Revising the Novel: Expanding a Scene
Today, I’m going to go out on a limb and offer a before and after glimpse at two scenes from Chapter 1 that I revised this winter. I’m not putting this in the public forum for critique, as even the “finished” draft I have now will most certainly change again. I’m sharing it, rather, by way of demonstration to reveal how expanding a scene worked for one writer–this writer–and am indeed open to information and responses about how others may have handled these same challenges in their own work. What I was toying with when I made the decisions to cut or expand where I did, were some of the following suggestions:
- Details need to build character or advance plot.
- If a setting is going to be returned to later in the novel, focus on it more initially. If it’s not going to be returned to again, don’t let your details clog your narrative.
- Characters need to be distinct and clearly differentiated from each other at the outset.
- Within the opening pages, it should be evident where we are, who the protagonist is, who/what the antagonist might be, and what one (of potentially many) problems could be faced by the protagonist.
- A book should “tell” a reader how it needs to be read within its opening pages; therefore narrative voice needs a lot of attention: tone should be readily conveyed through word choice, rhythm, and observation, and allegiances should be clarified as readily as possible.
I am writing in limited 3rd point of view, but my narrator also maintains a tone that is always just a beat or two ahead of Nathan. In this way, the narrator can occasionally hint at how people or things Nathan interacts with will play out in the future. I wanted the reader to have a sense for those narrative powers in the opening pages, so I worked on that a bit as I revised, too.
These are long excerpts, but I hope you find them demonstrative and have input or queries about your own experiments with scene expansion! Read on:
The Longest Day of the Year: Chapter 1, Scenes 1-2 [DRAFT, (c) 2014 KMS]
Another fetid sunrise in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan—this one orange, molten—and if Second Lieutenant Nathan Morris knew enough to stop the spread of today right here, without consequence, he most certainly would. But he does not, and he watches from a security tower inside the wire of this Multi-National Army Base, while sunlight seeps across the modest city as if from a wound. In the distance, mourning doves teeter on electric wires connecting family compounds. Curtains flap in the wind; thin linen in reds, purples, and emerald greens waving like hands from the upper stories of the wealthier family homes. Nathan would like to wave back, to imagine he has done good for the citizens of this city, of this country for that matter, and that this is one small way they have come to greet each other at the break of day. Just as quickly, the thought tires him. Too much has happened; he knows that now. There is no such thing as winning. There is only surviving and even that is uncertain. He watches as a coil of dirt rises from a narrow alley: a male civilian driving a scooter on his way to work, Nathan guesses, and he is right. Block by block, the city alights. Airborne particles of sand catch the sun’s rays, mother nature’s tracer fire, until Tarin Kowt appears lit by a sparkling, muted Armageddon. The view is almost peaceful in its contradiction and, for a moment, Nathan wishes this mess of a war would just stay put in time—frozen, like a postcard for him to ponder a safe distance from its troubling beauty.
Four tours and it has come to this, the last mission on the last day for Nathan and the men of Spartan Platoon. They have seen their own blown to bits: a leg, a torso. One time, a gunner’s nose and ear blown right off his face from the force of a blast. Mr. Potato Head, Nathan remembers thinking, I need Mr. Potato Head and his bucket of parts. That was how the mind worked on you in such moments. Twisted, private humor that made you want to giggle and cry and look the other way all in one breath and before you know it you’re applying well-aimed, direct pressure to the wounds until Doc takes over, then wiping the blood off your hands and onto your DCU’s as you high-tail it over to the two insurgents your men just cuffed. You will kill them. But of course you won’t, the two of them kneeling at your boots with bags over their heads, one of them just having shat himself and the other wailing some tinny, syllabic prayer into the hot air.
