The Drama of Boredom

I was recently presented with a challenge--write a scene about a character's boredom, but make it interesting for the reader.

The construction of this scene took longer than usual, because I had to proceed very, very carefully. In a normal scene, you can use the interesting stuff that's going on, and the narrator's engagement in it, to keep the scene moving. But what happens when the narrator is bored out of her mind?

This challenge made me consider in greater detail what it takes to make an interesting scene in the first place. First and foremost, I believe that comes through character--the reader must be engaged in what the character is experiencing.

Secondly, the reader must enjoy learning about whatever new information is being presented in the scene. Let me state for the record that "enjoy" doesn't necessarily mean that they'll like it. The reader may be horrified by what they learn, but they are drawn to find out more. Whatever happens in the scene has to scratch that itch.

Finally, the scene must in some way address the character's goals. That's not the way real life works, but it's the way a story works. There are lots of things that happen in real life that never make their way into fiction because it has no relevance to the story. So how does this scene bring the character closer to, or further away, from the goal?

I will now take the discussion out of the abstract and into the concrete. In this particular scene, Bryony was waiting. She thought she was going to be trained as an attendant, but instead, she's just sitting in a room getting more and more restless. I'm going to now describe how I attempted to address the three points above.

At this point in the novel, if the character isn't engaged in Bryony and what she wants, then I doubt they're still reading. I entered into the scene after a tense emotional moment, so hopefully the reader sympathizes with her and is willing to want what she wants. Okay, good, we've got them hooked.

Next, the new information. Here, I was handicapped because Bryony was seeing for the first time a place that we, as the reader, had visited before. The information was not entirely new. I included some reminders of what the place was like, in case it had been forgotten, then gave some more detail. Although I touched on the setting, I tried to spend more time with the people. I also attempted to demonstrate how Bryony was dealing with her boredom by describing her visual tour of the room. (In other words, working in some character beats to strengthen it.)

As for the goals, I needed Bryony to come to a new realization of what it meant to train as an attendant. I did that through the introduction of Cohenrad. He is an established character, but one that has been offscreen for a while. Bryony had never met him, but I needed to forge that connection for later on. I used him to convey to Bryony, and also to the reader, the appropriate information.

However, I didn't want to turn Cohenrad into a puppet, spouting exposition. I made sure to include Bryony's reaction to Cohenrad, and his reactions to her, as these first impressions will form the basis of their relationship. I tried to make the exposition come as naturally as possible.

If I had to judge my success, I'd say I got about a 3 out of 5. When I revised, I'll want to make Bryony's desires clearer, so that the drama of her boredom is more sharply defined. It was definitely a slow scene, but there's not much I could do about that. We'll just have to see if the next few scenes can build some more momentum.