Scenes, Scenes, Wonderful Scenes!

The scene is the building block of fiction. Once upon a time, a novel might contain a lengthy description of a field, several flashbacks, and lots and lots of telling.

Those days are gone. We’ve become a cinematic society. Scenes speak to us. Pretty words are all well and good, and I do enjoy them myself, but not when they put the story on hold. Not when they bore me. 

Scenes move the story forward, keep your reader turning the pages, keep them on the edge of their…well, you get it. As Ansen Dibell puts it in her wonderful craft book, Plot: “Creating scenes means finding ways for your story to show itself, rather than ways for you to tell it.” (We’ll have more on showing and telling in a future article. For now, you can read Seven Simple Ways to Make Your Writing Rock for more information.)

Some writers do like to write in a ‘scene and sequel’ format. With this technique, after the scene comes a sequel, which is a time of reaction, reflection, planning, regrouping, and the like. In the current literary atmosphere, sequels are usually minimized. 

I do have a couple of sequels in the rough draft that I recently finished, but they are short, and I think they add rather than take away. When you have a slow spot in your story, you need to ask yourself if it needs to be there. I think sometimes they can be helpful if your pacing is very quick. It’s nice to slow things down a little now and then. Otherwise, try to include some sort of action, conflict, or tension in your sequel. That will make it a bit more scene-like.

So What’s A Scene Anyway?

A scene in a story is similar to a movie. It encapsulates the happenings in one time and place in your story. If there is a gap in time, or if your setting changes, or if the viewpoint character changes, you should start a new scene.

Each scene needs to accomplish a few things. 

Your viewpoint character needs to have a goal in each scene. It should be related to the overall story goal, if possible. 

There should be an oppositional character or force trying to prevent the viewpoint character from achieving the goal. Yes, this should happen in the overall story, but it should happen in each scene as well. 

There should be an emotional story in each scene. According to David Trottier in The Screenwriter’s Bible: “The Action Story is the spine; it holds things together. The Emotional Story is the heart; it touches the audience.” The same sentiment holds in prose fiction.

Conflict is the core of each scene. Yes, the opposition will provide conflict. I’m just mentioning it again due to its importance. The opposition cannot be outside watching and plotting unless there is some sort of in-scene conflict.

Begin each scene as late as possible and end each scene as early as possible. Write only what is needed to show the conflict and move the story forward. Modern readers often do not have the patience for too much connective tissue.

Each scene can be viewed as a mini-story. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can carry it all the way out if you want and use a full story structure on each scene. Your work will only be better for it.  

Happy Writing!

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In case you’re wondering, the title of this article was inspired by Monty Python’s Spam Song!