What's a scene? How do authors make it stand on its own?
At its most basic, a scene is action that takes place at one time, in one place, and moves the story along convincingly to the next plot element. It is, in effect, a single small story in a connected row of small stories, each revealing an action, something about the characters (their wants, their fears, their plans), and one or more goals or obstacles that push the characters through to the next scene, and ultimately to The End.
As a complete story in itself, a scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Any story, whether long or short, literary or genre, staged or sung or read aloud, has a plot. The plot, or the dramatic action, is composed not only of actual actions, but also of internal changes that reveal or advance the motives for those actions. Motives occur inside characters; actions take place outside them, in specific locations/settings.
Repeat: a scene is a single small story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, in which something changes either internally or externally (or both).
Picture the story as an animal: the bones are the frame, the nerves are the psychological/emotional connectors, the setting is the fur, hide, or feathers on the outside.
We're talking today about the spine: the set of bones (vertebrae) that link to each other, holding up the animal and protecting its central nerve corridor. A story with SPINE has strong, well-connected vertebrae: scenes that securely wrap around the story's emotional core and carry it from plot point to plot point, all the way from inciting incident to action climax or even epilogue (the tail).
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| Laboratoires Servier, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
What are the nerves of a story, you ask? They're characters we care about, with goals we want to see them achieve (or, in rare cases, to see them get thwarted from achieving), that we're willing to follow through scene after scene in hopes the outcome will validate our decision to spend this time, these irreplaceable minutes of our lives, reading this one particular story over all the other ones out there.
But if a story's an animal, what kind is it? A hamster if it’s a flash fiction (short spine), a brontosaurus for a very long novel (and many, many vertebrae) and every other length in between. Maybe it's a series: a whole family of ostriches racing forward, running over any plot obstacle that would get in the way of the characters achieving their goals.
What the shortest and longest have in common is spine, a series of vertebrae, or scenes, through which the nerves flow as one continuous unit.
A vertebrae in your physical spine has a beginning (flanges), a middle (the smooth ring of thick bone), and an end (different flanges that interlock with the beginning of the next vertebrae). In your story, the plot’s vertebrae are individual scenes in that longer story, protecting the through-lines or 'nerves' while presenting the necessary actions and motivations to readers in a logical and entertaining order.What is a scene? At its most basic, a scene is action that takes place at one time, in one place, and moves the story along convincingly to the next plot element. It is, in effect, a single small story in a stream of small stories, each revealing an action, something about the characters (their wants, their fears, their plans), and one or more goals or obstacles that push the characters through to the next scene.
As a complete story in itself, a scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The beginning flange is a reason for the characters to all be at that place at that time. The action in a previous scene (or in off-page back story) brought these characters to this place at this time; the action in this scene will bring the same characters, or other ones, to a new place and/or time where a new scene will start.
In a beginning, some small action or line of dialogue raises a question in the reader’s mind, gives the characters a reason to interact with each other, and sets the scene rolling. The action might be as small as Character A ringing a doorbell. As over-used as this example is (much like answering the telephone or waking from sleep), it instantly raises the question of what Character A is doing at the door.
The middle of the scene advances and protects the psychological/emotional core of the story.
Like working against gravity thickens a human spine’s bony ring, what strengthens the middle of a scene is conflict. Each character wants something, even if it is only to be left alone by another character. The conflict between what Character A wants and what Character B wants makes the scene denser, more complex, like the lattice in bone becomes denser under pressure from gravity.
Assume Character A
wants answers to a question. Character B doesn’t want to give them. B evades or
lies. A pushes harder, verbally or physically, or changes tactics. B repeats or
changes their earlier response. Sometimes one of them appears to be gaining,
only to have a reversal occur that puts the other ahead. Every shift of the power dynamic is strengthening the matrix of bone around the story's nerve-core, carrying it safely to the next scene.
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| Andrewmeyerson, CC BY-SA 4.0 |
The beauty and challenge of the middle, whether of a scene or of the whole story, is not to make it too easy, either for the characters or the reader. Too easy means not dense, not good bone. Keep the reader guessing a bit. Entice them to use all they have learned about the characters up to this point, to try to figure out who will win this small struggle. The more the reader invests in an outcome, the stronger the middle is.
The end, the final
flange, is both the link to the next scene and the payoff for the character’s –
and the reader’s – efforts. Did A get his answer? Did the reader guess right,
or wrong?And what happens next because of that outcome?
Perhaps neither A nor B achieves their goal in this scene. That type of ending is the most frustrating for readers but can also make the most compelling reading. Use it too often, or too obviously, and the reader’s frustration will outweigh their engagement with the larger story. However it ends, there must be flanges to hook onto the next scene: new questions arising from the answers received, new places to go, new ideas to be incorporated or old ones eliminated.
At its simplest, a scene is action that takes place at one time, in one place, and moves the story along convincingly. At its most complex, a scene also sets a mood, reveals hidden aspects of character, delves deeper into the larger story’s central question, and has enough dramatic tension to draw the reader’s eyes forward almost without their conscious awareness.
If you can build a single solid scene with a beginning, middle and end, you can write any length of story. Make each scene, each small story, as strong as it can possibly be, linking it to the one before and leading to the one following, and there is no limit to what you can achieve: flash fiction with one strong vertebra, short stories with four to ten vertebrae, novellas and novels with as many scenes as you need. They’re all built on the length and strength of the spine.
