Crafting your scene

In the previous lessons, you’ve pulled apart the elements that go into making a dynamic scene. Now it’s time to put everything together and write a really good scene, where everything is beautifully choreographed for your reader, where the body language and emotion are on the page and we know where we are and why we’re there.

But first, a reminder about the purpose and nature of a scene.

Scene is the smallest unit of story

What this means is that a scene has to be its own mini story, a moment in time where something changes. In general, a scene would slow time down for a reader, give them the impression that they are experiencing the world of the novel in real time. Paradoxically, scenes are what give your story its pacing, its forward momentum.

There are no rules for how long or short a scene can be, or how fast or slow. Learning how to manipulate time and pacing with scenes is a fundamental skill in a writer’s toolbox.

Aside from this, a scene has a form. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

There are several ways for scenes to begin, just as there are several ways for stories to begin.

• Setting the scene/orienting the reader: This is perhaps the most common, as it gives a good signal that something important is coming. The writer slows the pace to focus the reader.

• Beginning with an event that sets the scene in motion (someone comes to the door, the phone rings etc.).

• In medias res—right in the middle of the action: Scenes like this need to have story elements preceding them so that the reader knows why she should care about the action that’s taking place, or be short enough that she’s not in suspense too long. If you’re a really accomplished writer and can make the reader so curious to see what’s coming that not knowing what went before doesn’t throw them off, you can do that too.

Scene endings: These are harder to quantify. They must be clear enough to indicate to the reader that the scene is over.

• Some comment by a character or the author that summarizes the theme of the scene, or relates to the point/theme of the entire book.

• A character or characters leaving, or someone new entering.

• A point of suspense—introducing something new at the end, a disruption, an unexpected occurrence.

Scene middles: Just like the middle of a story, it’s important for middles of scenes to keep the momentum going and lead to the end of the scene. 

You’re always manipulating time

In writing an effective scene, you have to be aware constantly of the way you’re making time pass—or not pass. Scenes have the illusion of being in real time, as I said, but even those that focus on a very small moment are not duplicating the actual time it takes for that moment to pass. In some cases, it’s being stretched out. In others, it feels as if time is going by just as in real life, but it never is. In those cases, the reader’s eye and understanding is always traveling faster than what’s actually happening in story time.

You manipulate time by choosing what you want the reader to focus on and for how long. We did a bit of that in previous exercises.

Example:

Suppose you’re writing a scene that leads up to a kiss. How you structure that scene will depend on what changes during it as well as what has led up to it—not to mention the established relationship between the participating characters. For instance: 

They are uncertain about each other. If the scene is between two characters who are uncertain and don’t know each other well but are clearly attracted to one another, you might choose to focus on their tentative chat at the beginning, make sure the reader feels the awkwardness and uncertainty of both the characters through their dialogue and their body language. You’ll start the scene earlier, spend more time on what happens before they connect, write dialogue that doesn’t actually say what the characters are thinking and feeling, and possibly end it just after they kiss—or don’t kiss.

There’s an undercurrent of passion already established. Your characters are drawn to each other irresistibly, and you’ve been setting this up for the entire book so far, so instead of drawing out the time of their approach to one another with dialogue, you shorten that and go into much more detail about exactly what’s going on in your main character’s mind, heart, and body during the kiss, inviting the reader to experience it with her.

A sweet sense of nostalgia exists between the characters. If your character is remembering the scene of a previous kiss, she might go into detail about the setting, what was happening that led up to it, feelings she had, etc. You might not even have to get to the moment of the actual kiss.

My personal favorite scene example

If you’ve ever done a scene workshop with me, you’ll be familiar with this. It’s an excerpt from Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road.

The couple, April and Frank, meet in the green room after a rather terrible amateur performance by April in a community theater production. This first version is me hacking out everything but the dialogue—which is brilliant, of course. But my version is lacking just about everything you’ve spent the last eight lessons practicing:

“Listen,” she said. “Will you do me a favor? The thing is—the thing is, Milly and Shep want us to go out with them afterwards. Will you say we can’t? Say it’s because of the babysitter, or something?”

“Well,” he said, “the thing is, I already said we could. I mean I just saw them out there and I said we would.”

“Oh. Well then would you mind going out again and telling them you were mistaken? That should be simple enough.”

“Look,” he said. “Don’t start getting this way. The point is I thought it might be fun, is all. Besides, it’s going to look kind of rude, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it?”

“You mean you won’t. All right, I will then. Thanks a lot.”

You definitely get a sense of the underlying tension, but it’s missing so much that’s essential in the way of choreography that conveys the undertone and emotion. Here’s the scene in its actual form:

“Listen,” she said. “Will you do me a favor? The thing is—” It seemed that all the slender strength of her back was needed to keep her voice from wavering. “The thing is, Milly and Shep want us to go out with them afterwards. Will you say we can’t? Say it’s because of the babysitter, or something?”

He moved well away and stood stiff-legged and hump-shouldered, hands in his pockets, like a stage lawyer considering a fine point of ethics. “Well,” he said, “the thing is, I already said we could. I mean I just saw them out there and I said we would.”

“Oh. Well then would you mind going out again and telling them you were mistaken? That should be simple enough.”

“Look,” he said. “Don’t start getting this way. The point is I thought it might be fun, is all. Besides, it’s going to look kind of rude, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it?”

“You mean you won’t.” She closed her eyes. “All right, I will then. Thanks a lot.” Her face in the mirror, nude and shining with cold cream, looked forty years old and as haggard as if it were set to endure a physical pain.

Masterful. The actions are very minimal, and each one is utterly essential: Her posture, presented in a way that isn’t a cliche at all (no “her back stiffened”) and that is actually very sympathetic. The way he moves away and stands, with that perfect simile. The very simple “She closed her eyes.” This scene presents a perfect microcosm of a disintegrating marriage.

Exercise

Now is the time to turn your test scene into something you’d be proud to have in your final manuscript. Don’t be afraid to change everything about it, if it’s not working for you. All that matters for this exercise is the final product, not so much whether you’ve used any specific techniques. Because that is part of your job as a writer: figuring out where to move forward, where to slow down, where to dig in deep, where to skim the surface.

The link below takes you to a form with a brief survey and a place to upload your document of your final exercise. Please let me know if you have any difficulty with this upload!