101 TIWIK: #3 Scenes are the Building Blocks of Fiction

Do you know what a scene is? I didn’t until I’d already been writing for about a decade.

A lot of writing books and courses start with the larger elements of fiction, plot, character, setting and theme. We’ll get to those in due course, but I want to start with what I call the tools of the writer’s trade. These are the smaller, sometimes overlooked elements of fiction: things like scene, POV, narrative mode, style and voice, word usage.

I’ll start with scene, because for me, a lot about writing became clear once I understood exactly what a scene is and how to use one. About seven years ago I was fortunate enough to land in a writing class taught by Laurel Leigh at Whatcom Community College’s Continuing Ed program. Laurel is an editor for Chronicle Books and offers freelance editing services, which you can learn about here. If you have a chance to work with Laurel, take it. Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned from her.

Laurel was only the writing instructor I’ve met who placed an emphasis on scene. I clearly recall the class where she asked all of us would-be writers, “What is a scene?”

We all sort of cringed down in the way you do when you’re hoping the teacher won’t call on you. A few brave souls ventured answers, some of which she paraphrased on the whiteboard, but it became painfully obvious that none of us knew.

So what is a scene?

According to Merriam Webster, a scene (in the context of storytelling) is “a part of a play, movie, story, etc., in which a particular action or activity occurs.”

Could they be a little more vague? What would define “particular action or activity?” If I write about a character banging her shin, is that a scene? It’s certainly an action. Or if I describe a round of golf, is that a scene? Golf is an activity.

I think we know intuitively that a character banging her shin or a round of golf is not, in its own right, a scene. Other definitions limit scene to a set of actions in a particular locale, or an interaction between specific characters. Again I ask you, if the entire book takes place in the living room of my apartment, does that mean the book is one long scene? If two people high-five in passing on the street, is that a scene?

So what is a scene?

A scene is a unit of story that either propels the plot forward or develops character, or both.

I don’t recall exactly how Laurel phrased it in that class, but that is what I took away. Note the difference between developing character and revealing character. Scenes can also reveal character, but they must develop character (show growth and change in the character) in order to be a scene. Or they can propel the plot forward–move the story from where it is now to where it is going.

All of the above definitions–action, activity, locale, interaction–can be applied to scene, but they by themselves do not a scene make. If things happen in that round of golf that propel the plot forward and/or develop character, then it’s a scene. For example, perhaps the two people playing golf are having a conversation in which one reveals his intention to blackmail the other. That would certainly move the plot forward.

This is a concept that can be hard to wrap your mind around without looking at examples, so do this: grab your favorite book and pick it apart, looking for the boundaries of scene. (Warning: this may ruin reading for you forever!!) You’ll start to see where scenes begin and end, and get a sense of what is entailed in a scene.

One thing you’ll notice is that a scene does not always, should not always, equal a chapter. In fact, another nifty trick Laurel taught me was to break your scene across two chapters. When you end a chapter in the middle of an unresolved scene, it makes the reader keep turning pages in order to find out what happens next. If your chapters always match up with your scenes, it can give the book a cadence of problem–>resolution that gets boring. Varying the make-up and pattern of your scenes keeps the reader engaged.

Another great way to study scenes is to watch movies. Movie scenes are easy to identify because they tend to have a distinct cut separating them. However, if you start to look for character development and plot propulsion, you’ll find that all movie scenes (unless it’s a really, really bad movie) follow this rule. And TV shows tend to use the reader engagement trick by breaking scenes across commercial breaks.

Once I understood the parameters of scene, it changed the way I wrote. I started to see that an entire book, a daunting prospect, was actually just a string of scenes. It helped me organize my writing projects. Instead of a hopeless mess, I saw the manuscript as a series of building blocks that I could move around, take out, and add to in order to change the shape of the story. Now when I revise, I ask myself, do I have enough scenes? Does this plotline have enough propulsion behind it to be where it needs to be at the end of the book? Or do I need to boost it with a few additional scenes? Does this character develop the way I want them to throughout this book, or do I need to add a scene at the beginning to show how they went down this path? Are all the scenes in this book doing what they are supposed to do? Are there any weak, throwaway scenes that don’t propel the plot or develop character? Understanding scene has given me much greater control over my writing.

Another thing understanding scene had helped me do is cut out weak transition material. Before I saw scenes as units, it was hard to tell where to end a scene. Say I have two scenes in a row, one showing the character getting ready for work and the next showing a confrontation with their boss at work. When the character leaves the house, do I need to show every detail of their commute before they show up at work? When you think in scenes, you realize that once you’ve achieved the goal of the scene at the house, you can cut to the character at work, because everything in between is not scene. Unless it is scene because something important happens, like the character getting in a crash or running into an old boyfriend who becomes an important player. But that makes it a third scene between the other two, and the same rules apply to it. When you write using scenes, there are no transitions. Only cuts. And that makes for a cleaner, tighter manuscript that is much more engaging to readers.

Now that you know what a scene is, the next question is, how do you make every single scene in your book the very best scene it can be? What makes a scene work? What makes a scene brilliant?

Tomorrow: 101 TIWIK #4: Make Your Scenes Shine

This post is part of a series of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Start reading the series at the beginning.