Cause and Effect and the Connectedness of all Scenes
I have said elsewhere that a story is not like life because a story clearly exhibits cause and effect, whereas real life tends to feel more chaotic. To simplify: Between each scene in a story you could say “because of that” more usefully than “and then”. Each scene is the result of a previous scene and each scene has follow-on scenes. A scene is, as Jorge Luis Borges put it, a premonition of another scene situated later in the narrative. Later scenes are “set up” by being foreshadowed through earlier scenes.
The “because of that” effect is clearest when broadly describing the outline of a story (for instance: a crime occurs, because of that an inspector is called, because of that he takes on the case, because of that he searches for clues, because of that he finds a first clue that, in consequence, leads him to the next clue, which eventually in a causal sequence leads him to discover who the criminal is).
On a scene-by-scene level, the “because of that” does not have to be entirely consecutive. It is not that the immediately following scene is the result of the directly preceding one, but rather that the scenes in a narrative almost always refer back to prior scenes. The audience remembers – more or less consciously – the point being referred back to, recognizes the connection to a piece of information they have received in the prior scene. This results in a pleasing “aha-moment”, a pleasant sensation of having understood something, of “getting it”.
Mastering these aha-moments of “getting it” is, I am convinced, the most essential trick of the authoring trade.
This means that as an author you connect scenes with each other across your narrative. No scene should exist from which you could not draw a line of connection to another scene.
Often the examples with which I seek to illustrate my points tend to be popular blockbuster movies, since these usually display narrative techniques rather obviously and also the chances of you knowing the film are relatively high. But lest you think that only action entertainment utilizes the various dramatic techniques I’m talking about, let me illustrate my point about the interconnectedness of scenes with examples from the new Norwegian movie Sentimental Value, co-written and directed by Joachim Trier.
The story concerns four main characters: a father, two daughters, and an actress. The setting is primarily a house, the family home. The father is a successful film director and the grown-up daughters feel that he neglected them during their childhood, especially after the separation of the parents. The primary conflict is between the elder daughter Nora and her father. Nora has become a theatre actress, but lives a lonely life, whereas the other daughter Agnes has a partner and child – that is, a new home.
There are no explosions, no chases, no shoot-outs in this film. It is a family drama. It shows middle class people, no underbelly of society or shining elite. Just people caught up in family dynamics trying to come to terms with their lives – like so many of us.
Though not spectacular, the narrative is densely woven in the sense that many scenes are connected. Hardly any scenes are “unnecessary”, since they refer to others.
For example, in the first half of the film, in fact while the audience is still getting used to the “ordinary world” of the father, we see him being interviewed at a retrospective screening of one of his films, saying that while he is filming the crew are his family. At this juncture in the narrative, this scene implies to us the audience that he neglected his “real” family.
In the second half of the film, at least two scenes refer back to this earlier line of dialogue.
Firstly, in a scene where all the immediately family members have gathered, the sisters, in particular Nora, accuse him of only being there for brief durations during their childhood, instead of providing consistent and continual care. The audience is reminded of his statement earlier that the film crew is his family during a shoot. Secondly, there’s a scene in which the father goes to an old colleague, his cameraman, whom he has not seen in ten years. During filming, they were close, like family. As soon as a film is finished, they are not in touch. The cameraman understands this fully, makes no reproach. Unlike the daughter. We are reminded of both preceding scenes.
So at least two scenes in the second half link back to a scene in the first half – a scene which already has a raison d’être because it shows the ordinary life of a main character, but which has a significant double function as a premonition of later scenes.
Of course, the two later scenes are not just “effects” or “pay-offs” of the earlier scene but also set up more scenes to come. In the family scene, the angry actress daughter Nora attacks her father verbally to such an extent that her sister says she is exaggerating. You can see in Nora’s face at that moment that she feels betrayed by her sister Agnes. But she does not react angrily towards her. She does not turn on her, there is no escalation. One almost wonders why, because it is clear that Nora is enraged by this small betrayal.
The answer comes later, very near the end, when in a bonding scene the younger sister Agnes thanks Nora for always being there and looking after her, even while the mother was sick and the father not there. Nora is and has always been, despite not realizing it herself, very good at caring for people close to her. Her instinct is so protective of her sister that she would not turn on her even when angry with her. Of course, this bonding scene between the two sisters late in the narrative refers back not only to this one scene but to very many preceding scenes.
The scene in which the father visits the cameraman begins with him intending to hire him for his new film. However, the director is disappointed to see his old colleague so old and frail that he cannot imagine him being able to shoot what we know we want him to shoot, a complicated handheld one-shot take. So he takes back his offer, pretending the producers have the final say. The scene works in itself, shows how this character can vacillate between his perceived families, between closeness and distance. We think he has made a wrong choice, morally. But in the final scene of the movie, which is located at a film set and shows the director at work filming, the cameraman reappears. Probably he has been taken on after all, perhaps in some advisory capacity. It is not explained, but it does not need to be. The point is that the audience has this aha-moment in which they see that the main character has atoned, has recognized his fault and has made the morally right choice after all. This minor little subplot mirrors the major A-plot of the conflict between the father and Nora which we also see as resolved in this final scene. The final scene of course refers back to numerous previous scenes.
These are just a couple of examples. This film, like most stories, be they told as film or novel, is full of such backwards and forwards referencing between scenes.
To my mind, there is no chance of achieving such density of interconnectedness of scenes without careful arrangement of the details of plot. It is clear that this interconnectedness causes emotional resonance in the audience. You as an author should not leave it to chance. The interconnectedness is story design. It is your craft as a storyteller to create such interconnectedness.
The idea of foreshadowing and the connectedness of scenes also has to do with the idea of stories being symmetrical. Naturally, being a well-crafted movie, Sentimental Value exhibits many examples of symmetry. For instance, the first scene features children leaving the house on the way to school. The final scene features a child leaving the house on the way to school. The fourth character, the actress, played by Elle Fanning, arrives in the story some twenty minutes or so into the movie and leaves the story some twenty minutes or so before the end. One might think such a quiet movie has no similarities to a spectacle like Star Wars, but Luke Skywalker and Han Solo entering the Death Star and escaping from the Death Star is the same deliberate symmetry as the actress coming and going.
Try planning your own story:
