So, if....IF I've got this right. Dwight Swain, and those who advocate his formula, insist that the first scene must have our MC in perceived danger; All info given must be pertinent to the following paragraph rather than something much further into the story, and characters should ideally be extreme in outlooks or personality types.

I'm trying to start with a believable 'every day' feel to my book, with credible 'every day' characters. The idea is then that more and more extraordinary events transpire, but gradual in their increasing incredulity so that when the amazing happens... it feels normal.
Also I hope that the characters react to the events they're faced with as one would if they were actually happening in real life. (Initially denial and disbelief.)
I'm not claiming to have pulled it off, but that's my aim. An aim which seems totally at odds with the formula set out for a successful novel by Swain and his 'disciples.'
What are your thoughts? Dare we stray from the path? And if we do, are we asking to be plunged into obscurity or to explore lands of discovery and opportunity?
Mike

• Dwight Swain, and those who advocate his formula, insist that the first scene must have our MC in perceived danger;
 
It’s neither Swain’s nor a formula. You’ll find Hemingway talking about it in, “A Moveable Feast. You’ll find the necessity of having tension in every scene taught in virtually any course in professional fiction writing. And it’s the basis of the vast majority of fiction from the time when verbal storytelling was all there was.
 
Sure, you can write a story about a nice man and a nice woman, who meet, date, marry, and have a nice family. But since it’s no more interesting than living our own lives, who would pay to read it?
 
You can write about people having deep philosophical conversations. But they don’t sell either.
 
You can follow a character around with a camera and chronicle their life, but what’s the point? The term in medias res was coined a long time ago, and it’s been the advice given to writers from that time, for good reason.
 
The difference between fiction and history is that fiction is uncertain, while history is immutable. And uncertainty breeds tension. Fiction always has outsold history books.
 
But that aside, Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, Ben Bova, Orson Scott Card, Sol Stein, and the host of others who wrote books on writing say nothing about “the first scene must have our MC in perceived danger.” Not a word. What they said is that every scene must have tension, and that it must steadily grow, because a scene is a unit of tension. It’s the basis of what’s often called the hero’s journey, and it’s inherent to the three act structure of fiction.
 
• All info given must be pertinent to the following paragraph rather than something much further into the story,
 
No one says that, either. I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas, but it’s not from Dwight Swain, or any writing teacher I know of. Nor is it anything I’ve ever said. I have said that if you raise a question in a paragraph the reader expects to have it addressed, quickly, but that’s something very different.
 
Two quotes that might apply:
 
“Don’t inflict the reader with irrelevant background material—get on with the story.” ~ James H. Schmitz
 
“To describe something in detail, you have to stop the action. But without the action, the description has no meaning.” ~Jack Bickham
 
• I'm trying to start with a believable 'every day' feel to my book, with credible 'every day' characters.
 
I know dozens of everyday people. Why would I want to read about someone like that, doing something I could do myself? I could spend an hour following someone in the local mall, should I care to. Why would I want to do the equivalent in a book, in hopes that sooner or later something meaningful to the plot will happen?
 
Readers come to us with mild curiosity, an interest that will quickly fade. And that’s it. You have about three pages to change curiosity to interest, and make them say, “Hmm…interesting. Tell me more.” Fail that and your audition is over, and every second you spent writing more than that was wasted. And that “Hmm,” moment had best happen as close to the top of page one as possible, because all around that reader are other books, shouting, “Read me, I’m better.” And unlike you, they’re promising to be interesting from the beginning.
 
Readers want to have their emotions stirred. They want to worry.
 
With a book in her hands mousy bookkeeper who has no social life can romance the handsome man who wouldn’t give her a second look. She can be the butterfly she’s always dreamed of being. The man who spends his day dealing with irate customers can pick up a book and find a cutlass in his hand—along with the skill to use it, and survive things that in life would lead to him being quite dead.
 
