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Managing Fictional Narrative Flow - Scene/Narrative Summary
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 9
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Once you have decided (for the moment, anyway) what to include in your story, the next level of pacing decisions revolves around how to present what you have chosen. Depending on who you talk to, there is any number of different ways to present dramatic information. However they are divided up, though, they almost always exist across the same spectrum, ranging from the briefest of summary, which can span years in a single sentence, through scenes that present events in-the-moment (with some sense of congruence with "real time"), all the way to internal monologues and descriptions which can bring story-time to a temporary stop.
A writer needs to have control over this spectrum of presentation much in the same manner that a writer needs to control psychic distance. I'll go back to my comparison with the novice driver who steps on the brake and gas at random--often at the same time even--without being aware of doing so. Developing fiction writers often float between scene and summary, mixing elements of each, with very little control.
Robie Maccauley's exercise in What If?, Exercise 60 "Handling the Problems of Time and Pace" on page 162, provides excellent practice at making the basic pace decisions that a writer faces. He's provided a story framework that implicitly does the first level of exclusion/inclusion, but I would add to his instructions that you should decide what you might exclude from what he's provided. Complete this exercise using Maccauley's story framework. This exercise will not be posted to the course site, but should be placed in the Scene/Narrative Summary section of your craftbook.
Scene/Summary Exercise 1 (Opt.) - Submit Response
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