Need help on making a scene interesting

[Barefoot_Sis]

Ok, I want some advice and opinions on how other writers make their scene interesting.

That is to say, the regular scenes, no sex, no tickling. When you're faced with just moving a body across a street, or having someone pick up the mail; something mundane, but integral to the plot so the scene can't be skipped. How do you liven it up? Ratchet up the tension and suspense?

 

[Sablesword]

A lot depends on just how and why the scene is important to the plot.

One piece of general advice is to depict the scene using multiple senses: E.g. the sights AND sounds AND smells as the character goes to pick up her mail. (Or at least two senses if it's awkward to work in three or more.)

Another piece of general advice is to have the scene perform extra functions: In addition to forwarding the plot, it shows something of what the character is like, and/or what the setting is like, and/or it provides foreshadowing to some future event, and/or some additional other purpose.

Suppose you have a character, Jane Willowflower, going to pick up her mail. The scene is important because she's receiving a letter that's necessary to push the plot along. Here you can slip in whether the setting is a block of apartments in a city, the sprawled out outer suburbs, or an enchanted elven forest. You can mention sounds and smells as well as what things look like (wind, flowers, cars & car exhaust, chattering squirrels, the incense the neighbor burns, the roaring of a distant lawnmower, the way the mailbox no longer squeaks because she oiled it the day before...) You can slip in bits of what Jane looks like, so that two scenes later you've covered the significant elements of her appearance without ever having inflicted a boring infodump on the reader. You can show things about her personality: Bold, shy, inherently neat or inherently sloppy, what her favorite color is... ("Jane Willowflower liked green, but she thought the mailbox was a particularly ugly shade. Unfortunately, the color of her mailbox was not hers to choose. Rather..." )

 

[ElFewja]

By not making it generic and mundane. There are a lot of ways to do just that, from writing style, to satire, or even just adding a bit of detail that makes the event stand out.

Under writing style, I'm specifically referring to how you describe a situation. Lately - since I had this poetry class lately - I've been changing up my descriptions. There was one where, instead of just saying it was night time, I talk about how the night sky has this black, unnaturally oozy sort of look to it, like an artist knocked over a bottle of ink onto a sketch he was working on, and he sort of just had to make do with what was left and turn that stain into a night sky, work around it, etc. Stuff like that can definitely turn an ordinary event into something that isn't at all ordinary and make it enjoyable to read, but it doesn't need to be as... ridiculously out there as that.

Occasionally, when I need events to happen that are just too ridiculous to happen in real life, and are obviously the result of my overactive mind looking to create a tickling scene, I rock satire. I don't even know how to describe this, even after having done it once or twice. I mean, I just made a generic situation, girl gets in stocks, but kind of made fun of it being so generic. Yeah I'm describing it horribly, but it worked in the story that I used it in. I think.

The last part - pretty much everything sable said. If you were doing the body being moved in first person for example, you could describe the smell of the sack, what it feels like, how unbelievable the situation seems to the character, etc., or you could expand upon what the character is doing prior to being abducted and moved. It can still be quick, but description will make it seem much less like, "and obviously the author is just phoning it in here because he wants to get to point C from A but needs to cross B".

Anyway, etc.

Etc

 

[Kunzite1]

In a tickling story, I find that there are two good ways to do this. The first is to inject some humor (eaiser said than done). If you can come up with a particularly witty observation or retort in your head, try to build a scene around it which also involves getting a character from point A to point B. I've written short scenes around lines that made me chuckle and I'm generally satisfied with them.

The second way, which works best in a female character's first or second scene, is to give a detailed physical description as well as what she's wearing (long flowing hair, shapely legs, stiletto heels, etc.) Of course, it's important not to make it sound like a checklist, but if done well it can really add to the characterization.