Mise-en-scène: A Film Technique That Can Improve Your Writing

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 5, Mise en Scène. Today we're looking at how a fundamental technique of filmmaking can be adapted to make our writing resonate more deeply with theme and character development. Welcome back to Inside Creative Writing. Before I get into today's topic, I really want to take a minute just to say thank you.

When I started this podcast, I really didn't know what to expect. It's kind of a new endeavor for me. I haven't done anything quite like it before. And honestly expected maybe tens of people might be interested to hear what I had to say. Secretly, I kind of hoped for hundreds.

But here, just starting our second month, we're in the thousands of listeners. And it's just overwhelming. I can't thank you enough.

So thank you for listening. Special thanks to those of you who have emailed me, for those of you who have shared episodes on Facebook, for those of you who have left good ratings for the show on iTunes and shared the podcast with your friends. You know, it's just one of the most rewarding things that I've done creatively, and I'm just starting month two. And I have all of you to thank for that.

So I appreciate it, and I'm so grateful that you're listening. So without further ado, we'll go ahead and get into today's topic. Now, if you listen to the show last week and heard me kind of promo this week's show at the end of that show and have any familiarity with French pronunciation, you'll know how badly I botched the pronunciation of this week's topic. I pronounced it exactly like you would expect a typical American with no knowledge of the French language to say it. I think I called it mise en scene. I've done a little more research on the pronunciation of it, and I think I've got it closer when I say it's mise en scene.

It's M-I-S-E-E-N-S-C-E-N-E. If it's something that you want to do a little more research on your own after today's show, something I really encourage you to do, and I think you'll see why as we explore it today. So mise en scene. We'll get to what that means in just a little bit.

But if you've taken a writing class before or read a book on writing, you've heard advice like this. Make every word count, or every word, every sentence should be doing some work in your writing. Now, that kind of advice sounds great, and I think it makes us nod our heads and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I should do that. And then we sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or an empty Word document, and we suddenly realize that we don't actually have a concept of what that means. What does that actually look like to make every word count? If you're like me, I start examining my sentences word by word.

You know, do I really need this and in there? Is that the doing any work in this? I've got a so in this sentence. Do I really need that? Has it earned its place on the page? Is it doing any work?

And, you know, also, if you're like me, that process can really interrupt my writing process rather than aid it. It becomes a stumbling block for me getting words on the page when I stop to try to question the validity and the work that every word is doing. I begin to question every line, every word and realize that I don't really know what it means for a word or a sentence to count or to do some work in my writing. It's an approach that can, I think, cripple us, especially when we're looking back on like the draft I'm working on now is I'm at about 65,000 words. And when I imagine having to go back through each of those 65,000 words and make every word justify its position on the page, it's crippling. It's overwhelming just to imagine doing that.

So today what I hope to do is to take that abstract advice to make every word count, to make every word do some work, to take that abstract advice, which I actually think is really good advice, and put clothes on it. Now, that's a phrase that I end up using quite a bit. I don't know if it's a phrase I've picked up somewhere or if it means anything to you, but I'll probably end up using it in future podcasts.

So I should, I guess, explain real quick what I mean by that. When I talk about an abstract concept and say, okay, let's put clothes on this. It basically just means let's make this real. You know, let's put this in the room with us.

Let's make it alive. Let's make it something that we can see and touch and feel. Let's put clothes on it.

Understanding Mise en Scène

So I hope I didn't throw you with that phrase, but it's one that springs to my brain naturally for some reason. So anyway, that's what we're going to try to do today is put clothes on that abstract advice to make every word count. And that's what we're going to do with this concept called mise en scene.

Now, it's actually a term that, as I understand it, got its origins in stage plays. It literally means to put in the scene. And in stage plays, it was, again, as I understand it, more about the props. You know, what are we literally going to have on the stage? What is the mise en scene of this scene?

But as the film industry kind of grew out of that, more of a stage industry, the term mise en scene stayed, but its meaning really expanded to the point that it becomes a little bit difficult to actually define, but that's what I'm going to attempt to do here for you today. Basically, it means that you're going to take into account everything that appears in a moment of film. Now, that has to do with the composition of the shot. That has to do with the sets that they take place in. That has to do with the props, with the actors, with the costuming, with the lighting. Literally everything that you see in a scene in film has to do with that scene's mise en scene.

So what I want to do is look at each element of mise en scene and see what work it's doing in the scene. And then we're going to look at how we can use that concept in our creative writing to accomplish some really important things. So we'll look just fairly quickly at these.