We read to escape, and to be titillated, frightened, and in general, entertained.
 
Write your nice slow buildup. And when you come to the part where things go wrong, toss everything you wrote before that, because that’s where your story begins.
 
Assume someone who has a half hour for lunch, and they read during that time. Do they really want to waste a lunch or two reading about someone living a mundane life before anything important happens? Readers don’t come to us to get to know the characters as people. They want something interesting to happen on page one, and on every page that follows.
 
• Also I hope that the characters react to the events they're faced with as one would if they were actually happening in real life.
 
That’s a given. It’s what editors mean when they say to show not tell.
 
• I'm not claiming to have pulled it off, but that's my aim.
 
And here’s the killer: what we care about, our intent, and everything about us is irrelevant. It’s the reader, the words we supply, and what those words mean to that reader. They don’t know us and we’re not there to explain. We either make then want to know more or we’ve failed

I’m also reading reviews, along with the pieces they pertain to. And I’m reading the first few paragraphs, sometimes the first few pages, of every work of fiction in my bookshelves, hundreds of books ranging from well loved classics to obscure treacle, bought at the library sales because I found a paragraph or two I admired in a nothing-plot and hoped to discover other sublime bits to add to my note files.

In the end, I’m sure that I will take to heart some of the Swain-type advice, and some I will reject as not serving my style and point of view.

I’m writing for myself. I must please myself. If I also please others, great. But, you see, I’m on the verge of retirement. I’m not hoping for a career. My husband and I have enough to scrape by on. (My most expensive enthusiasm is gardening.) And I’ll be damned if I’m going to create something that I would not love to read myself. That covers a lot of territory, a number of genres and, probably, most best-sellers.

There are always exceptions. I have come across Sci-Fi that was so beautifully written that I was enthralled. But I read it for the prose style and not for the ambulating, wise-cracking briefcases.

• You say the formula which includes every scene having compulsory tension, amongst other things, has been in existence since storytelling was a verbal art. Might this be an assertion?
 
Homer used it in The Illiad. Dickens used it, as did so many others through history.
 
A scene in writing isn’t the same as for the stage. In general, in fiction for the written word, tension will slowly rise, scene by scene, with the protagonist’s options narrowing, while the odds of success diminish. Any story, at its heart, is about a person or group with a problem. It could be getting a date for the prom, learning that you need to be careful what you wish for, threading their way through the maze of growing up, or saving the world. Whatever it is, it tosses the protagonist out of their comfort zone. They began with a goal, one that might be trivial or vital, but something derails that goal, shunts it aside, and presents a problem that cannot be ignored, and continues to worsen.
 
Good sense might demand you say “Oh my God, I’d have to be crazy to go on with this,” and run But for reasons the protagonist accepts as necessary, they cannot do so, and must persevere, in spite of certain failure.
 
That’s the story. But because the initial reaction to the inciting incident, if continued, must soon result in either abject failure—ending the story—or success, which will also end the story, the scene must end, so another, different but greater, source of tension can be introduced. Because of this, a scene usually ends in failure. Even when the protagonist prevails, it soon becomes apparent that the problem, instead of being resolved, is greater than anticipated, which requires recovery, re-evaluation, and the beginning of a new scene.
 
So the new scene begins with the new approach, perhaps a change in the scene-goal, increased tension, and finally, failure, as the progression toward the black moment and the climax continues. A scene may be part of a chapter, or continue over several chapters. It may take a moment or a year, and involve any number of locations. It will, however, continue to grow in tension, risk, and intensity.
 
Any place where the protagonist can take it easy tells the reader that they aren’t taking the problem seriously. So why should the reader? What is it that will make a reader need to read on?
 
• Not surprisingly, I don't think anyone was suggesting that they would have 400 pages of this.
 
