Live Blogging at Poynter

We're here at Tom French's seminar on doing narrative on deadline for some tips. Updates all hour!

Tom's talking about scene construction:

A few strategies:

Zoom in. Take the reader in tight to see the drama.

Find the arc, even if it's tiny. Tom says we long for the completion of a sequence, even if that means someone picking up a cup of coffee and taking a drink. There exists a dramatic arc inside that insignificant process.

Stay close to the line of action.

Build with detail, dialogue, intimacy.

Pay special attention to entry and exit points. City council meeting starts and ends, but it's not necessary to start with council members coming into the room and end with the meeting adjourned. Look for interesting places to enter and exit.

Slow down. Explode the moment. When you're writing, there's a simple way to slow something down: Shorter sentences. every period requires the reader to stop. Think of it as distance covered per sentence. You can say, they drove from Florida to Texas. Hudreds of miles. You can say, She turned the ignition and back out of the driveway. A few feet.

Speed up when it's not interesting. Slow down when it's interesting.

Think about what it is you want the reader to remember. That's the place you may want to slow down.

Shift between opposites. It's interesting if you have a moment in a story that's quiet to go to a moment that's loud. Crying to laughing. Man to woman. Same for paragraph length. Mix that up. Long to short.

Show what's at stake.

Learn how to crescendo.

Application: He's using Vermeer's Girl reading a letter at an open window.

Look at the painting. What's going on in the painting? What's the story?

What's in the girl's face? Sadness? Longing? What's important about the letter? Her mouth? What details evoke emotion? How far is the letter from her face? Look at the room. Why is she holding the letter like that? In what manner is she reading? Do you think she's read it before? How is she holding it? Is she fastened on one last paragraph she can't get over? Is she stuck on the ending? Do the red curtains represent love or desire? What about the curtain in the foreground? Does it suggest intimacy, that we're peering behind a curtain at a private moment? What about the color green? Does that suggest jealousy?

Tip from Richard Ben Cramer, on his way back from an assignment: What are the emotions I'm feeling about what I saw? And, what are the specific details that led me to those emotions?

Try this: In the next five minutes, write a paragraph about the scene in the painting without making assumptions about what's going on outside the scene.