Perhaps the best part about today is simply to have made it this far. The last day, a day Spartan Platoon has counted on for nine months. Nathan moves from the tower, the clap of his boots echoing down the stairs like a confirmation. Those are his own feet walking, aren’t they? His own breath coming short and quick across his lips? How can this be, that he is still here and so many others are not? That he sees himself from outside of himself all the time now? Turn it off. There is no time for this today. Nathan has made it this far and that should be enough. He heads toward the staging area where his men have gathered, not a minute behind schedule. 0530 hours. The tick of the second hand. The beat of their hearts. They will complete this last mission and then they will be done.
It is always the smell of diesel fumes, first. Then the men. They gather around their vehicles and wait for orders. If they’ve been out on patrol the night before, which is often the case, there hasn’t been time to shit, shower, or shave before this next mission and here they are in all their glorious funk. Body odor like a cloud of smog. Salt-encrusted, dust-stiffened uniforms. Tiny, pre-game rituals as each man mentally prepares. Specialist Reynolds and the thick plink of tobacco juice spit into a Mountain Dew bottle. PFC Nacho Supreme, polishing his Oakleys like a weapon, cracked thumbs rubbing smooth cloth across mirrored, plastic lenses. These are the two who socked each other that first week on base. Too much alike, both bull-headed and loud but soft as a baby’s ass when it came to stray dogs or little kids begging for chocolate. Inseparable now, juking through conversations like an old married couple and just as dependable. More than once, these two saved a fellow soldier’s life. More than once, albeit indirectly, Nathan has not.
Nathan can feel his platoon’s energy even before the first man speaks. It is as though they’ve already stepped onto the plane, all thirty of them, homeward bound. Questions come quick as bullets, zipping past his ears:
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do, Lieutenant Morris?”
“How long will processing take in Kuwait?”
“I’m hitting the beach, that’s for sure.”
“We don’t have to go through that psych stuff, do we? Those mental tests, on our way out?”
“I just want better chow. Soon as I get home. Better chow.”
Nathan resists the urge to turn back and feels embarrassed. They’re just his men. The same platoon he’s been with the entire tour, give or take. From mindset to mission, he’s responsible. He’s got this. He’d better. He steps into the middle of their circle and begins.
“It’s bad luck, gentlemen.” He tries to calm them, to calm himself. “Home’s a hell of a lot further than a day away. Now—to business…” But the platoon is too amped. Nathan feels their hope like static in the air, the way they lean on every word. He used to love that. They’ve all heard about guys getting chopped up their last day in country. Nathan figured they knew better than to count down, red X’s on calendars like harbingers of death. Apparently some don’t get superstitious, the ones talking now. Others know better than to test chaos; John Boy with the baby face that got him his name, or Private Caldwell whose entire fire team exploded around him (their bodies were like trees, that’s what he told Nathan, like dead trees that fell on top of him and protected him from the blast). “Now—to business…” the lieutenant repeats. Nathan hopes his voice is steady, practiced.
Surely his men want to trust him. He’s gotten them this far. He makes them better than they are on their own. Also—and this they don’t know, should never know—he thinks of his own wife, Tenley, with every stomp of his boot heels, every gulp of water from his Camelback, every needling grain of sand that cuts his concentration. Every cell, every moment leaning closer to her. It takes skill to do this, a leader who gets the killing done, keeping silent vigil for life all the while. Lately, that skill eludes him.
Nathan eyes his men; sees the way they’re expectant—not a liability among them save, perhaps, PFC Rauchmann. Everyone calls him Rock, as in dumb as a—. But what Rock lacks in battlefield skills he overcompensates for in insight, always bugging Nathan about the intentions of a mission or, more and more, the lieutenant’s own inability to fuse one moment with the next. “It’s like you’re sparking, LT,” Rock had said. “Like two wires that shouldn’t be crossed, but they just keep crossing…Sir, that is, I mean, respectfully, Sir.” Nathan had only nodded, as he is nodding now, Rock staring back at him with those my-mother’s-a-psychiatrist-eyes resting inside a skull that contains no decent understanding of hierarchy. An obnoxious little burr planted into the lieutenant’s heel. Nathan opens his mouth to speak, but dry air swallows his voice. His men carry on:
“Shit, at least you guys got homes you want to go back to.”
