What Does It Mean to Write a Scene That Works?

Photo credit: dan.boss on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is by Rebecca Monterusso, a Story Grid Certified Developmental Editor and writer.


What the heck is a scene, anyway?

“A scene is an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a character’s life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene is a story event,” writes Robert McKee in Story.

Meaning: it’s an event that takes place through conflict that changes the life value of one or more characters. Alternatively: it’s action that results in the character’s quality of human experience changing from the beginning to the end. Put simply: change that occurs through conflict.

You know something is a scene when it pulls a character out of their comfort zone, progressively complicates (for better or worse), asks the character to make a decision, shows that decision, and describes what it means. Or, when a character has fully experienced an inciting incident, progressive complications, a crisis, climax, and resolution. When something has happened to them to cause a change.

Why does it matter?

Because, says Shawn Coyne, “scene is the basic building block of a story.” A bunch of scenes compiled together builds your novel. So you must know what constitutes a scene (and what doesn’t) in order to know whether or not it should be in your novel or thrown into the nearest garbage bin. No one said writing was easy.

So what is a scene, really?

Change through conflict. On the whole, stories are about change. And scenes are a boiled down, less intense, mini-story. They should do the same thing your global story does: upset the life value of the character and put them on a path to try and restore it.

What are value shifts?

Value shifts measure the change in a character’s life. They are on a spectrum based on what’s at stake. For example, the scene where the criminal is caught. The change might move from injustice: the criminal has thus far escaped being discovered, to justice: he is brought in. Compared to the proof of love scene where the change moves from hate or indifference to love or commitment or intimacy. In each of these examples, the start of a scene is very different from its conclusion.

The value spectrum in a scene depends upon what the character wants. Think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What they want in any given moment will determine how that scene turns. Either they’ll get it, or they won’t. In any case, there must be a change from the start to the end or a scene doesn’t go anywhere. And, if a scene doesn’t change in life value, it’s either description or backstory. And it shouldn’t be there.

Genre: the overarching structure of your scenes

In the bigger picture, all the scenes weaved together build your novel. And that novel will fit into a certain genre, which determines what’s at stake overall. Genre isn’t meant to be scary or confining. It merely gives you an idea of the expectations your audiences comes to your story already having.

Genre will even help you, the writer, decide which scenes are necessary to your novel and which aren’t. For example, if you’re writing a thriller, you’d better include a “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene or you’ll alienate your audience. And, unless you’re writing a love story subplot, you probably don’t need to worry about a scene where the lovers experience their first kiss.

At their core, scenes boil down to a certain event. The lovers breakup. A stranger knocks on the door. All is lost. Etc. Etc. And, depending on what you want your story to say, you get to decide what those scenes look like and whether or not you even need them in your novel. Genre is the key to making those decisions in a way that will impress your audience and keep them coming back for more.

How to use core emotion, core event, and change to judge your scenes

So you have a scene. In it something takes place and the value shifts for one or more characters from beginning to end. Great. But, how do you know whether or not it should be in this particular novel? By looking at the core event and core emotion. And by evaluating the change that takes place.

To do this, you should know why you decided to write the novel you did instead of the infinite number of other possibilities you could have chosen. What are you trying to say? How do you want your audience to feel after having read your novel? Genre combined with controlling idea will give you an idea of what you were thinking when you rushed this idea to the keyboard.

Then, when you’re evaluating a particular scene, look at its core and how it relates to the bigger picture. What is the event that takes place? The change the character experiences? And the emotion you want to evoke?

Once you have that written down for every scene, you’ll be able to track the overall change and evaluate how each scene gets your character closer to or farther from their ultimate goal. If any scene doesn’t fit with the overall story’s core (the emotion, event, and change) it should probably be cut.

Probably because only you can be the judge. Just make sure you’re a fair one.

What this means for your writing

Hopefully this doesn’t make your head swirl into the unproductive resistance realm from which some never return. My goal is to help you be more critical of your writing, but in a way that is actually helpful. To give you tools and language to evaluate what’s on the page and whether or not it should be included in a final draft.