When a reader opens to page one, you have, at best, three pages to interest them. Given that, one paragraph of it may be too much. Most submissions are rejected within a page. With a standard manuscript that’s only eighty words. Probably more than half are rejected before the first paragraph ends, because the reader has encountered one of three things:
 
1. The writer is providing a list of plot events that the writer has visualized—a graphic novel minus the graphics.
 
2. The writer is providing a transcript of themselves speaking—a verbal storytelling minus the verbal and visual performance.
 
3. A lecture, by the author, on the setting, background, and actors who will participate—the storyteller clearing their throat.
 
That’s a full seventy-five percent of submissions. Of the rest, all but three aren’t written in what the publisher views as a professional way. And two of the three aren’t right for that publisher.
 
It doesn’t matter what you and I think important because we’re not the customer. People like Jack Bickham, and Dwight Swain, who were not only very successful as writers; people like Sol Stein, who was a writer, playwright, screenwriter, publisher, and editor, know. There are lots of crap books on writing. But the people I mentioned knew, because they made their living through their writing before they became teachers.
 
In the words of Holly Lysle, “Michaelangelo did not have a college degree, nor did Leonardo da Vinci. Thomas Edison didn't. Neither did Mark Twain (though he was granted honorary degrees in later life.) All of these people were professionals. None of them were experts. Get your education from professionals, and always avoid experts.”
 
• When you say if a question is raised, it must be answered quickly, again to me, it depends on the question... and what you mean by quickly.
 
Specifically: when a writer opens by saying that someone must  “steel himself,” before leaving a car, they want to know why, because without that, it’s a factoid, self-contained and without meaning, so they have no context for him having done it. It’s reasonable to expect that what the character does demonstrates that it was necessary. That reader has a right to be shown why the person did what was noted by his reaction to the thing that caused him to tense up. Following the mention that getting out of the car required a conscious effort with nothing more then a walk through the rain, which seems to have no purpose to be described as more than having taken place, raises another question: Why am I being shown this in this much detail? Why is it important enough to mention?
 
In writing fiction context isn’t important, it’s everything. Without context we can have no emotional connection, and emotion is the entire purpose of reading fiction.
 
• The book may be a quest to find this answer
 
Only if you make the reader want to know the answer. And only if you make the answer worth the wait. Readers are with us for moment-to-moment reading pleasure, not for a list of clues that may or may not be meaningful at some unknown time in the future. Bore or confuse a reader for one single line—especially when they’re deciding to buy, and you lose them. Readers are volunteers, not conscripts, remember.
 
• I don't think anyone is making the case that we should have lots of irrelevant backround..... seriously Jay, do you think that's what we are asking for?
 
You miss the point. No one intends to write badly, yet fully seventy-five percent of what’s submitted is declared unreadable. What we intend, and what we provide in the belief that it’s what the editors are seeking, has no connection with what that editor actually wants unless we make a careful study of the subject, based on what the editors say, not what we believe.
 
Sincerity is an admirable trait, but it helps not at all in selling a manuscript because we all sincerely believe we’re writing something a reader will want to read.
 
• Otherwise in my mind, what you have is a Marvel comic. I don't mind Marvel comics, but I don't read them looking for an epic, credible tale.
 
Yet comics are the perfect illustration of why scenes are constructed as they are.
 
They can be a powerful teaching tool because they are plot and scene, stripped to the basics:

http://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/the-grumpy-writing-coach-6/
 
Good luck favors the prepared.
 
 

Mike,

'Lo there, fellow scrivener in the trenches!

For what it’s worth, I’m one of the ones who hasn’t read your novel’s opening—but after all of this detailed analysis and discussion, I feel like I have. (Heh!)

As I’ve followed this unfolding saga I was struck by two things: (1) No one likes being told they have to write according to a formula, and (2) writers who do so are very, very successful.

