Bonus: How To Write Scenes Like Rowling (An Interview With Savannah Gilbo & Abigail K. Perry)

Speaker 1: 0:00

If anything's all serious all the time, it's not going to be that fun to read. So we need humor at some point in some way. We have plenty of room with this in Harry Potter, with characters. I think that what you want to be thinking about is that when you're with a book, you're playing all the roles, because when you're looking, when you're watching a film, it's not your job to create character interiority in a script, because the actor does that and the music, the score does that.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming, so each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So, whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

Speaker 3: 0:57

In today's episode, I'm sharing part of an interview that Abigail K Perry and I did with Tim Grawl, who is the CEO of StoryGrid, and in this part of the interview we talk about writing scenes.

Speaker 3: 1:08

So how to know if your scenes work, what to do if you think you need to cut a scene or revise it to make it work, and things like that. We also talk about how to look at your scenes from three different perspectives the reader's perspective, the character's perspective and the author's perspective and how this is a really cool tool to put in your writer's toolbox. You'll hear us talk about how Rowling manipulated readers by making really good use of these three different perspectives and how you can do the same. We cover a lot in this episode and it's all based on a section I wrote in the introduction of my brand new book, the Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which is officially available for pre-order right now. You can learn more about my brand new book at savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork. But for now, let's go ahead and dive right into the conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:01

So one of the things I think are hard for some writers sometimes is this idea that everything has to mean something and that it's not realistic, right, because so many things in our lives happen and they don't. They're not going towards the plot of our lives. And so can you talk a little bit about, like, when you're talking to writers and you're trying to get them to understand that, like then we're not talking about fantasy versus realism, we're just talking about the story. Like real, a realistic story is not necessarily a true story. And so can you talk a little bit about when you talk to your writers about, like, how type plotting works and how you need everything to to be in there for a reason, like why that's so important and what that means to a story.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Do you have an example from Sorcerer's Stone that stands out in your mind that you'd want us to build off of that, Tim?

Speaker 2: 2:53

Yeah, I love the chocolate frog because that's where they figure it out later, right. But again, even the way that they drop Quidditch in there and then Quidditch is such an important thing, and I think what I struggled with for a long time. I think what a lot of writers struggle with is why does everything have to mean something? Can't I just put something in there that happened, that doesn't necessarily pay off later, or something like that? What is it about storytelling that you because even in books that aren't so tightly woven as Harry Potter, this still shows up where, like you, can't have a whole scene happen that doesn't have anything to do with the main story, right? So how do you get writers to understand that kind of thing of oh, we have to cut this, because, even though you like it, it doesn't, it's not in the story.

Speaker 3: 3:44

Yeah, so two things. I think we don't always have to cut it because you, though you like it, it doesn't, it's not in the story. Yeah, so two things. I think we don't always have to cut it because you can make it matter, but let's say that we're at the stage where it's really needs to be cut.

Speaker 3: 3:53

I find that when a writer takes some time and space a couple of days or a week or a month, whatever away from their draft and they come back to their story, they literally will feel it that the pacing has slowed, the tension has dropped. They're wondering themselves what does this matter for? Right, so sometimes they can see it, but it takes that time and distance to experience that themselves. So when I'm working with them, I will say some. Usually it's me encouraging them to make it matter. So my first instinct is let's not cut it. But how could we make it matter? And then they'll get to the point where they're like I don't think we can, I don't know. And then that's how it falls out. But it's really important in terms of pacing because you don't want the reader wondering what am I doing here? And I've read books like that where you're in a scene and you're like why are we on this little like side quest that has nothing to do with anything?

Speaker 1: 4:43

yeah, but it's not fun one of the tools that I love from the analysis is the ots ats bts, and that was game changer for me, and analyzing this, that's part of you explain what those are yep.

Speaker 1: 4:55

So when you have on the surface, above the surface and below the surface, so when you have otsTS, bts, the way I process thinking that is that we have reader perspective, character perspective, offer perspective. That's how I make sense of it. So when you have on the surface, the literal thing, that's happening in a story. So we like to look at what is the change, what is the you know call the value change, what is the change in the scene, on the most literal landscape? So that could be you are in the house to leading the house, we're seeing movement. We can check that off right Above the surface. When I think characters, I'm thinking internally what's going on here? So how is the character changing internally? Now? They're going to change internally because they're going to be challenged by conflicts, which is going to put them into crisis, right. So that means, if you can check that box off, character development has had, and then you have beyond the surface this is the author and to me, this is the value change. If you're talking about global story, global value, this is where you can say, maybe, on a scene level, the loudest value is an ATS value change. Maybe the loudest value change is an OTS value change. Maybe the loudest value change is an OTS value change, but you best be able to argue that is impacting beyond the circus value change. Because if you can't argue how influencing the big picture, we probably need to have a discussion on what is the purpose of it. And I think this is what's interesting between the books and like right after the movie. The best example I can think of is in Star Wars, a New Hope. There is a scene that George Lucas has simply for comedic relief, where they're on the Death Star, darth Vader's spacecraft and there's like a robot mouse that comes out and just like squeak, squeak and Chewbacca, just like does his like growling at it. There is no necessarily like purpose to that other than to get us to laugh in a very high tense like situation right now comedic relief in any story. If anything's all serious all the time, it's not going to be that fun to read. So we need humor at some point in some way. We have plenty of room with this in harry potter, with characters.

