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Heard a guy at the library say 'every scene needs a secret' and it clicked for me
I was at the downtown public library in Portland last Thursday killing time, and some guy in the writing section told his friend that every scene in a story needs a hidden purpose or it's just filler. It got me thinking about my own prompts I post here. How do you figure out what that secret purpose is without making it feel forced or obvious? I'm trying to apply it to a short piece about a woman buying oranges at a farmers market.
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the_luna1mo ago
I read this thing by Ursula K. Le Guin once where she talked about how every detail in a story should be doing two jobs at once-like showing what's happening on the surface while hinting at something deeper underneath. For your farmers market scene, maybe the secret purpose is about the woman avoiding something painful in her real life, like the oranges are the only thing she feels in control of right now. Try writing the scene without any secrets first, then rewrite it with one small change-like she always buys exactly seven oranges, or she never makes eye contact with the seller. That way the hidden purpose grows out of a tiny action instead of being jammed in there.
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Ngl, that's solid advice from luna. But how do you know when the secret is actually working without explaining it to someone?
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