What was it Kurt Vonnegut said? “A character must want something, even if it’s only a glass of water.” He’s talking about tension: Your story can concern itself with the most mundane and quotidian of events (which is not your novel, by the way; your novel sounds fascinating—but someone’s gotta create it out of mere words, which is Jay’s point); nevertheless, there must be something your protagonist wants which he or she cannot immediately attain. Narrative drive and tension arises when that desire is frustrated and we, the reader, empathize with the protagonist’s struggle to obtain the object or outcome of their heart’s desire.

I know you know this; it’s incorporating this lesson and demonstrating it in our writing that’s the hard part. For all of us, Mike—not just you.

You know what? I’ve decided I gotta read your opening after all. Hang on a second . . .

. . . Okay, back now.

Here’s the verdict: You’re both right—you, the writer and your constructive critics.

The gruesomeness of what Mr. Hassom finds in the house is horrifying and lurid in the extreme. (Extra points for invoking senses other than sight.) I certainly wasn’t bored and the narrative moved at an appropriately brisk clip in this opening chapter. (Though surely you mean “a charnel house” and not “a carnal house” at 1%?)

But that first page could be improved in the manner Jay is suggesting: simply insert a sentence like, “The dead were waiting for him in the house,” before we read about Hassom “steeling himself”. (And if you don’t use the sentence I’m proffering as an opening line I’m gonna use it on something of my own; that’s a f@cking great opening line . . .)

I don’t have a problem with the rain; I read it as mood-invoking atmosphere at this juncture and nothing more. (I don’t need a mini info-dump on your world’s out-of-whack weather till later in the novel; your instincts were good here and I applaud your restraint.)

But I do agree with Herb that Hassom’s exclamation of “God, no!” simply doesn’t work where you’ve interjected it into the text. Coming as it does after paragraphs of artfully-described clinical detail and the woodenness of Hassom’s personality/reactions to this point it rings false—I don’t buy it. “Fuck,” I would buy; or something bizarre and disturbing like, “Be still, my pretty,” (showing us he’s in psycho-killer ego-identification mode).

Watch for cipher-description—“two forensic technicians”, “one of the uniformed constables”—bring these minor characters to life with a quick, deft telling detail or two.

I don’t want to pile on when you’re trying to process and absorb constructive criticisms publicly and in real-time, as it were, so let me close by saying something I sincerely and whole-heartedly believe: The hard work of having written the novel is done! You have accomplished what many (including myself) have never managed to do; now all you have to do is edit the text into something saleable. Ask for specifics and clarification from your critics as to how they would improve certain passages. Don’t berate yourself unnecessarily for things you may have missed. Remember, a published novel may go through as many as five distinct editorial reviews. I’m not a genius; your critics aren’t geniuses; I suspect you suspect that you’re not a genius—we all struggle with the craft together, eh?

PS. Regarding the injection of tension into the most quotidian and mundane of everyday events I’d like to quote the words of those master story-tellers of the baroque and surreal, Master John Winston Lennon and Sir Paul James McCartney:

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
Somebody spoke and I went into a dream . . .
 

I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I see the problem with the current approach to the chapter, which is that you’re doing exactly what you set out to do. You are placing the reader into the character’s position and letting them see for themselves.
 
Thus, you start in the car, the place the scene might begin were this a film. The reader is the character in the sense that they are a camera-lens, and a microphone, placed just where the protagonist would be, so we, as readers see, hear, feel, taste and smell everything the character does, as he does, and from his sensory input.
 
So, we walk through the rain, as he does, and see the neighborhood around him. We hear him dealing with the policemen we see in front of us. Then we walk into the room and see it, as he does, from the control panel in his head, where his senses are received.
 
In addition to that, you, the narrator, explain just as much as necessary, like telling us he steels himself, and tosses the cigarette.
 
So yes, we know everything he does. And his field of view is our field of view, etc.
 
But he has something we don’t have. He has backstory. And his backstory includes knowing how to look at the crime scene and what’s meaningful. He, as a member of society, can look at the room and know the people’s status, and where they fit onto their society. He glances at the things we learn of and analyzes them with an educated eye. He knows it rains in the way it does, and after the time he’s spent with it he ignores it, where we wonder about it. We “see” a hundred things, while his background, personality, needs, desires, and police training narrow it to only-what-matters-to-him. We see. He pays attention.
 