“I still have a home, but no one’s in it anymore.”
“My wife says she decorated already, hero banners and everything.”
“I still have two years.” This from Huang. Bless him. Barely old enough to vote. The youngest of five brothers; doctors, engineers, and then, Huang: Kevlar bobbing over his eyes, a constellation of pimples across his cheeks. The lieutenant has always felt an affinity for Huang, like rooting for the underdogs in college football. It would be great, wouldn’t it, to see the kid surprise them all?
But most of Spartan Platoon is not like Huang. They wear their excitement during these fat seconds before their lieutenant announces the mission. Nathan remembers that excitement. In high school, he met with the recruiter who came to the assembly hall and gave the big presentation about signing bonuses and world travel. He trained on weekends using the school track and an old set of free weights he found in the garage. Push-ups, sit-ups, a timed two-mile run—all of it with the sweet smell of Indiana corn filling the air around him and the sun burnishing his skin to perfection. He counted down the days to graduation, to enlistment, to freedom. Tossing his cap into the blue sky, tassel rioting through the air, he couldn’t have known that millisecond was all the freedom he’d get. From then on it became his job to bring freedom to others. Eight years in and still, he’s not sure such a thing is possible.
The Longest Day of the Year: Chapter 1, Scenes 1-2 [EXPANSION, (c) 2014 KMS]
Another fetid sunrise in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan—this one orange, molten—and if Second Lieutenant Nathan Morris knew enough to stop the spread of today without consequence, he most certainly would. But too much has happened. He can do everything right and still be wrong. He knows this now. There is no such thing as winning; there is only surviving and even that is uncertain.
He watches from a security tower inside this Multi-National Army Base while sunlight seeps across the modest city as if from a wound. Coils of dirt rise from a narrow alley below; a male civilian driving a scooter on his way to work, Nathan guesses, and he is right. Block by block, the city alights as airborne particles of sand catch the sun’s rays, mother nature’s tracer fire, until Tarin Kowt appears lit by a sparkling, muted Armageddon. The view is almost peaceful in its contradiction and for a moment, Nathan wishes this mess of a war would just stay put in time—frozen into a postcard for him to ponder a safe distance from its troubling beauty.
Four tours and it has come to this: the last mission on the last day for Nathan and the men of Spartan Platoon. He has gotten them this far and will not stop now, though some have seen their own blown to bits: a leg, a torso. One time, a gunner’s nose and ear blown right off his face from the force of a blast. Mr. Potato Head, Nathan remembers thinking, I need Mr. Potato Head and his bucket of parts. That was how the mind worked in such moments. Twisted, private humor, like a teen jerking off in his parents’ bed. A curious sickness that makes Nathan shrink in shame and feel charged with life all at once. The nose went one direction. The ear went the other. The memory almost makes him laugh and before he knew it, he applied well-aimed, direct pressure to the wounds until Doc took over, then wiped the blood onto his DCU’s as he high-tailed it over to the two insurgents his men cuffed. He would kill them. But of course he wouldn’t, the two of them kneeling at his boots with bags over their heads, one of them just having shat himself and the other wailing some tinny, syllabic prayer into the hot air and how different was that, really, from Nathan’s own pitiful shortcomings leaking into this forward march of war?
Nathan moves from the tower, the clap of his boots echoing down the stairs like a confirmation. His own feet walking. His own breath quick across his lips. For quite some time, he has experienced himself as if from outside of himself, an entertaining little mindfuck, though the jury’s still out on whether this renders him more effective. In either case, there is no time to find out. He crosses the courtyard, returns a few salutes to new recruits in line outside the phone center, and flashes for a moment on his wife, Tenley. He really ought to call. He aims for the staging area and there, at the end of a long row of concrete bunkhouses, Spartan Platoon loads their Humvees.
They haven’t noticed their lieutenant yet, and even he can’t hear himself approach with the air conditioners humming like spacecraft as if the whole tour has been an alien visitation any Afghan would just as soon forget. Hot exhaust swirls at Nathan’s face as he walks down the corridor flashing between slanted, bunkhouse shadows and bright sunlight. It could be Kansas, it could be Oz, it could all be about to blow away and what’s real in war, anyway? Laughter breaks through the pasty air and Nathan recognizes First Sergeant Pilchuck’s snare-drum bray, second in command and the platoon is better for it. Around him, twelve more Spartans work like colony ants to load their Humvees, not a minute behind schedule. 0530 hours. The tick of the second hand. The beat of their hearts. Nathan will get them through this final mission and then he can say it: He did it. They all did. They finished. The smell of diesel fumes hits him then, his throat tightening against the invasion. The human body can be so needy, so easily rattled. It’s all a wonder to the lieutenant as he steps through the last patch of shade and into the open, hot light of that ever-racing sun to greet his men.
Spartan spots their lieutenant and gathers around the Humvees. Three rigs gussied in desert brown, shit brown, and beige—the difference between shades a topic of unending debate. Bullet holes and veiny scratches of rust mottle the side doors and gunner hatches, lending a vintage look that would make AM General manufacturing proud. A caked, desert gumbo has dried on the undersides of each vehicle in the most invasive places. Specialist Reynolds stands on one foot in the center of it all, balancing his Kevlar on the tip of his boot, leg outstretched as if to juggle a soccer ball. His black mop of hair holds the shape of sleep from the night before and whether or not this soldier is trimmed and tied to regulation is of no concern. Combat infantry has bigger bones to pick and Nathan is not the kind of leader with a hard on for boot laces.
Reynolds flicks the Kevlar playfully and Nathan snatches it, mid-air. He feels Spartan’s energy encircle him before the first man speaks and when the questions come, they’re quick as bullets:
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do, LT?”
“How long will processing take in Kuwait?”
“I just want better chow, soon as I get home. Better chow.”
Nathan tosses the Kevlar back to Reynolds and shakes his head. “It’s bad luck, gentlemen,” he tries to calm them. “Home’s a hell of a lot farther than a day away. Now—to business…” But the Spartans are too amped, their hope like static in the air.
Private First Class Nacho Supreme yanks the Kevlar from Reynolds’ hands, his boots knocking over a Mountain Dew bottle of tobacco spit in the process. A viscous, brown pool forms in the dust at the center of the hustle as Supreme, whose eyes remain hidden behind a coveted pair of silver Oakleys, lobs Reynolds’ Kevlar over the Humvees shouting “Go long, go long.” And to think these two socked each other that first week on base nine months ago. Too much alike: attention-seeking and loud up front, but soft as a baby’s ass when it came to stray dogs or kids bumming chocolate. Inseparable now, juking through conversations like comedians and just as dependable on delivery. More than once, these two have saved a fellow soldier’s life.
“I gotsta, gotsta, gotsta get me suh-uh-ome,” Pilchuck croons and as smooth as the college ball star the Spartans swear he must have been before enlisting, he sprints around the head of the line and palms Reynolds’ helmet like he was born holding it. Pilchuck. Upchuck. Everybody calls him Yak but he’s Nathan’s right hand man, so here is where the game stops, all 6’4” of this lean, big-eared First Sergeant ambling back to the huddle with a pink-faced grin that says, Now now…
The Spartans have heard about guys getting chopped up their last day in country. Nathan figured they knew better than to count down, red X’s like harbingers of death. Apparently some don’t feel superstitious, the ones talking now. But others know better than to test chaos; John Boy with the baby face and blond hair that got him his name, or Sergeant Caldwell whose entire fire team exploded around him. (Their bodies were like trees, that’s what he told Nathan, like dead trees that fell on top of him and protected him from the blast.)
“Now, to business…” Nathan repeats, a practiced steadiness in his tone. He’s got the voice. The one that makes them believe. He’s coached them this far, hasn’t he? There is so much they don’t know, but that their LT makes them better than they are on their own is not disputed. Also, this: that Nathan thinks of Tenley with every stomp of his boot heels, every gulp of water from his Camelback, every needling grain of sand that cuts his concentration, every cell, every moment leaning closer to her. It takes skill to do this, a leader who gets the killing done, keeping silent vigil for life all the while. Lately, that skill eludes him.
