Let's Make a Scene Together
New Class Begins April 14
When I was young in the 1960s, making the scene was what all the hep cats did on a Saturday night. I’m not actually sure what a hep cat was or if I’m using it correctly. I was a studious aspiring writer. I was in my room pounding away on a 1939 Royal typewriter, spinning stories about things I knew nothing about.
Anyway, next week, I would love it if you would join me at SavvyAuthors to “make the scene” in my new two-week course on crafting the perfect fiction scene. The course covers all aspects of creating engaging scenes that will keep your reader engaged in the story. The registration fee for the course is $30. Click Here to register.
In this course, you will learn about the different types of scenes, their functions, and how to structure them effectively to engage your readers. You will also discover the importance of motivation in scenes and how to use it to drive your story forward.
Because you guys have been with me for so long, I’m going to give you a sneak peak at the first lesson.
The Basic Structure of a Scene
If a plot, however it is developed, is the framing of a novel, scenes are the building stones. A scene is a discrete piece of action that moves the story forward. There are four general parts to a scene
Prelude
This is not technically part of a scene, but every scene begins in media res or in the middle of things. You have to ask yourself about the context of the scene. How did your character arrive at the scene? What is his/her/its feelings going into this scene? What resources are available? What liabilities? These will all affect what happens. If there is more than one character in the scene, then you need to think about multiple preludes.
Perhaps the most important factor to consider is the intent of each character when he/she/it enters the scene. This includes the character’s preferred outcome, the character’s assessment of the odds of achieving that outcome, the character’s limitations in achieving that outcome, the consequences of not achieving that outcome and the resources the character has. This is also
Entrance
This is the start of the scene. It establishes the setting, identifies the players, and initiates the action. This may be done in a single sentence:
Jack Carter slammed his fist down on the desk of Kenneth Cromwell, knocking a stack of freshman essays onto the floor next to the professor’s desk.
It’s a bit awkward, but it gets the point across. The entrance also kicks off the action and hints at the protagonist’s goal. In the above example, we know Carter is going to confront Cromwell about something. If this is the first sentence in the book, we might not know what the confrontation is about, but we know one is coming.
Action
Action in this sense of the word doesn’t mean a bunch of physical activity. It can be a detective interviewing a witness or two parents discussing their daughter’s new boyfriend.
The action has three elements: initial effort, opposition, and response. The last two will be repeated throughout the scene.
Initial Effort
This is the action that kicks off the scene. The character makes his or her first attempt to fulfill his or her objective. In an action-adventure, that might be facing off against the terrorist in the basement of the skyscraper just as the villain sets the timer on the bomb. In a love story, it might be the first declaration of affection. In a mystery, it could be the detective beginning an interview with a witness.
Within a few sentences, your reader needs to know the characters involved and what the protagonist wants to do.
Opposition
If our hero rushes into the basement where the terrorist has set the bomb and immediately the terrorist surrenders and disarms the bomb, the scene is going to be very boring. There needs to be some tension, some question in the reader’s mind about what will happen. Will the hero capture the villain? Will the detective get the clues she needs? Will the lover have his declaration of love returned?
The “opposition” may not even be in the shape of another person. For instance, a private detective in a story breaks into a suspect’s office and searches it. The opposition here is the number of possible places to search. It might also be her own fear that she will be caught. You might have a conversation between two people facing a common problem. One might raise solutions and the other obstacles to those solutions, or they may differ in their approach to the problem-solving. The opposition might even be their mutual recognition of the problem facing them and their lack of viable solutions.
Response
When opposition arises, the protagonist needs to respond. Even failing to respond is a response. If your protagonist is a shy fellow wanting to ask a woman out on a date, and after a few initial attempts, his fear sets up so many barriers that he leaves without asking, that is a response to opposition. In this case, the opposition is his own shyness.
Exit
This point and counterpoint of opposition and response continues until we hit a climax or there is an impasse. This is the point where the scene as served its purpose. The protagonist has either accomplished his or her goal, failed to accomplish it, decided the goal was not worth pursuing further, or deferred action until a later time.
The climax is a high point in a scene where the scene has reached an emotional peak or has reached a point in the action where the stakes are as high as they are going to be in that scene. The love of her life walks out the door, the villain has pushed the hero off the boat (or vice versa), the board votes to oust the CEO - those are examples of a climax.
Sometimes, though, they simply reach an impasse. This means that the opposition has held off the efforts of the protagonist but has not defeated him or her. The detective has searched the room and found nothing incriminating, just a calendar which the detective figures might be useful. Sometimes scenes like this in mystery novels seem like they are going nowhere at the time, but some important clue is dropped which seems like nothing at the time.
The exit can be dramatic with some sort of cliffhanger. It can be intriguing. For instance, right in the middle of a conversation between detectives about their prime suspect is cut short by a phone call. The last line is, "Well, we can mark him off our list. That was the coroner. He was found murdered."
It can simply be a return to normalcy. Maybe a husband and wife detective team are discussing the suspects, working through the clues, and getting frustrated with each other's interpretation of the clues. The end can be them deciding to put the whole thing to bed and work on it in the morning.
We will take a deeper look at each of these in this course.