Elements of Composition

The first one I want to look at is this idea of composition. And that is just in film, it's whether the shot, the camera shot is a close-up, is it far away, is it somewhere in the middle, or is it from straight on, or is it a shot from overhead, kind of looking down at the action, or is a shot from underneath, maybe looking up at the action. Now, each of these decisions means something different and is done intentionally in that scene.

So from the composition angle, that's what we're talking about with mise en scene. And we're just going to go through these strictly from the film perspective so we can get a grasp of what mise en scene is, and then we'll go back and look at them from the writing sense. So the next element is the set, where the action happens.

The Importance of Setting

Now, these sets are elaborately researched and constructed so that they'll express a very specific meaning. An example that comes to mind to me is one of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine. And I picture the house that this family lives in. And it's really easy to just assume, well, they just, you know, they used whatever house they had available. They used whatever was cheap to use, or they used maybe, you know, a friend's house. What does it matter what kind of house they're in?

Because it looks like a very ordinary, just kind of single-level ranch-style home. But when you start to look at the setting and the way that house is laid out, it starts to give you meaning. It starts to express a meaning intentionally. It has a floor plan that's similar to the house I grew up in. It's a circular floor plan where you can walk from the family room and circle around into the kitchen and then circle back around into the family room. And it has kind of this island in the middle of the room.

And I think that that gives us this meaning, you know, of this family kind of running in circles and not really ever getting anywhere. Then there's also the scene when they sit down to have dinner. I think it's KFC. And, you know, the mom is putting out all the mismatched plastic cups from all the various fast food places that they've collected. And, you know, even the choice to do that with the mismatched cups is very subtle, but it's delivering a meaning. We can sense that there's a purpose with those mismatched cups.

Whether we get it at the time or not, we sense that it's there. So I'm going to try to move through these a little more quickly here. Props. I covered that a little bit just now with the cups, which technically are props rather than a set.

But, you know, props are not only what we see the characters hold and interact with in a scene, but it's also what's in the background. It can seem like something just innocuous and just kind of there by happenstance. But I can tell you that it's all connected to meaning. Nothing is in a film scene that hasn't been thought through and isn't there for a specific reason.

Now, there's a real art to this because it has to look like a natural scene and yet still carry this underlying meaning in it. You know, it's part of what makes movies so expensive. The mind just boggles at how expensive it is to produce movies.

Role of Props and Costumes

But when you stop and think, okay, you know, they're not just borrowing a friend's house and shooting it in this house with whatever happens to be there miscast, and they never quite fit into that movie. There's always just something a little unsettling about seeing them try to occupy that role. And then we've all seen movies too where we've seen a major star that by all rights we shouldn't be able to picture as anybody but who they are because they're so famous. And yet we've all seen movies where they disappear into that role and become that person so completely that we forget that we're actually watching somebody who is just ultra famous and ultra known. And that again is an element of mise en scene. And then you've got the element of costumes.

What people wear is important. It's one of the ways that we make snap judgments about people in real life. So it's very intentional in film. You know, in our fiction we might just decide we're going to put somebody in a green T-shirt because it's the first thing that comes to mind and we write it and we move on. In film, in its mise en scene, even that green T-shirt is something that would be highly intentional and chosen to express something about the theme, the character, the mood. It's not just happenstance.

Significance of Lighting

And then finally, we'll touch a little bit on lighting a scene. You know, is the shot brightly lit? It's called high key lighting where there's almost no shadows. Or is it very dark? Is it low key lighting? Or is it somewhere in the middle?

Are there shadows in the scene? What direction does the light come from? All of this is intentional, and it's designed to match a mood or a message of the scene and of the film.

Now, some of you are probably already thinking cliche. You know, this is how we end up with cliches in our writing. We try to match everything to a mood and it just becomes too intentional. And you're right. That's something we really have to be aware of. This approach can lead us into gimmicks if we're not careful.

And I'm going to touch on that here in just a little bit. So we'll set that idea of how cliche prone these ideas can be. We'll set that off to the side for just a moment.

Intentionality in Writing

So why are we talking about mise en scene? Because I think it holds the key for how we go about making our writing do the same thing, how we go about making our writing intentional, making every word do some work on the page. Now, movies have gigantic staffs. I mean, just watch the end credits, you know, person after person after person after person.

But we are everything when it comes to our writing. I mean, we're the director who decides how to compose the shot, which direction we're looking at a scene from and how close in we're going to get. We're the lighting designer who decides how bright the afternoon is, how dark the night is, whether or not a fog rolls in, is it cloudy, is it sunny. We're the set designer. We build buildings. We build homes and businesses, parks, mountain ranges.