And that’s my point. He’s purposeful; we’re just there. All his knowledge acts as his measuring stick to keep him focused. But by presenting the scene as you have, we have no measuring stick, just unrelated data. Some is background and some important, but we have no way to differentiate So you’re in the right place, but you’re one layer too close to the surface. Instead of showing what there is to see, use his filters and even his preconceptions and biases to give us his viewpoint, not his viewing point. Let him be our measuring stick, calibrating our response via his desires, reactions, and intent.
 
That way, if he’s not paying attention to the rain or the neighborhood, he reacts to it only minimally, enough that we get ambience.
 
Assume that a character is sitting in his kitchen. The doorbell rings. In his viewing point, we’re taken on a tour of the house as he walks to the door. We watch the door open and get a report on who he sees and what they look at. But then, abruptly, our protagonist kicks the man at the door, turns and runs into the house. Why? Who knows?
 
Take that same scene through the character’s interpretation. The bell rings and he puts down his coffee, wondering who it is. And because he does we learn that he isn’t expecting someone, which we wouldn’t otherwise know, unless the narrator told us as part of the tour on the way to the door. He thinks of who it might be, and now, having the list, we make our own evaluation of who or what we think it might be. And as part of it, we might have the character say, “It had better not be that bastard Matthews.”
 
Does the character pay any attention to the trip to the door? No. His thoughts are on who’s at the door. So why tell the reader anything but that, and that he’s heading there. We don’t really care if it was ten steps away or walked down three flights of stairs. It’s finding out who it is that matters to him, which is his viewpoint, not his viewing point.
 
So the door opens and our protagonist thinks, Matthews! Will we be surprised when our hero hauls off and kicks him in the chops? No. We may not approve. We may wonder why he fees as he does, but we know our protagonist is well and truly pissed, and feels it justified. And because we want to know what could have made him feel that way we’re going to read on, to find out.
 
Isn’t that a lot more fun to read than a list of what was done and said?

A final word on the subject of rain:

 If you saw the first Batman movie you’ll probably remember that as shown, the sun never seemed to shine in Gotham City. Even the outdoor daylight scenes were gray and flatly lit.

But did you, at any time during the film, wonder if there had been a worldwide calamity that resulted in it always being overcast? Or did you attribute it to the director’s decision, so as to maintain the mood? Because if you didn’t…  ;–)

Premise, Inciting
Incident, Catalyst, Debate

Well you know what they say about broken clocks!

I've gone back to my opening scenes and input some blatent tension......... or perhaps brought the undercurrent more to the fore.

I've sold out to the dark side, DG.

I'd like to chat more, cause it's great to hear from you again, but I have to go and scrub myself with a stiff, soapy brush...................... I feel so dirty.

Mike

• Would you prefer it was not shown to rain until such times as the displaced protest at the ruination of their homes and resentment of immigrants pressurises those in power to drastic action?
  
Everything you say that’s not directly related to the action in progress might be ambience. It also might be be of some importance later. A reader can’t tell which is is, unless the protagonist or some other character reacts, or you in some way mark it as being something to remember.
 
Foreshadowing is what you’re trying to do, but stories are about people, not weather. So there’s a problem. We’re supposed to be in his POV and he doesn’t pay any attention to the rain. Nor does the rain seem to have any effect on the scene other then that it’s set on a stormy day. And, the next time he goes outdoors, a few moments later, the rain has stopped. So there is no way in hell that a reader will conclude from that, that the climate has changed and in what way it’s changed. Yes, if you keep on doing it the reader might wonder why you keep presenting rainy weather, but you could have accomplished the same thing by beginning with him walking into the house, taking off his raincoat, shaking it off, and saying, “Damn, I’m starting to grow webbing on my feet. Tell me again that the global warning has no effect.” The walk through the rain provided no plot development because walking from place to place is movement, but not action. It didn’t develop character because he had no thoughts or reactions to anything he encounters. And it didn’t set the scene because that takes place inside the house. From a reader’s point of view it served only to delay the arrival of the actual story. Sure, from your POV it’s foreshadowing, there to introduce the effect of climate change. But you gave the reader, the one this was written for, no reason to do anything but skim forward to find something happening because there’s no emotional content.
 
Readers are not looking for subtle hints that seem unrelated to the plot but will later turn out to be important. They’re looking for what’s happening. It’s the writer’s art to plant seeds that appear to be part of what’s needed to make this scene entertaining, but which will, later take on greater importance.
 
• I think that entire thread is more credible when storms abound, and floods are encountered prior to this issue being demonstrated.
 
Description isn’t showing. Physical events are only meaningful in human context because stories are emotion based, not fact based. In the words of E. L. Doctorow, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
 
Make me be him in the rain and reacting to it, if it’s important. And make the rain seem relevant to the scene in progress, so the reader doesn’t realize that some foreshadowing is going on. Make him care, so I know what I should care about, and how much it means to him. Weather reports I can get on the Eleven O’clock News. In fact, one f the "never do this," things that writers are told is to never begin with a weather report.
 
• I'd explained that as well as setting the scene it also was relevent to the plot...
 
It’s only relevant to the plot, from the reader’s viewpoint, if they see it as relevant and necessary in the context of the scene playing out. You’re talking of matters of intent, but intent dribbles off the words in the modem. I’ve got a puddle of it on the floor under my desk right now from this post.

All that’s left at the reader’s end are the words, and what those words mean to that reader.

• These are things that some successful author (Swain in this case) believes will help an as-yet-unpublished author become a published author.
 
Swain wasn’t just an author. He was very successful as a writer of fiction. He also wrote screenplays, and developed some techniques of filmmaking that revolutionized the making of documentary films. He was a teacher of professional fiction writing at Oklahoma University, whose professional fiction writing program, at the time he taught there, boasted a list of students that reads like a who’s-who of American writers. The man used to fill auditoriums when he went on tour. I’ve listened to audio condensations of two of his all-day seminars, and found myself saying, “This man is a damn genius,” in more then a few places.
 
He wasn’t giving personal opinion. He helped codify the craft of the fiction writer, yes, but didn’t invent it. His book is simply a much better than average discussion of the craft of the fiction writer—a learned skill. You can see the craft he discusses in operation in most of the successful writing on the market today.
 
• So, will not following the Swain formula ensure that your work never gets published?
 
Pretty well. First, because it’s not a formula. There is no teacher I know of who says, “Do this and you’ll be successful. Swain, for example, doesn’t talk about style. Style is the writer’s job. He doesn’t talk about the various ways of presenting POV. That’s an authorial decision based on preference. Instead, he talks about what POV is, and how to make it work for you. Over 90% of new writers think POV refers to which pronouns you use. Fail to learn what it actually is and you’ll be one of those 999 out of 1000 rejected for every “yes” from a publisher.
 
Any profession is filled with specialized knowledge, tricks-of-the-trade, and trade secrets. No one is born with an innate knowledge of how to use the tools of any profession, including fiction for the printed word. Nor do we even know what many of the tools are—or that they exist—until they’re pointed out. And that's a serious problem, because as they say, “If the only tool you own is a hammer, everything is going to look like a nail.”
 
Swain, Bickham, Dixon, etc., point out what kind of tools are available, why they’re necessary, and how and when to use them.
 
The short version: before you condemn someone’s work, research. You can read a sample chapter of Techniques of the Selling Writer, or Bickham’s, Scene and Structure, on Amazon. While you’re at it, look at the reader comments on the book. Those men have a lot of fans.