Being able to look at your writing objectively is key to being a good writer. You can neither be too harsh nor too gentle. And being able to see your scenes from this angle might help you be honest when evaluating something you’ve written.

The goal is to keep readers reading. You do that mostly at the scene level. Knowing how to write a scene that hooks, builds, and pays off will satisfy your readers. And, being objective as to whether or not it should be included in your novel is key.

Share on:
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

7 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
jeff

Rebecca writes, a scene is “…change that occurs through conflict.” Conflict is the go-to word in nearly every explanation of what takes place on the page. It’s the wrong word. Conflict is war; it’s a knife fight, explosive. Sure, a scene may have conflict, but it’s most often about interaction, which does not require weapons or harsh words. Interaction can be subtle, a gesture. It more often sounds like, “Oh?” not a Bang! The word conflict leaves no room for humor or romance. Sorry to turn the movies for a scene, but check this one from “Now Voyager” between Paul Henreid and Bette Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-KGiwGn1d8 … Conflict or interaction?

Rebecca

Jeff, I really appreciate your comment and point of view. It’s an interesting question to ponder. When I wrote the piece, it was with the loose definition of “conflict” in which the word can mean anything from a “serious disagreement” to an “incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests” to the one in psychology: “a condition in which a person experiences a clash of opposing wishes or needs.”

And I think that the last definition fits the best in many cases. Think of what the characters want and how those can clash (or even just interact) within the subtext of what’s going on. You’re right that a scene can turn with a simple word or look. But that doesn’t necessarily point to the conflict of that particular scene, just its turning point.

I haven’t seen “Now Voyager,” but in that scene, it seemed to me that Bette’s character was hoping for a certain reaction from Paul’s. The conflict was whether or not he wanted the same thing she did. At least from my perspective.

jeff

Hi Rebecca,

Thank you for your thoughtful and generous reply. You wrote a cogent piece, which I enjoyed and thought a lot about, obviously. I would not have changed a whisker of your essay, apart from that word, “conflict.” It’s a personal beef. In fact, as you point out, you used the word as it was intended, contextually. But I fear the word has too much impact especially in, say, a writing workshop. By itself, the word conflict is a scary pull-the-covers-over-your-head word. For instance, say the word conflict and North Korea in the same breath, and there you go, fire and fury! But, say the word “interaction” and North Korea in the same breath, and it leaves you to wonder what comes next. And for me, it’s that doubt about what comes next that keeps the pages turning.

Rebecca

Jeff, that makes perfect sense and I appreciate your perspective. The point is absolutely to keep the audience wondering what comes next in the story. Whether we say it’s through conflict or interaction, keep the readers reading.

trackback

[…] shows how to intertwine plot, character, and theme in every scene; Rebecca Monterusso gives us what it means to write a scene that works, and Janice Hardy has tips on writing scene and chapter […]

Tina

I see your point in this piece. I think to boil it down, every scene/chapter should contain the MC moving toward the goal, show the motivation that’s keeps them moving as well as giving them conflict in any form that is trying to KEEP THEM FROM REACHING THEIR GOAL.
Its the form I use for writing. Here is an example I used in a post about scenes:

Little miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey. This is the goal and motivation. Along came a spider (enter the villain), sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffett away (conflict)

Now here is where you can add a second part of the same scene because her running away is pretty boring: she ran into her house and grabbed a broom. Upon returning she found the huge spider camped out on the edge of her bowl. With a might thrust, she brought the broom down on the bowl and spider. The bowl went flying and the spider ran away. end of scene!

If you start telling the reader what was in her house and what her recipe was for her curds and whey you have taken all the emotion out of the scene and dragged it out. That should have been told before she went out to eat.

Rebecca Monterusso

I really enjoy the example you gave, Tina. It clearly exemplifies the change through conflict and avoiding unnecessary information that slows readers down.