Speaker 1: 6:59

I think that what you want to be thinking about is that when you're with a book, you're playing all the roles, because when you're looking, when you're watching a film, it's not your job to create character interiority in a script, because the actor does that and the music, the score does that. So they get to create emotion in their own way and you get to see things Like everything is visual. A film is very visual, a TV show is very visual, so so much is captivated by the actors, by the score, by the visual effects, by the setting. We're seeing all that. As an author, your role is to create all of that, while also not dictating to the reader necessarily everything that they need to have to believe is happening in the story. So when you're writing these scenes, it's very important that you can actually define OTS, ets in each scene.

Speaker 1: 7:48

To me, in simplest terms, that means I've seen a literal change. I've seen a character development move and I've seen a plot development. The plot has advanced on a scene level and the plot has advanced on the global level, because I can speak and argue as to why it's influencing that movement in Harry Potter, in life and death. So my BTS is always dealing with life and death. That doesn't mean I necessarily have to be using the word so directly, so linearly, if you will. This is a life to death move. You can use different words to describe the same idea, but the point is is that it's influencing that life and death change, and that's what's important to me. So that's one of my favorite rules that comes from the masterworks, because that gave me purpose and language to communicate why I thought a scene was working or not working and deserve to stay in a story or not. Because I could defend why I had to read the scene evolved and push the character to evolve at the same time. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 8:46

Yeah, one of the things I find when I'm working with a writer who has a scene that maybe doesn't matter as much as it could is sometimes it's like there's just an OTS shift or something on the surface happening and it's not quite affecting the character as much as it can, or maybe it's too internal.

Speaker 3: 9:02

And I can say to them like we know what the purpose of this is for the character, but if the reader doesn't know that yet because the evidence hasn't been set up via this type plotting and setups and chaos, we need something on the surface to make that happen. And one of the cool scenes in Harry Potter one of my favorites and one of the most difficult to analyze was Diagon Alley, because the shift there is like his internal shift. He's getting more nervous, he's getting more insecure about his place in the world. There is an on the surface shift though. We go shopping, we get his supplies, he's ready to go. But I think we have landed on that. The louder shift is actually internal and imagine if we had an internal scene where we weren't distracting the reader with Diagon Alley and all the magic and fun and things like that. It would not work as well as it does.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Yeah, yeah, you know this, even just this discussion has really helped me, I think, understand my process better, because you know we had done the narrative path for my book and figuring out like the whole arc of the book and you know how East Quadrant's going to work and where we were going. And so what that allowed me to do is think, when I went to write the scene, it was like, okay, I got to get my character from this point to this point. And then it was like my job when I write the scene because I already got that figured out, because I know where the story's going that I've got to get my character to like drop down to this even worse place, right, and then my job is to just make that, when I write it, as interesting as possible to read. And it was that's really interesting because again, I feel like I'm that's just starting to play in my head of like okay, cause I'm I've struggled to explain to people like you know what my process was for like writing the book, because it was like I don't know, I just like wrote the absolute best scene I could and then I wrote the next scene, the absolute best scene I could.

Speaker 2: 10:55

But in thinking about it like that I think that's what was happening for me is I already knew the above the surface and beyond the surface, generally the direction. You know, I knew where I was on our waves of story and I just had to make that really interesting to watch. You know what watch is a reader.

Speaker 3: 11:13

This brings up something that I'm super interested in. So we had we actually had a really hard time with this because we're like, we know this is an action story but in the beginning there's not really these like dangerous life and death situations. However, in the analysis you'll see, from the author's perspective, we are moving Harry along that journey into more danger, into, you know, survival, the arena where he needs to survive or die right. And so readers on first read, they don't know any of that. And imagine if we didn't have the stuff to entertain them on the surface.