We even build other planets. We're the prop person. We go out to find the things that our characters have in their homes, the things they carry around with them, the things they interact with. And we're also the costume designers. We pick out the clothes for our characters and everybody that they meet. And we're also the casting company.

I mean, we provide the perfect actor for the part in our fiction. So if you're like me, you're feeling a little overwhelmed at this point. That's a lot, a lot for us to do. And then to do that with every word on the page. Oh, okay.

So before you get too overwhelmed, we're going to look at how we can approach this to make it work. Have you ever heard the saying that success is achieved by doing the things nobody else is willing to do? Now, this is one of those areas that can set us apart from writers who aren't willing to do this kind of detail work. They aren't being intentional about the mise en scene of their writing. And yet we can be. We need to be specific about how the settings, the props, the lighting, the mood, the characters, the costumes, and really everything else in the scene delivers the message of our scene.

We can't just hope for what I think of as happy accidents. You know, sometimes, especially when I was a new writer, I thought, you know, maybe I'll just sit down and write something and it'll just be a happy accident. It turns out to be great. You know, maybe I don't need to know all that much about craft or technique and maybe I'll just kind of accidently write this amazing piece of literature, you know, with a little bit of skill and a lot of luck. Happy accidents, they may happen, but trust me when I say that most of the things that appear to be happy accidents in the writing that we appreciate are things that have been very intentionally thought out and done with a purpose.

So this is getting us hopefully past that idea that our writing can have happy accidents. So what I mean by that is, you know, if I do put my character in a green T-shirt and without any thought, maybe there's this happy accident that somehow a reader has some connection and suddenly they pull this great meaning out of it that I didn't even intend, but I kind of happily stumbled into it. So we're getting away from that. We want to be intentional.

So there you have it. You know, this is easy, right? All we have to do is be intentional about absolutely everything in your writing. Yeah, right.

So the question is, how do I do that? It sounds crippling. And I believe it actually is crippling if we try to do it at the draft stage.

Drafting vs. Revising

So I want to make it really clear. When you're drafting, just draft. If something cool strikes you, just put it in. Get it down on paper. If nothing's cool strikes you and you just have to use something generic or even cliche just to get those words down on paper, do that. Mise en scene, what we're talking about today, I believe, happens primarily in revision.

So as you're rewriting, what you want to do is you want to look at your descriptions, look at your settings, look at everything you've put in the scene and ask yourself, what message is this sending? Because it is sending a message. We can't always control what kind of message it sends, but I mean, why not stack the odds in your favor? You know, why not imbue these things with meaning and with purpose? Because a lot of that is going to translate to our audience.

So what you'll do is you're going through and revising and you come across these details that you've put in, these descriptions that you've put in, these scenes and settings. You're just going to ask yourself if there's something else that you can either add or replace in that scene that will resonate with what you're trying to get the scene to do. Now we have to be really, we have to beware of the cliche. This can end up, this is how I think we have so many stories and films end up with the funeral where it's always raining, right? I mean, that's kind of one of the big cliches. If you're going to have a funeral, it's got to be raining, right?

Because it sets the mood for it. It's symbolic. You know, the rain is tears coming down and, and it's really easy to stumble into cliches when we try to create this mise en scene for our scenes. What I'd encourage you to do if you're, if you do seem to be coming up with these cliched approaches, try the reversal approach that we talked about just a few weeks ago. The episode was called sparking or creativity.

So go back and take a listen to that if you haven't, but try that reversal approach and say, okay, if, if, in fact, I, I actually use this in a, in the book I'm working on right now. I've got a funeral and when I rough drafted it, it was raining. I mean, it is set on the Oregon coast, so chances are it's, it would probably actually be raining.

But as I was writing that, I just thought, oh, this is so cliche. I've got a funeral and it's raining. Surprise, surprise.

So I thought, why don't I use this reversal approach and see if I can use the same idea, but flip it on its head and make it even more effective. So what I ended up doing is, and I don't know if I'm gonna keep it this way, but I think it's working initially. We'll see if it survives to the final draft.

But what I ended up doing is saying, what if the funeral is the one place that it's not raining? What if the funeral is the one place where we finally get this beautiful, bright, clear day with this sun that is just penetrating down and, and providing such a clarity to everything? There's that, that it becomes a unique experience.

In other words, instead of the funeral being that cliched rainy, dark time, it becomes one of those rare moments that everything becomes clear. I think, I think that's really powerful. You may disagree with me, but by flipping that cliche on its head, we can accomplish something really important, I think. And we have that opportunity with, with almost every cliche that's out there, I think.

