Writing With Elfie - Scene Gropgraphy

Why hello there folks! It's been a few wild months, I hope you're all keeping well. I've been busy getting my ducks in a row for Blood and Roses, while also wrangling all my adult responsibilities too. Repairing a car from the mid 2000s is surprisingly difficult these days, I cannot find the parts anywhere XD I'm getting back into the swing of working so we should be getting a lot more consistent content going into March. I also have a few exciting announcements for y'all in the Spring, so keep an eye out then!

Let's get into today's writing topic, something near and dear to my heart; an element of writing that will immediately take me out of a story if it's poorly executed.

Scene Geography

What in the heck is that?? Well, I don't know if it's a specific concept in the classic school of writing; but I sort of lift the idea from film. Essentially, when I'm thinking of scene geography I'm thinking about whether what's happening in my story is consistent with the space it's happening in as I've described it; combined with whether the actions being taken by our characters are physically possible within that space given previous information. It's continuity, that's what it really boils down to. Is your scene contiguous? Let's go over some examples real quick to illustrate the point:

Let's pretend we're planning a smutty scene taking place in the passenger seat of a four door sedan. The receiver is pressed up against the seat, which is set as far back as it can go, and the giver is on their knees giving the goods. Is this possible? Let's consider.

So, here's an example of what we'd be working with, and you can see there's not a ton of space. It's not insurmountable though, I can envision a cute gal, trans guy, or enby pal with their legs spread in the seat, probably putting their feet up on the dash to make room (rude but titillating). And a giver, in my case probably a hot butch lady, on her knees. Let's be frank, this isn't gonna be comfy for our imaginary butch because of how tight a fit it'll be, they're essentially gonna be crammed all the way in there.

So, it should be possible. If you own a car you can also test this yourself, I HIGHLY recommend testing out sexy actions or scenes yourself if you're able; it's a great little tool for realism. But achieveing realism is a topic for another day, for now let's review our scene.

We have:

• The passenger seat
• The receiver (let's go with an enby pal) sitting on the seat with their legs propped up
• The butch crammed into the footwell with her face between their legs.

This is coming together well, we've fit our two lovers in, we have the setting, and we can finally get to work. What comes next is the part where I often get taken out of my - Reading Flow - by amateur authors, we have the configuration, I know where everyone is in the scene, I'm completely into it: all cramped and partially exposed and close and intimate and risque. Let's illustrate this with a quick example of how we can go wrong with scene geography:

They moan, aghast that they're even letting her do this to them, and here of all places! The parking lot?! What if someone sees? They sigh, eyes fluttering shut as her tongue finds that perfect little spot and zeroes in on it. They can't even register that they're legs are getting tired, or that their back is aching from being arched this way, because any slight discomfort is completely overblown by the raw pleasure. She pulls away, then kisses them right on the lips --

Woah now. Hold on a sec. The butch just kissed the enby on the lips, cute right? WRONG! My brain would be instantly pulled out of the scene to ask

How in the Fuck Did That Happen?

We established in our previous scene setting that they are both quite cramped here, the butch is crammed in to get at the goods, and the enby is pressed into the seat with their feet up on the dash and their legs stretched over the butch's shoulders.

So how in the fuck did the butch climb up to give the enby a quick kiss? Let's consider a poorly made 3d reference I definitely didn't spend 30 minutes struggling to create to give us a visual.

Imagine this, but even more cramped and in a car. There's something pressed up into butch's back, and the only feasable way to get out of there is directly into enby. Casually mentioning that she pops up for a quick smooch isn't very feasible for the given situation, in the given scene. Therefore, this action violated scene geography.

An easy way to fix that disconnect is to explain to your reader that going up for said kiss was awkward and fumbling as butch struggles to get out and make room so that she can do the smoochin. Even a quick sentence like, She paused and climbed up, the two giggling breathlessly as they both arranged themselves in a way that gave butch room to kiss them. Would solve the disconnect, and prevent knocking me out of my flow state. NEVER knock your reader out of their flow state unless you're intending to for some thematic reason, and even then I'd caution against it.

