"s are I think less important as defining aspects. But place, time, and point of view are so tied to a scene that, if you want to change one, it ends the scene and begins a new one.
Patricia Wrede has been writing about the Lego blocks of writing and today finishes with the scene [ETA: try this corrected link]. And, reading this, it seems to me that one fundamental aspect of the scene is that it proceeds in chronological order.
This isn't the case with sentences (which follow grammatical order) or even necessarily paragraphs (which can for effect show a reaction before the thing reacted to) and it's certainly not the case for books (as discussed above).
But a scene, by and large, moves smoothly forward in time, and even if it refers to memories of past events or the narrator's thoughts about the future, it's still in the chronological order in which it occurs to the point of view character; we aren't actually leaving this time.
Looking back at her post and thinking more, I think I'd add that a scene is fixed in one place and from one point of view. Her other "wh"s are I think less important as defining aspects. But place, time, and point of view are so tied to a scene that, if you want to change one, it ends the scene and begins a new one.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 05:20 am (UTC)