Writing a Party Scene/ Creating a Crowd

Your character might be driving a carful of kids and dogs to the annual family clam dig, or he might be wandering through Munich's town square at Oktoberfest—either way, the challenge for the writer is the same in both instances: how to introduce multiple people in the same scene.  Most novels (and many short stories) probably have at least one scene in which the main character is but one of many.   There's almost always a group get-together of some kind or another—a family meal, a party scene, a dash through a crowded airport.  

This morning I began working on a scene from my novel in which a group of five guys shows up unexpectedly at my protagonist's front door.  Only one of the five are important to my story (and to my protagonist) but  the fact that that this visitor arrives with an entourage is significant.  My first attempts at writing this scene were not very successful.  When I focused on introducing the significant visitor first, the other four almost disappeared entirely. On the other hand when I attempted to keep the other four characters in view, the focus veered clumsily away from the conflict between my two main characters.

           

With a little research I discovered the answer to my dilemma in Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, A Guide To Narrative Craft:

“Sometimes it’s necessary to introduce several or many people in the same scene,  and this needn’t present a problem, because the principle is pretty much the same in every case, and is the same as in film: pan, then close-up.  In other words, give us a sense of the larger scene first, then a few details to characterize individuals.... We will believe more thoroughly in large numbers of people if you offer example images for us...." 


"If you begin by concentrating two long on one character only, we will tend to see that person as being alone."

Pan, then close-up.  Pan the five guys who show up at my protagonist’s door, then focus the camera on the two who matter most.  Sounds pretty simple. 

But what if I want to write a large dinner party into my story? How do I juggle all those guests, their comings and goings, their different groupings, and snippets of conversation?

According to Burroway the same technique is used for both:  pan first, then zoom in for the close up.  But if the scene goes on for several pages or an entire chapter how do we keep the crowd from disappearing after that initial "pan"?  In that case a single pan at the beginning of the scene will not be enough to keep the reader aware of (and believing in) the crowd we've created around our main characters. We will need to zoom in and out more than just the one time at the beginning of the scene.  In The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, the reader follows protagonist Nick Guest as he arrives at a very large party: 

Drinks were being served on the long terrace, and when he came out through the French windows there were two or three small groups already laughing and glowing.  You could tell that everyone had been on holiday, and like the roses and begonias they seemed to take and hold the richly filtered evening light.  Gerald was talking to a somehow familiar man and his blonde-helmeted wife; Nick knew from his smiles and guffaws that he was being recklessly agreeable.  None of his particular friends was here yet, and Toby was still upstairs with Sophie, interminably getting dressed.  He took a flute of champagne from a dark-eyed young waiter, and strolled off into the knee-high maze of the parterre.  ...The curlicue of the path brought him round to a view of the house again, but the waiter had moved off, and instead he saw Paul Tompkins ambling towards him.

Later, when the guests are seated for dinner, we drop into the middle of a conversation between Nick and the two people sitting beside him, then pan out briefly to get a glimpse/feel of the room as a whole, before finally returning to the close-up conversation between the three:

"So what's he like?" said Russell.  "Her old man.  What's he into?" He glanced at Catherine, across the table, before his eyes drifted back down the room to Gerald, who was smiling at the blonde woman beside him but had the fine glaze of preoccupation of someone about to make a speech.  They were in the great hall, at a dozen tables.  It was the end of dinner, and there was a mood of noisy expectancy. 

            "Wine," said Nick, who was drunk and fluent, but still wary of Russell's encouraging tone.  He twirled his glass on the rucked tablecloth.  "Wine.  His wife…um…"

            "Power," said Catherine sharply.

            "Power…" Nick nodded it into the list.  "Wensleydale cheese he's also very keen on.  Oh, and the music of Richard Strauss--that particularly."

Throughout the scene the author reminds us again and again that Nick and his friends are not alone in a bubble but part a crowd seated at “a dozen tables.”  He accomplishes this by having Nick pan the room every now and then giving us the opportunity to glimpse other guests at distant tables, and to interpret their gestures and hear snippets of their conversations. We hear the group laughter and even catch a peek of the servants watching from the gallery above. In between these occasional faraway glimpses we return to focus up-close on Nick’s thoughts, his immediate surroundings, and his conversations with those beside him:

            Nick pushed his chair back to get a clearer view of Gerald, and also of Toby, who had colored up and was looking round with a tight grin of apprehension…  Nick grinned back at him, and wanted to help him, but was powerless, of course.  He was blushing himself with the anxiety and forced eagerness of awaiting a speech by a friend….

           

            Through the generous laughter Nick caught Toby's eye again, and held it for two or three long seconds, giving him perhaps a transfusion of reassurance.  Toby himself would be too nervous to listen to his father's speech properly, and was laughing in imitation of the others, not at the jokes themselves…. Nick surveyed the room, and was reminded of a college hall, with Gerald and the more influential guests elected to the high table.  Up in the arcade of the gallery one or two servants were listening impassively, waiting only for the next stage of the evening. There was a gigantic electrolier, ten feet high, with upward-curling gilt branches opening into cloudy glass lilies of light.  Catherine had refused to sit under it, which was why their whole table had apparently been demoted to this corner of the room. If it did fall, Nick realized, it would crush Wani Ouradi.  He began to feel a little anxious about it himself….

             

            Nick glanced round, in a little shrug of amusement, and saw that the waiter from Madeira, was standing in the doorway behind him, following the proceedings with a vacant stare… He saw that Catherine was stuffing things into her bag and flashing irritable looks at Russell, who mouthed, "What?" at her, and was getting irritable in his turn.  "So, Toby," Gerald said, raising his voice and slowing his words, "we congratulate you, we bless you, we love you: happy birthday!  Will you--all--please raise your glasses: to Toby!"

            "Toby!" the overlapping burble went up, followed by a sudden release of tension in cheers and whistles and applause--applause for Toby, not for the speaker, the heightened, unreal acclaim of a special occasion, amongst which Nick lifted his champagne glass with tears in his eyes, and kept on sipping from it to hide his emotion.  But Catherine had jumped her little gilt chair back from the table and hurried out, past the waiter, who followed her for a second, to see if he could help.  Then Nick and Russell stared at each other, but Toby was getting to his feet, and Nick was damned if he was chasing after her this time, he really did love Toby, more than anyone in this high magnificent room, and he was going to be with him as he spoke. 

I apologize for butchering Hollinghurst’s beautiful prose in that excerpt.  Didn’t mean to take a machete to it, but the scene goes on for some time and I just wanted to give you a gist of what he accomplishes there.  I’m sure you have your own favorite party scenes by authors you love.  Francine Prose, author of Reading Like A Writer has a few of her own: the ballroom scene in Anna Karenina;  “the wild party that winds through so many pages of William Gaddis’s The Recognitions;” and her favorite ( I think): the party scene in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” 

Janet Burroway: Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
Francine Prose: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty