Scenes and Postcards in Literature
By Victoria Fortune
During the January residency for my MFA program (The Newport MFA at Salve Regina University), one of the graduating students, Leah Decesare, presented her thesis on scenes as mini-stories. She argued that each scene within a book can be viewed as mini-story in itself with a three-act structure. Whether it holds true for every scene in every book, it is a useful framework for analyzing scenes.
I have been using the template for scene cards from Lisa Cron’s Story Genius to map out the scenes in my book. The template compels you to consider what happens in the scene, what the consequences are, why it matters, and what will happen next as a result. In other words, it keeps you laser-focused on the purpose of each scene in advancing the plot, either through some change in circumstances or in a character. Viewing each scene as a story with a beginning, middle and end works well in this framework.
Working from my scene cards, I tend to fixate In my first drafts on the action of the scene to ensure forward movement of the plot. When I look back over the draft, I may be able to check off all the boxes on the scene card, and yet the draft feels bare bones, skeletal. The scene doesn’t resonate. The commentary I often get is that the scene feels rushed, that there are moments where I need to “slow down,” as a number of writing instructors have put it. I am what one of my instructors, Tim Weed, would call a “putter inner” during revision, as opposed to a “taker outer.”
The question and answer session after Leah’s presentation led to a discussion of “postcards,” as described by Donald Maass in his article “What Makes Fiction Literary: Scenes vs. Postcards.” Maass posits that while scenes consist of action and move the plot forward, postcards are moments when the author pauses to take a deep dive that causes a change not in the situation or any of the characters, but in the reader’s view or perception. They are moments that lead to deeper understanding.
Maass provides some great examples in his article to distinguish between scenes and postcards, but as the discussion among my fellow MFA students suggests, postcards are difficult to define. So, as I began my reading list for the semester, I looked for other examples. My concentration is historical fiction, and the first book on my list was The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate. This historical novel has two settings: 1875 where a formerly enslaved girl travels with the daughters of her former master from Louisiana to Texas, in search of family; and 1987, when a teacher comes to teach in the Louisiana town where the girls once lived. The book is full of action-packed scenes, but there are also postcards like this one:
I need magic. I need a miracle, a superpower. In almost two weeks, I have taught these kids nothing but how to bum cheap snack cakes and sleep in class . . . and that I will physically bar the door if they try to leave before the bell rings, so don’t try it. Now they skip class altogether. I don’t know where they are, just that they’re not in my room. My unexcused absence reports sit unbothered on a massive stack of similar pink slips in the office. Principal Pevoto’s grand plan to turn this school around is in danger of falling victim to the way things have always been. He is like the overburdened character in Eiseley’s often printed story, throwing beached starfish back into the ocean one by one, while the tide continually deposits more along an endless and merciless shore. . . . Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I can’t help believing that, for kids who are given so few choices on a daily basis, just having some [books] could be huge. Beyond that, I want them to see that there is no faster away to change your circumstances than to open a great book.
This is an excerpt from a postcard that runs nearly three pages, as the teacher reflects on the impact of books in her own life and her hopes for what they will do for her students. Nothing happens in these three pages, and I would be hard-pressed for how to account for them on a scene card, which may be why my first drafts tend to be missing this element. Yet the deep dive gives the reader important perspective on the teacher and the challenges she (and her students) face. It also provides the teacher’s motivation for taking a daring step later on to secure some books for her students. And it is a nod to the other story line, set in 1875--the italicized phrase suggesting a connection between the current conditions and past injustices. It evokes that Faulkner line, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past,” which is a central theme of the novel.
Postcards are a way to slow down, give the reader a breather from the action, and provide a little perspective. They create a sort of connective tissue that gives the scenes around them resonance. According the Maass, it is these deep dive moments that distinguish literature from genre fiction. However, while Maass’ title, “scenes vs. postcards,” is meant to distinguish between the two, it is the right balance of scenes and postcards that raise a story to the level of literature.
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