This is part of a series on how to study fiction, mainly directed at writers who have read all the beginning writing books and are like, “What now?!?” The rest of the series is here. You may also want to check out the series on pacing, here, which I’m eventually going to fold into this series when it turns into a book 🙂
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Scenes are the building blocks of your fiction. If you can turn out a nicely crafted scene, readers will forgive almost any mistakes you make (except when it comes to characters–like killing them off or making them act out of character).
Scene issues at this level:
- Second-guessing whether a scene is “finished” or “good enough.”
- A feeling that something is missing but not knowing what.
- Information delivered at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
- Author intrusion and rants.
- Disorganization.
- Dragging chapters.
- Characters spending a lot of time talking to each other about stuff they already know.
One of the major issues with a lot of writers’ scenes is that they are poorly organized. The writer knows that a certain amount of information has to be delivered to the reader, but sticks it in willy-nilly. Or the writer might not put in all the information the reader needs at all, thinking that hiding information will increase the drama and tension of the scene.
(We won’t get to tension in writing until later, by the way.)
Here’s something that most beginning writer books won’t tell you:
Structuring a scene properly will take care of a lot of problems that sound like minor problems…but that you can never seem to fix.
If you’re getting feedback on your scenes being:
- Boring
- Talky
- Full of too much description
- Ranty
- Confusing
Then it may be that you’re just not telling the reader what they need to know, when they need to know it.
And the way to fix that is through the structure of your scenes.
Basic scene structure, coming right up…
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