Scene Analysis # 2 - It by Stephen King

Hey there, folks! Here's the 2nd analysis. Today, we are doing IT by Stephen King. The scene I had copied is from Chapter 2, page 17 from my Kindle.


As a refresher from my copywork blogpost (click here to read the full post), here is the color coding on the highlights:

• Orange for Action beats
• Green for Descriptions
• No highlights for Dialogue
• Yellow for Summary/Transition
• Blue for Thoughts
• Pink for Authorial/Narrator Intrusion
• Purple for Exposition

The scene starts with a summary where the narrator is giving us the essential info. After this summary/transition, we are grounded with a line of dialogue from Don Hagarty.

The grounding dialogue gives us a scene, but we are pulled back again, entering the narrator's mind and Harold Gardener's mind. There are some snippets of description in between that block.



After that block of "telling," we are now entering the realm of "showing" which is a string of dialogue and an action beat (Don Hagarty began to cry.) I like this flow, we start out in the abstract and then end with concrete beats, like an emphatic end.

One thing I found out with this scene is that it's a scene fragment. The scene's goal is to get information from the witness. The conflict is Don's emotions getting in the way. The outcome is never shown. It's a cliffhanger, in a sense, but it's more of a lead to the next scene.

The next scene begins with a block of summary/transition. It's a quick setup to establish location and characters. We then zoom-in on Christopher Unwin with a description and a beat of action (Unwin, who wore . . . was weeping). Mood is established with Unwin's weeping, and the action grounds us immediately. Next, the narrator fills us in on the two Detectives.



Now we get deep into the scene, listening in on the interrogation of Unwin as the Detectives try to break him.



Action beats break up the block of dialogue (Boutillier took a pack...), grounding us once more with tangible sensation. Too much dialogue could pull us from the tangible realm, so having a beat of action helps us reorient to that realm.

After succession of action and description, we pull back into the narrator's lens (...and still unable to comprehend the stupendous change... ).

The scene ends with a line of dialogue that foreshadows the titular villain.
































The goal of this scene was to break Unwin, wanting to get a confession from him. The conflict is Unwin sticking to his story, which is not what the Detectives want to hear. They badger him constantly until they get something from him. The outcome is failure: the Detectives did not get a confession from Unwin, but they get a clue--the guy with the balloons.

Here is the bulleted format of the scene:

• GOAL: The Detectives need to break Unwin
• CONFLICT: Unwin will stick to his story, insisting that they did not intend to kill Adrian.
• OUTCOME: Will the Detectives break Unwin? NO, BUT they get a lead.

 And here's the value shift of the second scene:

• ( - / + )
• (Dead-end to Lead)
• (When Unwin mentions the guy with the balloons)

Below is a graph of the narrative modes of the copied scene. This shows the rhythm between abstract and concrete beats. It scales from -3 to +3 with the following sequence respectively: Exposition (as -3), Intrusion, Thought, Transition (as 0.5), Description, Dialogue and Action (as +3).



There you have it folks! I'm not sure which copywork I'm going to share next time, but stay tuned. Follow my blog or twitter to get these updates.

As always, keep writing.



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