I just finished my annual viewing of my favorite opera, Boris Godounov. Yes, it’s full of gorgeous, exoticizing music and has a cast of baritones, but it’s also based on a play by Pushkin, and I figure we could all learn something from that master of the pen. You can complain about the double storyline, which the opera never really weaves together quite successfully (condensation oblige), but there’s no denying: this baby contains some super dramatic scenes.
Nothing Like a Good Scene
And that’s what I’d like to talk about, scenes. You could think of a novel (or an opera libretto) as a series of scenes strung together with a plot, like pearls on a string. The plot is important, but isn’t it the scenes that imprint themselves on the reader’s memory? That’s where the emotion rocks out. That’s where images are burned in. That’s where we see what the characters are made of—not just through their words but through their actions. Better make each scene strong, because they do a lot of work.
Lights! Action! Scene!
Let’s use my opera as an example. It’s a historical tale, so it necessarily condenses many years of Boris’s life into two-plus hours. I’ve condensed things even more.
Scene 1: The old tsar and his heir are dead. The people are gathered by certain boyars and told to cry out for Boris, the former minister, to make himself king. Boris, though, is mightily reluctant. He finally cedes to the popular will and is crowned. This snippet gives us the historical mise-en-scène and also shows us the character of Boris. We meet the kingmaker Shuisky, a wily boyar.
Scene 2: Time has passed. Boris is now king. He has tried to do good for the people, but nothing seems to be going well. He fears it is because he bumped off the old king’s heir. We see him with his own children, and he is revealed as a loving father but one with a tortured conscience. At one point he thinks he sees the dead prince’s ghost (a great moment!). Shuisky, now Boris’s minister, is shown as a man Boris doesn’t trust.
Scene 3: In a quiet monastery, an old monk is completing a chronicle of the times. The young monk Grigory hears about the death of the previous king’s heir, who would be exactly his age, and begins to get ideas. This is the germ of the antagonistic uprising against Boris.
Scene 4: Rumors are spreading that the young heir didn’t really die, while simultaneously, miracles are being worked at his tomb. Both versions send Boris into an agony of conscience. On the street, a holy fool refuses to bless Boris because he is a murderer. Ouch.
Scene 5: In an inn near the Lithuanian border, Grigory is trying to sneak out of Russia to mount his attack. He has fallen in with a couple of (other) defrocked monks, and there’s a little comic relief. He’s almost caught by the police, but gets away. We have humor and physical action here, and the slimy character of Grigory is revealed. Seemingly peripheral, it’s actually a great scene.
Scene 6: The Douma (parliament) is meeting, and the boyars discuss the invasion of the false heir’s troops. Boris staggers in, clearly falling apart psychologically. The old monk is summoned to report another miracle at the dead prince’s tomb. Boris calls in his son and tries to make him king, then, in a super-intense episode, dies while the souave Shuiski looks on. The poor new king is standing there trying not to cry. The End.
Man, what a final scene! The music makes it clear that nothing good is going to happen.
Each scene packs in the maximum information, the maximum impact. Because there is no description in a play, the dialogue is chiseled and the actions bigger than life. Those are great criteria for a novel
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