Hi everyone, long time tinkerer, first time to this community. I'm curious if anyone has any good resources for writing scenes. I have found some books that have helped me with sentence construction, plot construction, dialog basics, etc. It's helping me write better. Where I very much struggle is with scenes. I just picked up The Stand and I was thinking about the scene that opens chapter 1. I would have wrote it something like "Dude was pumping gas and an old chevy came out of nowhere and omg hit the gas pumps! He yanked opened the door, and the man driving the car was dying, and a woman and baby were already dead. They looked very sick." I'm exaggerating and being a bit tongue in cheek, but I don't know how to make scenes really breathe and come to life. Looking for recommendations on books or online courses that cover that specific subject.
One of the things that helped my scenes is the use of the five basic senses. The sense of sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing. Something as simple as the sound of traffic off in the distance can give a sense of location relative to other things in the setting.
I can suggest a good book . Crafting Scenes by Raymond Obstfeld It is the only book you need on the subject, even if you don't think is that good . But it will improve your knowledge of the subject and you will see how other writers create page turners.
That's because the scene in The Stand isn't really about the car crash at the end. I mean, it is, but it comes at the reader sideways by first introducing Stu Redman and showing a slice of life: East Texas good ol boys hanging out at a gas station in an economically depressed town with nothing to do. The theme there is that everything is normal until it ain't... that nothing happens in this sleepy town until something does. Nobody would care about the characters if they arrived at the same time that things begin to go wrong. You need some context before you toss everyone into the jackpot.
It's also easy to go overboard when describing a scene. Yes, it's important to describe a scene but it's also important to consider what you want out of it. As said above, the scene isn't about the car crash (I'll have to go from memory, as it's been a long time since I read it). So King is setting our expectation of life in this town by describing all the other details. *Then* the car crash happens and breaks our expectation. If the scene had been about the car crash, he would probably have omitted those details (although knowing King, he might not have). You construct your scene by zooming in on the important parts of it. Think of it a little like an actual movie scene. The camera pans slowly across the street. It zooms in on a trivial, unimportant conversation between the guys hanging out at the gas station. The viewer's expectation is built up. Suddenly, the car crash happens and those expectations are dashed. Of course, that's not how all scenes are structured. But when you write it, as Kallisto said, try to use all five senses to describe the critical parts. I'm often guilty of neglecting everything except sight.
The Stand is also a great example of how to introduce a plethora of unrelated characters (Stu, Fran, Larry, Nick, Lloyd, Flagg, Mother Abigail, Trashcan Man... yeah, I read it probably 20 times when I was a teen) that are about to be connected by an incident that has nothing to do with any of them individually. And each of them has nearly a full chapter of ho hum regular life before the shit hits the fan. Granted, it's an extremely long book, but it isn't boring... at least, not offensively boring. And somewhat remarkably, the characters exist for hundreds of pages before they meet each other in dribs and drabs. You can contrast that with ASOFAI where there are also a buttload of characters, but all of them kind of arrive interrelated on some level, and already involved in the same jackpot, whether they know it or not. With those novels, it's a bit easier to riff the chapters off each other because everyone kind of occupies that same narrative space already. But in The Stand nobody knows anything about anybody else or what is likely to happen, so there's the need to craft a scene around each of them where their regular lives are interrupted by a universal inciting incident. Otherwise, we'd just have a bunch of random names on a page with nothing to connect them. You can do a lot worse than The Stand if you want to learn about scene structure and how to juggle a zillion POVs.
King does that a lot. Salem's Lot has the same thing, and IIRC, Needful Things does too. Also contrast with the Wheel of Time, where there are also a buttload of characters and they're all exactly the same.
I probably chose a horrible example with The Stand, as my puny ambitions are far removed from writing an epic novel. Any recommendations for books/courses that dive into how to compose and structure scenes?
Since I write action heavy stuff, I try to tap the brakes every other scene in order to give some contrast and breathing space for the reader, so it isn't so fast pace and exhausting. A scene will usually have these components: desire, obstacle, outcome. Include within that are the consequences and emotional reaction. If a scene has a heavy external obstacle, like a fight, then the next one will be more internal or social, giving time for the character and reader to digest what happened. When I write the scene, I'll usually try to set the scene, either by describing the who and where, or the emotional state of the character as they place themselves in the scene. Either way, the descriptions setting the scene also declare the desire of the POV character in the scene. Then they encounter the obstacle, have conflict, have a change in emotion, then exit. Doubling up the scene's physical setting and the desire line of the POV character in as few paragraphs as possible, by making sentences do double duty, is key. Example 1: There was poop on the street. It smelled bad. I had a meeting with the noble. I didn't want to smell bad. I saw a street sweeper. I gave him a copper. He swept the street. I walked behind him. Example 2: I paid a street sweeper a clipped copper to brush the horse shit out of my way, so the noble wouldn't know I had walked rather than taken an expensive carriage.
Too general, maybe, but it's Mamet: Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?” - David Mamet
I don't know the book so can't vouch for it's quality, but I just wanted to show you've already had someone suggest one.
While that sounds interesting POV wise, it really wouldn't work for plausibility, cause unless the noble was deaf, they probably already had that figured out. Hooves on cobblestone isn't exactly the quietest thing. Also wouldn't the evidence of fresh horse pucky add to the illusion that the MC could play off of if the subject came up? Just saying a white lie is better, than trying to overtly cover up the obvious point for both the reader and the noble. Just saying.
