How to Write Activist Literature – Six – Make Note Cards with Scenes
By Andy Heath
Now you’ve written your plot and filled in the gaps with that plot. Everything is going well if you’re following these instructions correctly. The problem with Steps 4 and 5 is that these free writing exercises are a mess. If you’ve been doing them correctly, there are pages and pages and pages of plot and gap filling. Step 6, making note cards with scenes, will give some rhyme and reason to the whole process.
Let me start with some background on scenes, which is the purpose of Step 6. Books are like movies in that they’re written in scenes. When you watch one of the Star Wars movies, you’ll note that one minute you might be seeing something going on in outer space on a ship. Then you might see something going on on a planet. Then you might see different characters on another ship. Each of these moments in time with different characters and different places are scenes. Books are written the same way as movies in this regard. They are written in scenes.
In activist literature, like all literature, a scene has certain elements. It has a certain action, internal or external, that occurs. The scene has a purpose, something that moves the story forward. Remember when I was talking about how all the characters must have good reason to take an action? Remember when I told you that you must set up whatever happens so it makes sense? These are some of the purposes of scenes. In my first scene of Preston, I showed Billy and some of his cronies assaulting another student. I didn’t just put that in for my health. There was a purpose, a reason for that scene to be there. The reason was that I wanted to show that Billy was a psycho religious fanatic. Showing that he was a psycho religious fanatic was important to the story because it set up other things that he was going to do later in the book. It leaves the reader saying, “Wow, that was surprising, but I can see it,” rather than, “Where the hell did that come from?”
Now that you understand what a scene is and how scenes work, here is a very important aspect to a scene – one that I have already noted but that bears repeating. Each scene must have a purpose. Each one must move the story forward in some capacity. I have explained this in the paragraph above, so you will have some idea of how it works. When coming up with scenes for your book, think along the lines of the purpose of the scene rather than just the action that will take place in the scene. In the example above with Billy and the assault on another student, I did not know at first that I was going to write about such a scene. I only knew that I had to prove that Billy was a psycho religious fanatic. So the fact that he assaulted another student for committing a “sin” worked well to bring about that purpose. My next scene was simply to show Preston praying in front of his bed and show how that came to be. I had to show him praying in front of his bed every night so the readers could get an idea of what his behavior is. Once he changed that behavior, it was to be a surprise, but they have to know what the behavior that is changing is first. At the end of the book, when he gave up his religion, I had to make sure that the readers would not say, “Where the hell did that come from?” So I had another few scenes that set up what was to happen. One of those scenes showed Preston’s friend Eric asking if Preston ever questioned God. Preston paused in that scene and then said no, he never questioned God. But the fact that he paused showed the readers that he was going in the general direction of giving up his religion. That way, when he did end up giving it up at the end of the book, the reader would say, “Wow, that was surprising, but I can see it.”
Now, you’re going to ask what this has to do with note cards. Since novels are told in scenes, you are going to write a little bit about each scene on the note cards. When I develop my note cards, I write the word PURPOSE at the top. Then I specifically write the purpose of the scene so that I know that the scene is necessary. Then underneath the purpose, I write a few sentences about what needs to happen in that scene, just a very brief summary.
When you get started writing your note cards, make sure you have your plot and gap filling exercises handy so you can use them. You will find – I know, it’s a shock – that there are still even more gaps to fill in. Don’t let that discourage you. Just keep working.
So when you have your plot and gap filling exercises in front of you, just start with any scene you like from that material. Write the purpose of the scene and then jot down a few notes about what will happen in it. Then do another. And another. As you see gaps, fill them in with new scenes that you had not previously thought of. Add things to scenes so that you can “kill two birds with one stone” in a scene. That will work well, and tightens the plot.
You will write about 80 to 100 note cards, I would say, and then you should have covered everything. Once you have written the note cards and have all the purposes and a few things that are going to happen in each scene, then go back and read what you have written in the order that you have placed the note cards – you don’t have to write the cards in order, but you need to put the cards in the order the scenes will be in.
When you read them, you are again looking for gaps in your material. There is a reason you spend so much time looking for gaps. They are so easy to occur and you want to address them before writing your manuscript.
With these note cards finished, if you did them write, you should have the purpose of every scene along with every necessary action in the scene with what character is committing that action as well as a few additional lines in each card telling about the scene. Feel free to use the back of the cards, but you should almost never need to use more than one card. If you do need to use more than one card, use some Scotch tape and tape them together. You don’t want to separate two cards if they’re for the same scene.
When you have completed this exercise, you will have a mini-novel in your hands. You’ll hold those note cards and that will be the blueprint from which you write your novel. But you don’t start writing the manuscript until Step 7, which will be posted in two days.
