Writing Lesson: Scene Deconstruction and Generation
Looking at Chris Offutt's short story, "Out of the Woods"
Photo by Thanos Pal on Unsplash
About once a week, I give my students a scene to deconstruct. I use a scene from a short story because they are more defined with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Scenes in novels tend to be much too long to deconstruct easily and they swirl around an expository line rather than existing in a delineated unit of action and dialogue. Occasionally, I will ask students to find scenes in whatever novel they are currently reading and deconstruct that in their writing notebook as an individual exercise. But this exercise is done in small groups to encourage discussion with the whole class having the same scene in front of them.
Scenes can be written in a thousand different ways, and all of them are correct until they aren’t. There is no infallible formula for a good story. As Flannery O’Connor said, “I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.”
A scene is basically a close-up unit of action in a specific time and place, yet it is the sequencing of these units, what John Truby calls the “scene weave” is what makes a great storyteller. The success of a scene is largely dependent on what precedes it and what follows it, and knowing when to zig and zag between.
The goal is to help students understand how these distinct units blend with other narrative elements to create a whole story. After deconstructing the scene, I ask students to mimic what the deconstructed scene does narratively using two characters of their own in a similar situation.
Scene Under Consideration
Here is an example from Chris Offutt’s titular story of Out of the Woods, a story about a man who travels across the midwest to claim the body of his brother-in-law. Here is the opening scene:
Gerald opened his front door at dawn, wearing only a quickly drawn-on pair of jeans. His wife’s four brothers stood in the ground fog that filtered along the ridge. The oldest brother had become family spokesman after the father’s death, and Gerald waited for him to speak. The mother was still boss but everything had to filter through a man.
“It’s Ory,” the oldest one said. “He got shot and is in the hospital. Somebody’s got to fetch him.”
The brothers looked at Gerald from below their eyebrows. Going after Ory wasn’t a chore anyone wanted, and Gerald was new to the family, married to Kay, the only sister. He still needed to prove his worth. If he brought Ory home, maybe they’d cut the barrier that kept him on the edge of things, like he was nothing but a third or fourth cousin.
“Where’s he at?” Gerald said.
“Wahoo, Nebraska. Ory said it would take two days but was easy to find.”
“My rig won’t make it.”
“You can take the old Ford. She’ll run till doomsday.”
“Who shot him?”
The oldest brother flashed him a mean look. The rest were back to looking down, as if they were carpenters gauging the amount of linoleum needed for a job.
“Some woman,” the oldest brother said.
Kay began to cry. The brothers left and Gerald sat on the couch beside Kay. She hugged her knees and bit a thumbnail, gasping in a throaty way that reminded him of the sounds she made in bed. He reached for her. She shrugged from his hand, then allowed his touch.
“Him leaving never made sense,” Kay said. “He hadn’t done nothing and nobody was after him. He didn’t tell a soul why. Just up and went. Be ten years come fall.”
“I’ll go get him,” Gerald whispered.
“You don’t care to?”
“No.”
“For my brothers?”
“For you.”
She snuggled against him, her damp face pressed to his neck. She was tiny inside the robe. He opened the front and she pushed against his leg.
Scene Deconstruction
When students deconstruct this scene, they discuss the following questions in small groups:
What are the stakes of this scene or what gives the scene its tension?
Through whose perspective is this scene rendered?
What is the ratio of dialogue to action to interior thought?
What is the physical movement from the beginning to the end of the scene?
What is the emotional movement from the beginning to the end of the scene?
Who “wins” the scene or who holds the “power” at the end?
After some discussion, they came up with these ideas:
The request to travel to Nebraska when Gerald doesn’t want to gives the scene its tension. The stakes are explicitly stated by Gerald’s interior thought: “He still needed to prove his worth.” Gerald wants to be accepted by his new bride’s family.
The whole scene is rendered through Gerald’s point of view.
There are 109 words of dialogue-driven sentences, 167 words of expository/action driven sentences, and 56 words of interior thought-driven sentences. This scene is built largely by dialogue and action, not explanation, musing or interiority.
The physical movement of this scene starts outside in the front yard of Kay and Gerald’s house with her four brothers standing in the early morning fog, and it ends with Kay and Gerald inside on the couch. The physical movement is slight. The physical location basically stays the same.
The emotional movement of this scene starts with Gerald’s feeling surprised by the early morning visitors ( text evidence: “quickly drawn-on pair of jeans”) to feeling coerced by honor to agree to his brothers-in-law’s request (text evidence: “He still needed to prove his worth.”) to feeling aroused by his wife’s gratitude that he has accepted this task (text evidence: “gasping in a throaty way that reminded him of the sounds she made in bed. He reached for her.”) Gerald changes the most emotionally in this scene, as Kay and the brothers are initially tense and then relieved.
My students were divided on who “wins” the scene. Several groups said the brothers clearly won because they achieved their goal to get Gerald to make the trip. One group said Kay won because she had used her femininity and the code of the mountains to control her husband to do what her family wanted him to do. And two other groups suggested Gerald had won the scene because even though he doesn’t want to drive to Nebraska, he has already received physical affirmation from his wife that he’s the hero and he feels as though when he achieves his goal at the end of the story, that the family would “cut the barrier that kept him on the edge of things. . .”
Scene Generation
After students have completed the deconstruction, I ask them to select a couple of characters that they have developed in a previous story and put them in a scene using any of the devices that Offutt uses. Students might choose to write a scene where one party is requesting an action of another party, who begrudgingly agrees to the action. Students might choose to write a scene between in-laws and out-laws where inclusion is at stake. Students might choose to write a scene where a wife wants her husband to do something not for her or for him, but for her larger family.