So, What Exactly am I Supposed to Learn Here?

I can hear some of you saying, "Okay Elfie, it's great that you've spent however many minutes rambling on and on about how something so simple and small is a huge problem... But what are you actually trying to teach us here? What am I supposed to take away from this ramble?" and I say that's a great question, you're very very smart. Now that I've hopefully illustrated an example of violating scene geography, let's actually talk about setting up good scene geography.

I typically go about this in a very specific way. When I'm introducing the scene, I give a brief description of the elements that will be important along with a description of where they're generally located relative to each other. This is part of set dressing, something we're going to cover eventually I promise. But essentially you want to give the reader a general sense of where the things in the room or scene are, so that your reader knows what to expect and where to expect it. Another example is one of the greatest action set pieces ever put to film: the lobby shoot out in The Matrix:

Take note of the first shot we see of the room at the start of the scene. This is the first glimpse we get of where the action will be taking place. It's vague, as in we can't see everything in the room yet, but we notice a few key elements immediately. The security checkpoint, the security guards, and the pillars further behind them. With this simple shot, we have everything we need to understand everything that's about to happen in the space. When Neo takes cover behind the pillars after his initial assault, it makes sense because we already saw that pillar in the establishing shot.

It's important to do the same with your writing as well, establishing the scene is essential for reader immersion, which is what we're ultimately trying to do as creatives. Pay attention to how each scene is set the next time you're reading your a favorite book or watching a favorite movie: you'll start to notice if the creator sets the scene efficiently and effectively, or if things are unclear or muddy. Do they clearly establish the important elements of the room? Do you see the gap that the hero will trip on later? Is there a clear mention of the window that will be used to make a daring escape? Have you mentioned the twin bed the lovers will be making out on, or is it seemingly going to appear out of thin air when it's needed? These are the types of questions to keep in mind when constructing a scene, especially a BIG or IMPORTANT scene.

Here's a written example from my fanfic The Last Princess on setting up an action scene:

Let's look over what this tells us about the scene, there's a big dark hall full of ruined furniture and stone and other things you might find in a dining hall, there's arches holding up the ceiling, there's piles of refuse, and the whole thing stinks which makes her eyes water. A vivid, if not gross, picture. Some of those elements come in immediately, and others become relevant to the fight later, while some are just set dressing. But we clearly know where we are, big room, random junk, but there's plenty of room to fight a big monster.

Because I took the time to setup that there's a lot of crap in the hall, when Luz suddenly grabs a candelabra to defend herself, it doesn't seem to poof into existence.

We already established that it's a big room full of crap, so it's perfectly believable that one of the pieces of crap is a big ol candle holder. The big monster isn't violating any rules of the space because it's just a big empty hall. He was hiding up amongst the rafters and arches, which was already established beforehand. All in all, I think I handled the geography of the fight pretty well there. It doesn't take much, but it's important to give the readers something to help them grasp what's happening, and that's what setting the scene is for.

Of course, you're always allowed to introduce new things to the scene as you go. A hero on the run from the baddies might notice a truck pulling out of an alley, and choose to dash across it's path to hopefully have it cut the baddies off. The truck wasn't ever going to be visible at the start of the scene, but introducing it later doesn't come out of nowhere, so it seems sensible.

I hope this is all coming across. Let's go over the lesson again so far.

1. It's important to establish the set where the action's happening so readers can understand what happens in the scene.
2. It's important to ensure that characters don't violate the space they're existing in. I.E. if there's no pillars to hide behind, they can't suddenly hide behind a pillar.
3. You don't have to describe everything right away, so long as the new element you're introducing is sensible. Notice I didn't say logical.

With that all settled, I have a very specific subset of Scene Geography Gaffes I'd like to share with you all as a cautionary tale. These are going to be made up passages I came up with on the spot, but they're based on real things I've encountered over the years of reading fanfiction that stuck with me.