So when you do stumble into a cliche, give some thought to that reversal approach and see if maybe it's a tool to get you out of it and to do something unique with it. So how do we make every word count in our writing? I believe it's through mise en scene. If you've put your character in, in jeans and a t-shirt because it's the first thing that came to mind, mise en scene calls on us to stop and question that, to maybe redress that character in some way that is meaningful. If you've put your character living in a typical nondescript suburban home, stop and question that. How can you change film and using the concept of mise-en-scène in our writing.

And that has to do with how heavy-handed we can be. I want to use an example from the movie Les Miserables. That seems like a good example to use. It's got a French title that I probably butchered to go with our French theme that I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of.

But in that movie, if you've seen it, this is the new musical version. There's a moment where Jean Valjean sings this song, Bring Him Home. One of my favorite pieces of music in the production at a really powerful scene. And as I was watching it, I've seen it two or three times now. As I was watching this song, which is, if you haven't seen the film, it's really about, I mean, it's a prayer. You know, he's singing to God on high and he's singing about, you know, God, will you protect this young man, bring him home, keep him safe.

And there's this self-sacrificial element to it. Jean Valjean is kind of saying, take me instead. And if you watch the film, and I hope you go back and watch for this because it's interesting to see. As you watch the film as Jean Valjean starts singing this song, God on high, you'll notice in the background that there's this giant eyeball painted on the wall behind him very high up. And as you see that image and hear this song, it becomes the eye of God, you know, looking down upon him.

Now that is very heavy-handed. Usually good mise-en-scène. We're not going to notice that quickly and I don't think it's going to be that directly correlated to what's going on.

But it took me this second or third viewing before I really noticed what it was doing there. But imagine that scene in writing. I mean, imagine if we were writing a similar scene and we had a character that was kind of going over the same prayer or the same thought, you know, that God take me instead of this innocent person. And yet in our writing, we describe that while he's singing this, there's this giant eyeball painted on the wall behind him. It doesn't work, right? It doesn't work in writing.

In writing, we don't have the luxury of making something kind of disappear so far in the background that we don't notice it. I mean, as soon as we put it in words, we put it right up front to be noticed. So what works in film ends up being way over the top in writing. There's another moment, just a little bit later in the same song in Les Mis, where Jean Valjean as he's singing the song, he walks up and kind of backs up against this door for just a few moments. And in the door is this window that is, I don't know the terminology for it, but it has, it's like four window panes together in one.

So it has a cross across the window with the, I guess you'd call it a molding or something. And it's actually not an up and down, you know, horizontal and vertical cross. It's actually diagonally crossed over the window.

But when we see that scene as he backs up against this and he's singing a song about sacrificing himself, suddenly that moment becomes imbued with religious iconography. I mean, he's backing himself up as the sacrifice for Marius against a cross. And for just a brief image, for just a brief moment, we have this image, whether it registers with us consciously or not, we have this image of Jean Valjean on a cross.

Now that's really, really subtle. And it took me a few viewings and a few times of specifically looking for the mise-en-scène that they were using to notice that image come out. And I think that's more indicative of the style of mise-en-scène that we have to use in our writing. It has to be so subtle that when we see it on the page, your reader doesn't just say, oh, well, this is symbolic for that, because then it loses all its power. It's got to be really kind of underneath the radar. And before we close, I'm going to talk just a little bit about that.

Well, in fact, let's talk about it now. You know, how do we do this? Let's, let's use the tough example I just gave you as the example. If in the film, they have this giant eyeball painted on the wall behind him as he's singing to God, how can we do something similar in writing without kind of beating our readers over the head about it?

So what we really want to get across is that the God is watching, you know, that there is this power overhead that's looking down on whatever we're writing about. Well, I think we could change that from an eyeball. You know, maybe we've got a bright star overhead or maybe even it's a lamp post that's overhead and it's shining down and illuminating the scene that's happening. Or maybe you could even just describe what's going on in the scene from kind of an overhead perspective. That's, that's a little more abstract and I'm not sure how we could pull that off, but I think it could be done to just take an overhead view of your scene as you describe it. The other key I think that we've got to, that we've got to do is that in film, mise-en-scène's got to all occur at once, right?

As we see Jean Valjean sing, we also see the eyeball behind him on the wall. In writing, we can offset those two things. In other words, we can set the scene with our elements of mise-en-scène and then have our characters function within it.

So, and what I mean by that is, is let's use the example of our character and there's this lamp post above him. You know, it's night, but there's this bright lamp post that's shining the light down on him. That might be too heavy-handed to talk about that at the exact moment that you're taking us through your character in this moment of prayer.