It's a long video so I just found time to watch it. Very good! Thanks for sharing. I am using it forthwith for my next scene.
I think what trips people up is not knowing the difference between scene and exposition (which, based on your original post, it seems like what you're writing is exposition more than scene), and not understanding their individual strengths and weaknesses; here's a copy of a write-up I once did for another group, hopefully it can help ya out: _______ Consider the following two passages: A roomful of people were playing League of Legends on computers. (versus) Fingers clicked against keyboards and hot computers whirred their fans, filling the net café with a sound like a light summer’s rain. Mystical heroes and mythical beasts fought on the screen of every computer as men and women talked over strategy to their League of Legends teams. The first passage is what's known as "exposition" and the second is what's known as "scene." Although both passages describe the same event, they each have a vastly different feel and provide different sorts of information to a reader. Exposition Exposition typically has a more journalistic and impartial feel and focuses on communicating facts quickly and with as little ambiguity as possible, similar to a summary. Exposition is what can be used to quickly share information with a reader, and is most often found in report-styled writing where the key purpose is to inform after an event has taken place. Exposition is closely related to another word writers often hear, "telling." Passages of exposition result in a reader having a logical understanding of what's taken place, and can also be a great device to establish recurring events. Typically news reports are told in exposition. Below are a few more short examples of exposition. Note how much information there is in each example even though you might not quite be able to picture the exact details of what might've happened: Eugene walked to work at 8:00 a.m. and went home at 5:00 p.m.. The Peach Creek Cobblers lost against the Lemon Brook Lumpers 0-62 on Friday night. Julie and her Nana baked a batch of chocolate-chip cookies. Scene Scene typically is what's more familiar to writers in terms of how it relates to another key word writers frequently hear about: "showing." Scene is depicted with a mix of sensory details (such as sight, touch, sound, taste, smell), description, dialogue, actions that take place, and setting. Scene puts your reader in the action during the moment it occurs and is a unique one-time event, like if your reader were watching something happen live in front of them. For an example, let's take the passage of exposition "Julie and her Nana baked a batch of chocolate-chip cookies" and start writing a unique scene: The kitchen smelled like a sticky sweet mix of sugar and melted butter. Julie screamed in delight when the 5-pound package of chocolate chips finally popped open in her hands. The bittersweet gems left trails in the white flour dusting the countertop as they skittered past and cascaded over the edge like water over Niagara Falls. "Sorry Nana," Julie apologized to her grandmother as the two of them began gathering up the chocolate morsels. The chocolate quickly melted in Julie's 11-year-old hands and left gooey brown marks on her fingers. "This is the best part, just for us bakers," Nana said with a smile as chocolate seeped into the wrinkles on her 70-year-old hands. "Taste testing!" Julie finished her grandmother's sentence. Julie and Nana both laughed as they licked the melted chocolate from their fingers... Tips and Tricks on Using Scene and Exposition: Some cool things writers can do with scene and exposition is manipulate a reader's sense of time and use it to speed up or slow down a story. For example, you might not want to write a full scene every time a character does something simple and everyday like getting dressed, or else your writing will probably get put down by your reader before you even get to the real story. If it's a normal day some simple exposition "Fred got dressed and headed off to work" is a good and quick way to depict a costume change before heading off to the real action. But, on an important day (like before a big presentation) Fred might break the usual mold and think more about what he's going to wear. This would be an excellent opportunity to write out something normally done in exposition as a scene to show more of what Fred's going through on this particular day as he heads in to work. A scene pays close attention to detail in a way that makes this difference obvious for your reader and lets them know that something special is (or is about to be) happening: Bypassing his usual khakis and polo, Fred pressed onward and to the back of his closet to where his old friend waited to join him in battle. The slate gray suit hung like knight's armor on the wire hanger.... While exposition lets your reader know the basics of what happens, scene gives a reader additional information about how something happens that can be used to express elements of mood, theme, tone, or otherwise create a unique experience for a reader out of even the most everyday of activities. Play around with scene and exposition next time you feel stuck in your writing!
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain will always be one of my top books to recommend for scene work.
The key to this discussion, at least in my opinion. Scenes are not settings. A scene is a sub-unit of a chapter; a unit of narrative and content and should be treated as such. One advice I'd give is to avoid "floating" scenes. You should never be able to simply substitute the setting & characters and get a different book's or movie's scene. Each scene must be unique, featuring narrative and conflict relevant to your work. Anything else can be cut. My opinion is somewhat skewed; I was never one to be moved by setting descriptions. "Flamboyant curtains framing a sunlit hall of gold and marble with a drooping, cracked mahogany table in the middle cradled by a set of cushioned chairs upon which various dignitaries and socialites sat" doesn't provide me with more information pertaining the narrative than the phrase "banquet hall filled with guests". I am not saying it should be cut; more so that what /follows/ is far more important. That is the scene itself. When your MC enters the room, approaches one of the dignitaries and asks him for a private discussion. When they retreat to the corner of the banquet hall and throw half-glances on another guests, explaining their true insidious purpose here. When the dignitary approached refuses to believe this and then taps his glass to grab attention and humiliate the MC in front of everyone by slipping their accusation to the guests up front. Here, describing the subtle reactions of the accused dignitary right before they shake their head, crack a smile and provide some vague explanation. That's what counts the most; that's what tells us how much fear the character feels, what threat they see in the MC, what actions they can possibly take. That's the core of the scene - brought alive by characters, their interactions and its effect on the narrative.