Geography Gaffes

Luz rolled onto her back with a laugh, she just couldn't stop smiling. It all felt so strange to her, like a dream or maybe a severely degraded VHS copy of real life instead of it being real life. But here she is, with Amity topless and climbing on top of her with a hungry look in those golden eyes of hers. Amity leans down, and kisses her softly, like a spring breeze. Luz's entire world fades into nothing, grabbing onto Amity's shoulders before nibbling at her beautiful back -

Impossible. Amity is on top of and facing Luz, who is lying down, how in the hell could Luz nibble Amity's back from this position?

Lucia's head is spinning, Ed is so deep in her, rutting from behind like a fuck machine while Em teases her with the promise of a strap down her throat. She shivers, arms shaking a little as she holds herself up on them. Her knees shift with every thrust from her classmate, and just when she wants to whine at him to go harder, Em grabs two fistfuls of her hair and crams the toy past her lips.

"Unngh fuck me harder." Lucia says--

Nyyyope! Lucia's mouth is full, she cannot talk. Go ahead, cram a cucumber in your face hole and try to speak legibly. I'll wait.

Willow snarls, blocking with one sword before stabbing with the second. Amity hops away, needlessly parrying the attack and unintentionally exposing herself. Willow's eyes glint, and she draws a dagger to throw true and finally pay this horrible bitch back for all the -

Wait, wasn't Willow already holding two swords? How is she supposed to quickly draw a dagger to capitalize on Amity's mistake?

I could keep going forever, but I'm 1000% sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about when I share these examples. When I rant about scene geography, what I'm mostly ranting about is continuity. Anything that breaks continuity also breaks flow, and that's terrible, we hate it, we'd like to avoid that wherever possible. Keeping things in continuity is as easy as referring to earlier in the scene, or previous chapters if necessary. I know that can be a serious pain when all you want to do is just forge ahead, but I promise it's worth it to put in just that little bit extra effort; it often goes a long way.

Wrapping Up

Scene geography is my philosophy for setting up good continuity in the scenes I write, it involves having a clear idea about where the scene is happening, what is present within the scene while it's happening, what is actually possible with human anatomy, and what's possible based on how that human anatomy is oriented. If you're ever in doubt about whether something is physically possible, try it. Ask your partner or a friend or just try it by yourself and see if you can do it, if it's possible but you just aren't flexible enough that's fine; but even if you were as flexible as you could be it's still not possible... then maybe don't write your favorite blorbo doing it.

Good scene construction comes down to giving your readers enough of the essential information that it doesn't look like you're pulling anything out of your ass later. Show them the places that you're characters are going to take cover when the fire fight starts, explain that there's a dresser next to the bed for when they accidentally bump into it during their heated embrace. It's all about good setup. And for the love of the Goddess, the sun, and the moon in the sky, PLEASE keep in mind that it's not possible to talk with your mouth full of cock. It's just not.

Keep your scene and the limitations of everything involved in mind, and your scenes will be even stronger for it. Like all things, it takes practice, keep working at it, and don't just rely on my advice. If you find something that clicks better in your head for you, do that instead!!

This post took a lot longer to finish than I thought it would, that's due to a couple of compounding factors both in and out of my control. I wanted to go a little bit further into this one since I'm very passionate about it, and I was sort of sitting on my hands about actually gathering the visuals I wanted, it still feels like I could have used more but what do you do? Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'm still going to be posting these regularly, even as I ramp up my weird attempt at marketing my novel, I'll aim for every week on Friday but I make no oaths.

If you have any writing questions for me, the best place to go is actually my Tumblr, which I'm in the process of transferring to be my primary social writing space. Stuff's still getting posted on bsky, but I'll be writing more blurbs and shorts and Blood and Roses lore posts over there. Plus it has an ask feature, so if you want advice on writing, please please please feel free to hit me up there <3

Until next time my lovelies, never forget.

Just sit down and write.