Speaker 3: 11:44

Because eventually, when we get into the draft, you notice the on the surface, the above the surface and beyond the surface. They start matching more. So in the beginning they don't match like the beyond. Example, in the first chapter Harry's a baby. However, there is a big life and death movement. Right, his life has just been saved, the world is safe from Voldemort, but he doesn't know that the reader. I mean, yeah, the reader knows it a little bit because they're being told that, but it's just really interesting how what the reader can sense and know changes and gets more close to that above the surface and beyond the surface the further we go into the story and by the end they're all working really well in sync, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Yeah, to use a metaphor, I think that there's a reason why the author is exhausted by the end of writing a story and the reader just gets to have fun. When you're a parent, your job is to make sure that everything is taken care of right, like. No, of course, there's complexities to that, but I think ultimately, like, your job is to take care of your child right and in order for the child to maybe have fun in a situation it might have taken a lot of things in order for the parent to handle and take care of in order for them to have fun at that time. So, you know, when you get to the park, it might have taken a lot of things in order for the parent to handle and take care of in order for them to have fun at that time. So, you know, when you get to the park, it might have taken a lot of things that you had to do before you got to the park. If you're having a play date, it might have taken a lot of things, a lot of sacrifices might have had to be made in order to get to that time, but ultimately, like what that parent all the things that they're taking care of in order to do. They're not going to dump that on their child. We just want to allow the child to have fun and I think that that's what the reader gets to do. The reader just gets to have fun. But that's the point. You go through this because you want to give something beautiful to your reader, want to give something beautiful to your child, right? And that sacrifice is worth it for that joy and that entertainment and that emotional experience. And I think that when you look at that Beyond the surface and that bts that is what the author is always thinking is like I need to understand the purpose of this so that we can be having fun on the literal, but ultimately it serves a bigger purpose than just the literal right yeah, yeah, and like and I somebody talked about surfer stone and chamber of secrets, very challenging books to analyze because of these opening acts and like how that fit on an action story because there is a lot softer.

Speaker 1: 13:56

The second you get into even, you know, prisoner of Azkaban. I think that the Death Stakes are picking up with the Dementors, velvet of Fire. We're starting with Death Stakes on chapter one, so like it starts to take off five, six and seven and we're dealing with death constantly on a literal scale as well as a beyond the surface one, right? So I think in Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, why those two in particular are so challenging is because of Act One or the beginning and we're dealing with how do you make sure that you can defend why, what is happening when Harry is receiving a letter, or when Harry's at theoo and you're having the conversation with the snake and the vanishing glass or you know all of those, like maybe the prologue in disguise.

Speaker 1: 14:36

We're dealing with death, right, it's kind of in the background. We know that Voldemort has disappeared because Harry's parents have been killed. We know that death is on the table. There's no immediate death threat in the scene, right, death has already happened before that chapter has happened. But we know it's, and I think that that's the thing is. You're opening with the idea that there are bigger death stakes at hand here because a baby has been tried, like someone tried to murder a baby. So you know that they are and you know it's Harry. So when you go into Harry, that's always in the back of your mind as a reader, whether or not you're conscious of it or not. Is that? Oh, there are big death stakes here on the table. And then when you're with the Dursleys, we're so because, also again, we're in Harry Potter's point of view we're dealing with just what's in front of us. We're dealing with the dang Dursleys and how terrible they are to him, and we're dealing with having to believe that your life is going to be living under the cover of the stairs.

Speaker 3: 15:24

Yeah, I think, as for a writer too, it's really interesting to think about and interesting to think about.

Speaker 3: 15:29

And you'll see, in the analysis guide we did call out the three perspectives, so you can kind of borrow our cheat sheet for how we think about them.

Speaker 3: 15:35

But in the beginning it's like it's a way to think about raising stakes kind of too, because in the beginning the stakes for the reader are going to feel quieter, they're going to feel like Abigail keeps saying the word fun.

Speaker 3: 15:45

That's how the beginning of the book does feel, even though Harry's like not you not treated very well as the OTS, ats and BTS start to become more similar and more on the same page, like, for example and maybe we should have started with an example but like in the OTS, in a beginning scene, let's say, it's like Harry goes from home to the zoo, right, like that's the most literal change, character wise, he wants to fit in at the zoo, he wants to have a good time just like everybody else, but he's worried, right, because of his life. Bts-wise, what's most important about that scene is he talks to a snake and this kind of exposes him. It's showing magics coming and things like that. So you can tell those are very different layers of stakes. Then fast forward to compare that to like something in the very end, the OTS, ats and BTS might all be about life and death, literally.

