8 Key Ways to Add Layers of Depth to Your Scenes

By Jordan Dane
@JordanDane
 

I’ve been working with college-aged writers recently and noticed that many of them rush a scene by sending it to me too soon, as if they’re in a race. My job is to get them to be their own critic and not settle for mediocre, even if it means they won't get a grade. To get noticed in the slush pile of an agent or editor, today’s author must bring something new to the table that is uniquely from them and their storytelling ability.

Using an example of constructing a house, they send me the basic framework, but the finishing touches are lacking. Is the dialogue there? Check. Is there a beginning, middle and end to the writing sample? Check. Did I meet the bare essence of the assignment? Check. But a good house needs walls and all the finishing touches that make it feel like a home. Well-balanced scenes can be those finishing touches that make a house a home. They can add a balance of color/setting, voice, emotion, and memorable characters that doesn’t slow the pace down and make your work stand out as unique, too.

Here are 8 key ways to layer your scene with more depth and make them stand out:

1.) MAKE YOUR VOICE UNIQUE - Pick a POV for the character who will tell the story of the scene and give him or her a unique voice. That means you must see through their eyes and add their senses and opinions to the scene. You can talk about what’s in a room, as if it were a forgettable inventory, OR you can add color by having your character say things like, “the dump smelled like cat piss.” Also give each character their own unique voice, using the same care as you craft each one.

2.) USE ACTION - Show your character taking part in the scene, rather than merely talking about the emotion they’re feeling. A guy who is forced to fight when he’d rather cut and run like a coward will behave differently than a guy who wants to be there and do the right thing. The coward might hang back or urge someone else to take his place or fake an injury to get out of what he really doesn’t want to do. The brave guy would take lead or protect the others by shielding them with his body, for example.

3.) USE DEEP POV - Set your character’s deepest thoughts in italics as “Deep POV” to give the reader insight into your character’s internal motivation. These could be expletives or funny one liners that he /she would mutter under their breath or in their head. The right Deep POV touches can add punch.

4.) WEAVE IN BACK STORY SPARINGLY - Know your character and their back story so you can slip it into the story seamlessly. Not many readers today tolerate a back story dump. There’s not many ways to disguise it either. But weaving a back story over a longer timeframe of your story is a good way to build upon your character’s history without slowing the pace—and it can create a mystery element. Other characters (who have a past with him or her) can fill in the gaps in a more interesting way.

5.) PICK THE ESSENCE OF EMOTION - Emotion is vital to make a scene memorable. Pick out the best images or set the stage in actions that best highlight the emotion you’re trying to weave into the scene. Add only the essential images. This could be a man talking about the small of a woman’s back, at a certain time of day when her body entices the shadows, or his memory of the first time he’d ever noticed how perfect that gentle curve had always been. The sensuality can be there, without overwriting the description of her, plus it conveys his enduring love for her in a sensual way. I'm not a poet, but I often think that good writers have the soul of a poet in them when I read certain passages that make me stop and reread them.

6.) PICK THE MOST PROMINENT PHYSICAL TRAITS - Beauty is in the small details. Today’s average reader may not tolerate an author describing a character in great detail because that would slow the pace, but try picking out the most essential characteristics of your character and pepper your scene with those images to suggest traits, rather than spell them out. Instead of describing how thin a guy is, add color by saying his suit hangs on him as if he were a human coat hanger.

7.) GIVE THE SCENE STRUCTURE – I think of scenes as mini-stories that will propel the story along with 1-3 plot points infused into every scene. They have a beginning, a middle and an end so that the characters in that scene take a journey and move the story forward. Internal monologue should not be repeated. Have your character discover or learn something about themselves during the scene, for example.

8.) ADD SETTING THAT ENHANCES YOUR SCENE – Any scene can be enhanced with the right setting. The bare bones of two characters talking in a study can be enhanced if there is a menacing storm rumbling outside, a loud crackling fire in the hearth, and a musty old library smell in the air from the countless alchemy books that lined the shelves, an extensive collection of magic books that spanned centuries, set in a mansion in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Classic.

I’ve mentioned 8 key ways to add depth to your scenes. Can you add more to this list? Please share your thoughts and what has worked for you.

Setting and Story

by Jennifer Archer

How does setting affect story? I've thought a lot about that question in relation to my own writing. Some writers write plot-driven books. I consider mine to be more “character-driven,” in that the plot is pushed forward more by the characters than by external events or the environment around them. That said, even in character-driven stories, setting plays a crucial role, as it does in any good novel. A vivid locale can create tone and atmosphere, thereby helping the reader immerse herself in the world of the book. You can’t build a sturdy house on a weak foundation, but build a strong foundation and the home will be solid. In the same sense, build a good setting and let your characters live and grow in it, and the book will be solid – or believable. 

