How to approach a scene

[old_prof]

I'm writing a story about a NYE party that will turn into an orgy. It has almost every character I introduced in my original series, plus one who I introduced in a sexual, and introduces one who had only been mentioned in a few earlier stories, for fourteen total party goers. Two will leave before the orgy.

As is common for a party, the fourteen will be involved in a number of distinct, simultaneous conversations. I want to touch on all five convos, and three of them have content that is important, either in this story of for future stories.

I'm trying to decide how to write five concurrent discussions. The whole story is 3P omni past. My current thinking is to swap between chunks of conversations as scene breaks, with the chunks typically ranging from 6 to 12 statements per chunk. I might let the important ones drag on longer, but I want to keep the sense that this is all happening at once.

Anyone have any alternatives or hints how to make this work reasonably?

 

[MrPixel]

Since I write a lot of orgies... scene breaks are how I do it, although I'm not very disciplined about limiting the dialog per break. I let the characters talk it out to a logical conclusion. The narrator steps away as the "action" starts to unfold, "stepping down the hallway to the adjacent bedroom" for the next scene. You can convey the air of simultaneous action by entering the next scene as they are "in progress", and then segue to the subsequent scene as the couple (or more) is metaphorically puffing on their cigarettes (or complaining, "Hey! Where was my orgasm, you bastard!").

 

[Britva415]

I'm writing a story about a NYE party that will turn into an orgy. It has almost every character I introduced in my original series, plus one who I introduced in a sexual, and introduces one who had only been mentioned in a few earlier stories, for fourteen total party goers. Two will leave before the orgy.

As is common for a party, the fourteen will be involved in a number of distinct, simultaneous conversations. I want to touch on all five convos, and three of them have content that is important, either in this story of for future stories.

I'm trying to decide how to write five concurrent discussions. The whole story is 3P omni past. My current thinking is to swap between chunks of conversations as scene breaks, with the chunks typically ranging from 6 to 12 statements per chunk. I might let the important ones drag on longer, but I want to keep the sense that this is all happening at once.

Anyone have any alternatives or hints how to make this work reasonably?

Regarding the party build-up and not the active orgy:

Conveying the sense that it’s all happening at once won’t be the hard part, the hard part will be hanging on to the sense that anything is happening at all in each of the separate-but-simultaneous conversations.

In order to have this big and multi-faceted scene not feel sloggy and to have it feel like it’s moving along, try to have each of the conversation chunks establish and work/move toward some kind of stakes. If the reader can’t tell it apart from aimless small talk, it’s going to be uninteresting. This is probably the risk in breaking a coherent, start-to-finish conversation apart into chunked mini-scenelets.

Like… each chunk doesn’t have to resolve any stakes, but imagine if this were a scene on a screen: TV, movie or even a stage play. I’m sure you’ve seen examples of acting performances where the script and the editing did this effectively, and broke a number of long conversations into smaller, interleaved sub- or micro-scenes, and each one of them provided some sense of propelling something along instead of just being an "insert random-seeming aside here."

I feel like British media historically has done this well.

 

[alohadave]

Anyone have any alternatives or hints how to make this work reasonably?

Do they need to be interleaved in the same narrative? Can you split off groupings into their own chapters or stories?

Honestly as a reader, an orgy with 14 characters sounds like something I would just skim through. Too much going on simultaneously to concentrate on.

Do all 14 characters need to have their parts described or detailed? Presumably there are core characters that are more central to this story that you could focus on. If the event is important to characters that will be featured in future stories, perhaps a flashback or reminiscing about the orgy in those stories would keep narratives focused where they need to be.

Just some thoughts, take them as you will.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Honestly, this sounds...complicated. Earlier this year I wrote a 20kish piece involving three main characters.

1 - The Male MC
2 - The Male MC's long-term girl-friend
3 - The girl the male MC wanted to have a threesome with.
4 - The girl his girlfriend wanted to have a threesome with.

There's an extended introduction in a restaurant and the sex scene at home when it finally happens, but the bulk of the action takes place in a nightclub and it was very challenging (and took a few rewrites) to get to the point where the PoV MC was bouncing between character 2, character 3, character 4, character 2 and 4 and each conversation was both driving the plot and keeping the reader guessing.

Doing 14 characters (or 12 if people are leaving) sounds like a spinning plate challenge. Not impossible, but definitely impressive if you can pull it off. Honestly, if I was crazy enough to try it, I'd definitely want to draw diagrams indicating not only where everyone is (and who is doing what to whom) but also the motivations and plot-drivers for every moment of the evening. Assuming you are putting lashings of sex at this orgy in between the dialogue, this could drag out over tens of thousands of words.

I'll end with the advice that one of my beta-readers gave me on my extented nightclub scene that maybe I should have taken - would it be possible for a couple of the characters to nip out of the action for a few minutes for a breath of fresh air and possibly a late-night kebab?