Speaker 3: 16:36

So it's a way for you to kind of also see how you're raising the stakes, how your reader's going to feel about those things, or like what you're presenting them at any given time. And then also giant caveat it's you're not going to get any of that right on your first draft either. So it is more of an art of revision and I've seen kind of back to the initial thing we were talking about. When you have a scene that's a little bit flat, or maybe it's just one dimensional, with an OTS shift and nothing else, sometimes you can layer stuff that happens in that scene with something that's happening in a different scene, where maybe it's quieter and you have a BTS shift. And so if I were the author of a scene like that, I'd say is there a way that I can merge what's happening in the OTS of scene one with the deeper meaning of scene two and kind of create something that's similar but different to make one more impactful scene. So really cool tools, and obviously we could nerd out for 10 years.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Something that Savannah and I always like to say when we're tracking scenes is has the goal changed? You'll notice this a lot in the notes, like when we talk about Diagon Alley and we analyze that one.

Speaker 3: 17:37

A billion times. How many billion?

Speaker 1: 17:40

times and we've gone multiple ways with it and you know what, like maybe next year we'll change our mind again. But I think it's one of those things where it's like we're visiting this and we're just compartmentalizing the best way that we think we can explain this from a structure perspective on how it might work. This is one way that you might see it and this helped us process why we thought it moved forward. So with Diagon Alley, all those different chess pieces are moving in different ways, but the goal is still to collect school supplies. I think that you can zoom in on that and you could say like there's a different school supply bowl within each one and like maybe that's going to change, but there's no necessarily like perfect way to analyze it. It's just like this is our best argument of why we think this works and this is how we move forward and it helps us like process in a way that we can communicate to others why we think this advanced the plot and develops the character. That's always coming back to those two and then, if you want to put that other layer, the purpose of it, why it matters for the whole story. So when you're looking at something like going through Diagon Alley and all the all the things he needs to collect. Like, hedwig is actually Hedwig at the time, right? So Hedwig is actually Hackergett's favorite form, right? So Hedwig is someone that we're going to love as a character, but Hedwig also is a tool. Hedwig delivers notes. Hedwig is going to play a much bigger role, maybe in even other books than for now.

Speaker 1: 19:03

I think the most memorable scene in Diagon Alley is Ollivander's when he gets his wand right. The wand chooses the wizard, mr Potter. So I think that that's the thing is that it's like that is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge moment. It's going to play an even bigger purpose in book seven than necessarily even in this one. But it's important to understand. Because what are we doing? We're raising the thing on like Voldemort's not on the page, yet we don't know where Voldemort is. We can anticipate that Voldemort's going to come into play at some point sometime in big ways, definitely by the climax.

Speaker 1: 19:37

But right now we're saying this is a big deal because again it comes down to choices and one of Harry's biggest internal struggles is I don't want to become Voldemort. The whole thing with Slytherin Look at the sorting hat scene, right. The reason why Harry is saying not Slytherin, not Slytherin, not Slytherin, not Slytherin is because he doesn't want to become a dark wizard. And what have we done to get to that moment? We've learned about dark wizards from Habred and we talked about Vildor after the wand and him having some struggle with like, oh, no, like, what does this mean? And with Draco and what we're dealing with there and seeing the differences between the rudeness of how he treats Ron, how Ron treats him, and that makes his decision.

Speaker 1: 20:08

I want to end up in Gryffindor. Look at all the Weasleys are in Gryffindor. So I think that he doesn't know where his parents were. He doesn't know what his parents' houses were at that point, by the way, when he's saying not Slytherin, not Slytherin. So I think that that's something that you're thinking about. That's the question of type plotting. We just always, always, always need to argue or wrong and I actually hate using those words because I think that, like, there's very sticky definitions around that but just be able, as an author, to confidently say this scene has purpose, because it does this for the bigger picture. But we have some fun in the movement here because we can see how the plot has changed, what actually has happened and the characters developed. Why it matters.

Speaker 3: 20:47

Yeah, and it's. We're going to dig into the Diagon Alley scene specifically in another episode, but one of the tools that helped us get to the result kind of because we're on this OTS, ats, bts thing that was a huge tool in helping us determine where the scene started and ended, because there were scenes like to our point, where we're talking about, like, going to Gringotts. Right, yes, there's change, there's a micro goal of getting money, there's micro conflicts that happen, but when you got to that bts level, it's kind of like, okay, the same change is happening in gringotts as it is in the robe store, as it is in olivanders, and we started to notice that it was more just building. So the stakes and the tension and conflict were building in each of these smaller moments to create that overall shift. And that was really huge for our learning in terms of these smaller moments to create that overall shift. And that was really huge for our learning in terms of how to understand story and also how to think about writing our own stories.