But we can set that up beforehand. If we set up that environment and describe this lamp post and describe the way it is illuminating the scene and then have our character act out what he needs to within that scene, we, we offset that enough that it doesn't become too intentional. You know, we hide it just a little bit so our readers don't equate it with, with, you know, an obvious attempt at symbolism or a cliche.

Now this is, it is a balancing act and it's part of what makes writing a craft. The balancing act is to make everything count, but also find that balance between heavy-handedness and our readers just completely missing it. Because we can make something so subtle that, you know, it may mean something to us and we might be understanding how it supports our theme or our plot, but our readers may not ever get it. And what I'd encourage you is, is err on the side of the reader missing the connection. And that's, that's based on two things.

The first thing is, is that heavy-handedness cheapens our writing. If it's so obvious that, you know, I'll use the green shirt example. If you're saying, you know, if you've got a character who loves to wear green and because they're a very greedy person and you're going for that really kind of cheap, you know, green is the color of envy thing, then that gets a little heavy-handed. It cheapens your writing. You're, it feels like a cliche and your reader's going to feel played. You know, it's not going to feel authentic to them.

And the second reason I think it works best to keep it, to, to keep our mise-en-scène erring on the side of the reader missing it, is that I think our writing works primarily on a subconscious level. And I've talked about this before. But our readers get it even if they don't get it. I mean, even, even if they can't, once they've read a scene, sit down and say, okay, this means this and this means that, and this is how this supports the theme. They shouldn't be able to do that. They should just be left with a sense that that meant something.

Maybe they can't quite put their fingers on it, but they can tell that it's intentional, that it meant something. Okay, so I'm interested to hear your feedback on this episode. It's a very abstract concept and I'm not sure how well I've done in bringing it to you today. It may be something that I have to revisit and use some more concrete examples on.

Final Thoughts on Craft

But I think here's the point. Don't get hung up too much on the ands and the thes and kind of what I think of as the OCD version of making every word count. I think maybe the better advice is to make every element count.

So using mise-en-scène, I think, is a great way to borrow something from film and pay attention to it in our writing and just be aware of everything we put on the stage. Make sure that it's there for a reason and that it furthers your theme, furthers your plot, furthers your characterization. So that's mise-en-scène.

Okay, for our wise words segment today, we are going to look at a quote from Ayn Rand. Now, regardless of how you feel about Ayn Rand's writing, people seem to either be very passionately in support of it or very passionately against it. But regardless of how you feel about it, I think these are wise words from her. And related to our topic today, she says, a good novel is an indivisible sum. Every scene, sequence, and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to, and advance all three of its major attributes, theme, plot, and characterization. And that's really what we've been talking about today.

And Ayn Rand puts it very eloquently there. If you've got a favorite quote or a piece of writing you'd like to share with the show, I'd love to have thousands of times and pick a scene that feels important in the film. Then I want you to just watch that scene over and over a few times and pay attention to the elements of mise-en-scène. Pay attention to how the camera shots are composed, how the scene is lit, what items do you see in the background, what setting have they chosen for the scene, what are the actors wearing. And I want you to see if you can find the ways that the filmmaker is being intentional about these things. You'll find that sometimes they're symbolic, but they're not always.

The second part of this weekly challenge is I want you to then go and examine a scene in whatever it is that you're writing right now and look at it as if you're turning that into a movie. How would you shoot that scene? What angles would your cameras take? Would you use close-ups? Would you use shots that are from far away? What mise-en-scène elements would you bring to make every element of that scene resonate with your audience and support your theme, your character development?

And then consider working some of those ideas into your written scene, see if they strengthen it. Now, next week, I am so excited about this show. I've got a guest coming up, and if there's anything intelligent that I say on this podcast, now that's debatable, I understand, but if there's anything intelligent I say on this podcast, it's because of people like my guest for next week. His name is Alan Heathcock. He's an author. Alan's collection of stories, Volt, was a best book 2011 selection from numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publisher's Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

It was named as a New York Times Editor's Choice, selected as a Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. He's won a Whiting Award, the GLCA New Writers Award, a National Magazine Award. He's been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the C. Weny Writers Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and he's currently a literature fellow for the state of Idaho.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is this guy knows his stuff, and he knows how to teach this stuff. He knows how to share it with people. He teaches fiction writing at Boise State University. That's actually where I met Alan when I got a chance to take a fiction writing class from him. I'm just so honored to be speaking with him for next week's show.

So tune in. I think it's going to be going to be great. So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do. I hope you're off to do the same.

Let's get some words on paper this week, and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the show's website. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing podcast with your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. We'll be back next week, but until then, join the conversation at the show's website.