Yak rejoins the circle and passes Reynolds his Kevlar. Settled, Nathan scans the Spartans, nodding with reassurance. Not a liability among them save, perhaps, Private Rauchmann, and here, the lieutenant’s eyes pause a beat too long. Supreme and Reynolds catch the burr. Rauchmann is Rock, as in dumb as a—, and what Rock lacks in battlefield skills he overcompensates for in insight, always pushing his lieutenant about the moral intentions of a mission or, more and more, Nathan’s inability to fuse one moment with the next. “It’s like you’re sparking, LT,” Rock had said. “Like two wires that shouldn’t be crossed, but they keep crossing…Sir, that is, I mean, respectfully, Sir.” Nathan had rolled his eyes at the Sir, though the other part dug in, leaving a stain of resentment that even now, as Rock stares at Nathan with his liberal-arts-education-eyes, makes the hair on Nathan’s forearms tingle and triggers a tightening of his fists. Nathan makes a move to speak, but dry air swallows his voice and there it is…maybe he is sparking. Spartan carries on:
“Damn, at least you guys got homes you want to go back to,” Corporal DeShawn Taylor says, punctuating the sentiment with the smack of Ice Breakers Peppermint between his teeth. DeShawn is average-looking, but his wide-shoulders and narrow waist lend a superhero look that begs to differ.
“Home’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? There’s a physical home, like the actual structure. But then there’s the feeling of home, the fantasy and the reality. ‘There’s no place like home,’ but I’d posit that—” Rock’s rhetoricals are quickly neutered by a chorus of groans from the rest of the Spartans.
“It’s like, couldn’t they give soldiers some sorta waiver from the recession or whatever?” DeShawn leans against the side of his Humvee and crosses his arms over his chest. A fat clump of dirt drops from the undercarriage onto the ground. “Fuckin’ foreclose on my ass while I’m fighting the hajis. Man, that’s bigger than bull shit. That’s like…T-Rex shit.”
“Dude. Prehistoric dooks,” Reynolds says, pondering.
“I still have two years,” a small voice breaks through the huddle. This, from Huang. Bless him. Barely old enough to vote. The youngest of five brothers. Doctors, engineers, and then, Huang: Kevlar bobbing over his eyes, a constellation of pimples across his cheeks. Nathan has always felt an affinity for this one, like rooting for the underdogs in college football. It would be great, wouldn’t it, to see the kid surprise them all?
But most Spartans are not timid like Huang. Or Sergeant Caldwell, for that matter, who hasn’t been the same since he outlived his fire team, a nervous chatter narrated under his breath as he details his own actions in real time. When the dictation stops, Nathan has seen Caldwell dip his head and cross himself, offering a prayer to the ones he lost, the soldiers who died and left him so obsessively haunted. It’s the others the lieutenant relates to more, recognizing the iizz of excitement in their eyes during these fat seconds before their final mission. Nathan remembers the feeling with the same affinity he might confess to having once reserved for his childhood blankie. A cell-level sort of knowing that, however short-sighted, made him who he is for better or worse. In high school, Nathan met with the recruiter who came to the assembly hall and gave the big presentation about signing bonuses and world travel. Remembers the bell ringing, how half the graduating class stayed put, lured by the idea of something bigger than all the corn fields in their home state of Indiana combined. Seventy-eight days to graduation, fourteen more to enlistment, to freedom, and as the husk-scented air whisked around Nathan in front of the graduation stage, the sun burnishing his skin to a young, hornball perfection, he tossed his cap into the air with a big-sky wish and a fuck-it smile. The tassel rioted toward the clouds and he couldn’t have known that millisecond was all the freedom he’d get, that from then on his job would be to bring freedom to others. Eight years in and still, he’s not sure such a thing is possible.