Speaker 3: 21:37

And I get so many questions about I want to write a scene like Diagon Alley. So does that mean there are seven scenes that I need to write in Diagon Alley and you can start there, like you can have seven scenes, and then you might get to the point in revision where you're like the bts shift is the exact same in every single one of these. How do I make them, instead of becoming each their own scene, more of progressive complications?

Speaker 1: 21:58

that are moments that complicate the goal and raise the states, and all that that was one thing I think I had to like step out of the traditional definition of a, c for us, make sense of this like the traditional definition of a scene. I think people often will. One of the arguments they'll say is that it changes with setting. Right, it definitely does in a movie, right, but to us, like, that's not how we process changes in scenes, it's about goals for us and that bts shift right. So I think that, like that's a say. If someone says, oh, I want to write seven scenes within diagonally, to write a scene like Alley, go for it. I think that as a coach, we then would usually look at those scenes and we'd challenge you and say can you do something different in this one?

Speaker 3: 22:41

or is it?

Speaker 1: 22:42

one scene, right, or is it one scene? And it's just kind of like stepping out of restrictions that I think we set ourselves, like we set up for ourselves sometimes, like you can learn so much craft knowledge sometimes that I think that it's like I have to follow all the rules and it's like ultimately, I think you can look at this. That was one of the freedoms that I had when I looked at a scene and I was like I'm going to allow my definition of scene to change in order to understand this. And the other thing is the words of values. When I started to give myself permission on, I don't necessarily need to say one word in order to define a shift in value. I could say something like I don't know what's an example we can have.

Speaker 3: 23:20

Well, in the guide that we left some of our thoughts where we're like we don't know the right answer of what this could be. So there's many value shifts that we're just showing you that you know there's not really a right answer but no matter what we picked, we're getting to the same result the same result.

Speaker 1: 23:38

That's the trick is like, I think, when we started to give ourself freedom and changing what scene meant to us and what how to phrase values, it opened opportunities for us to understand the story better. Because it was like and savannah and I would disagree all the time. I think we have a lot of writers because we do a lot of things together, and a lot of writers would be like do you and Savannah agree all the time? Or, savannah, do you and Abigail agree all the time? We're like no, we disagree a lot of the time. Right, sometimes we stay disagreeing, but can we get to the same result? I think that, and these tools have allowed us to analyze scenes in that way, which, for me, made it more fun, because it's like there is no right or wrong and how something can be written. But can I, as an author, confidently say this is why it has purpose?

Speaker 3: 24:19

I know we're on a little bit of a tangent now, but I'll just say one more thing. This is something we learned that was really interesting is a value shift of ignorance to knowledge can equal increasing danger. Yes, equal increasing danger, yes. So it's like being able to understand why gaining knowledge, or missing out on gaining knowledge, can affect those life and death stakes and the global value. And you'll see that in the book. But that was one of the most interesting things we experienced.

Speaker 3: 24:43

All right, I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek into what it was like to analyze Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and to write the Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. There's a whole lot more waiting for you. Inside the book we talk about story structure, character development, world building, and then I even take you on a deep dive into every single scene of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to see how each scene works and how each of the scenes work together to create the final product. So if you want to learn more about the book or pre-order a copy, you can go to savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork and once you get to that page, you'll see there are a handful of pre-order bonuses available should you purchase a copy between now and August 4th. And my personal favorite of the pre-order bonuses is a two-hour live workshop that Abigail and I are hosting, where we're going to take you on a deep dive into the climactic moment of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. So you probably know what scene I'm talking about. It's where the kids travel through that trap door, navigate each of those obstacles in the chambers under the school and Harry eventually faces Voldemort in that final chamber. So it's going to be really fun. We're going to talk through that and then we will do about an hour of Q&A where we will just talk about anything related to writing, anything related to Harry Potter and things like that. So, like I said, that's just one of the pre-order bonuses available. To learn about all of the pre-order bonuses and to get your hands on a copy of the book, go to savannahgilbocom forward slash masterwork. So that's it for today's episode.

Speaker 3: 26:20

As always, thank you so much for tuning in and for showing your support. If you want to check out any of the links I mentioned in this episode, you can find them in the show notes listed in the description of each episode inside your podcast player or at savannahgilbocom forward slash podcast. If you're an Apple user, I'd really appreciate it if you took a few seconds to leave a rating and a review. Your ratings and reviews tell Apple that this is a podcast that's worth listening to and, in turn, your reviews will help this podcast get in front of more fiction writers just like you. And while you're there, go ahead and hit that follow button, because there's going to be another brand new episode next week, full of actionable tips, tools and strategies to help you become a better writer. So I'll see you next week and until then, happy writing.