In a character-driven book, the setting may not drive what occurs, but in all likelihood it will affect the characters in some way, helping to drive them to push the plot forward. My novel Through Her Eyes would have been a very different kind of story if I had set it in New York City or Seattle instead of in a small Texas town. For one thing, the wind in the Texas Panhandle is very pervasive, adding to the eerie mood and atmosphere of the book. In fact, the wind plays with the main character's sanity to a certain extent and almost becomes a character in itself. Tansy knows that a ghost is rumored to haunt the property where she lives, so when the wind blows through the rafters of the old house, making the wood creak and groan, her imagination takes flight and she feels even more determined to solve the mystery surrounding the ghost so that she can put an end to her fears. That element of setting – the blustery West Texas wind – adds another layer to what drives Tansy to make the decisions she does.

I drew on my own experiences as a Texan to create the fictional town of Cedar Canyon in Through Her Eyes. The city of Amarillo, where I live, has a population of 175,000 but feels much smaller and it is surrounded by several little towns. While writing the book, I drove over to the towns of Canyon, Panhandle, and the scenic community of Canadian to do research that would help me imagine what life might be like in Cedar Canyon.  I was also able to call upon memories of the years I lived in the small town of Pampa, Texas, from the time I was in 5^th grade through my sophomore year of high school.

But a town is more than its layout and landscape – a town is its people. West Texans tend to be outgoing and friendly, especially in the smaller communities. However, true to the stereotype of small towns everywhere, gossips are as common as Friday night football and news usually travels faster than the person creating it! I couldn’t set my story in Cedar Canyon, Texas – a town with a population under 10,000 – and make it seem believable  without including that aspect of small town life. Cedar Canyon is a tight community with shallow-grave secrets. Nobody is supposed to talk about their neighbors’ buried skeletons – and certainly no one would admit to it – but one doesn’t have to dig deep to reach the corpses!

I am a Texan, and Texans are very proud of their heritage. Although many “outsiders” consider Texas to be a southern state, we aren’t truly “the South.” And though it’s true our Western legacy is strong, we’re somewhat separated from the rest of the west. Our legacy is uniquely our own, and our often over-exuberant pride in it can be difficult to explain! My husband’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all born in the Texas Panhandle, as were my husband and our children. That’s five generation of Archers born and raised right here where we still live. Many other families here have roots set just as deep -- 150 years or more of family members whose blood, sweat and tears nourish the soil; their ancestors are Texas’s heritage and history. When people from New York City are asked where they live, they say "New York City." But ask a Texan where they live and they won’t answer with the name of a town or a city, they’ll tell you they live in Texas! As you might imagine, this sort of mindset among the residents of fictional Cedar Canyon, Texas in Through Her Eyes makes it all the more difficult for someone like Tansy – an outsider – to find her place and fit in among the “natives.”    

That voice in my head is getting louder...

by Amanda Stevens

A character named Lucy November has haunted me for years. She’s become so real that a writer friend claims she sees Lucy sitting cross-legged in an empty room, impatiently drumming her fingers on the floor as she waits for me to give her a story. Actually, she has a story—a whole book, in fact—called Garden of Perpetual Slumber. That book has never been sent to a publisher, but it did help me land my current agent, who for years resided at the top of my dream agent list. Yay!

But…back to Lucy. She’s an aspiring filmmaker who moonlights as a corpse cosmetician at a boutique funeral home in Austin, Texas. By boutique, I mean the mortuary specializes in elaborate funerals and unique presentations. A little like Christopher Walken’s mortuary in Undertaking Betty but less Star Trek and more Rocky Horror, if you get my drift. Lucy also converses with the corpses. She calls herself a facilitator because she likes to think that she eases their transition to the other side.

The book has problems.  For one thing, the mystery plot is way too convoluted and for another, the reanimated corpses are nothing more than diversions. The good news is I know how to fix. I’ve tweaked Lucy’s occupation, incorporated the corpses into a simplified mystery plot and I’m integrating some mythological elements into the back story. But as excited as I am by these changes, something has been niggling at me for a while now.

Is Lucy a character whose time has come and gone?

How long should a writer cling to a character or a plot or even a premise before moving on? After all, my cemetery restorer protagonist in The Graveyard Queen series sprang fully developed from my imagination. The premise, plot, setting…everything came together seamlessly.

So what is the deal with Lucy? Am I trying too hard to make her work? Am I now so invested in this character that I’ve lost my objectivity? Has she taken on so many of my own personality traits that I’m unable to let her be who she needs to be? Have I become one of those awful stage mothers, pushing my beloved progeny into a direction she doesn’t want to go?

Just to mix things up, I’ve considered relocating her from Austin to Savannah, but a different setting would completely alter her personality. After all, she is a product of her environment. Austin is a cool, laid back city that prides itself on its weirdness. A haven for the nonconformist. A sanctuary for misfits, hipsters and aging hippies.

This is Lucy in Austin:

Savannah is old South. Deep South. The dark, eccentric, Gothic South of folk magic, Bonaventure Cemetery and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

This is Lucy in Savannah:

See what I mean?  Two different characters.

So what do I do?  Abandon the project?  Keep trying until I find her the prefect home?  How long must I listen to Lucy's voice in my head before I tune her out forever?

What do you do when a character won't leave you alone?