What Is a Scene?

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Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot

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Wesleyan University

Creative Writing: The Craft of Plot

1733 notes

Cours 1 sur 5 dans Specialization Rédaction créative

In this course aspiring writers will be introduced to perhaps the most elemental and often the most challenging element of story: plot. We will learn what keeps it moving, how it manipulates our feelings, expectations, and desires. We will examine the choices storytellers make to snag our imaginations, drag them into a fictional world, and keep them there. We will learn how to outline and structure a plot, discuss narrative arc, pacing and reversals and reveal the inevitable surprise: connecting the beginning, middle and end.

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A Scene in Motion

Scenes are the building blocks of storytelling. But what is a scene? And how does a scene move plot forward? In this module we'll learn about the difference between telling and showing, the five key elements each scene should have, offer some examples of effective scenes, and have a conversation about how setting and description can make a scene come alive.

What Is a Scene?7:14

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Brando Skyhorse
Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
English

[MUSIC]

Welcome to module c, a scene in motion.

Scenes are the building blocks of storytelling.

But what is a scene, and how does a scene move flat forward?

Anthony Doerr, author of the best selling novel All the Light We Cannot See,

says his students always want to write about quote, big things like love or

getting lost or heartbreak.

And they missed the simple message of staying in the physical level

all the time.

That level is evoked through detail and according to Doerr, it's what let's

an author quote, present an argument, that's the essence of rhetoric and that's

what we're doing, we're arguing readers into believing the fiction we're making.

The best way to get those details in your fiction is through scenes.

American writer Ernest Hemingway wrote scenes using what he called

the Iceberg Theory.

He honed this theory from his time as a journalist.

We had to cut everything away except for the most essential details.

The idea is we see only a tip of what's happening to a character, but

the substantial bulk of what makes this character tick is like an iceberg

hidden underneath the water.

Mike Nicholas, an American film director, responsible for such classic films as

The Graduate said that, all good scenes are essentially one of three things.

An argument, a seduction or a negotiation?

In each of these examples, the characters involved have different agendas.

Each character wants something different, thus giving the scene a reason to exist.

Creating a great scene means pairing down to just the essentials.

All of you have heard the phrase show, don't tell.

When someone says that what they literally mean is that they want a scene.

What goes in a scene?

What I teach my students is a five point checklist of what all good scenes need,

much in the same way that your story or

novel needs a five act structure in order to maximize your storytelling abilities.

Your scenes require five things in order for a reader to feel

that you're showing them something as opposed to telling them something.

Now, scenes can of course have more elements than what I'm about to list here.

But all scenes need at least the following five points.

All scenes need an action.

Scenes usually start with a specific action.

This means something has to happen, an action is something concrete.

An action is not reminiscing about something that happened to

someone earlier in the day.

It's not thinking about something or dreaming about something, or

wishing about something.

An action involves your character standing up and doing something.

Put it this way, if your character can accomplish what you've asked them to do

sitting on a couch, that means it's probably not an action.

If they need to get off that couch, you've probably got an action.

Dialogue, dialogue is what two characters say to each other, but

this requires some additional explanation.

In another module, I talked about the difference between a story and a plot.

A story is an itinerary of events that have occurred that don't have any

relation to one another.

A plot is a series of events linked causally to one another.

Much in the same way, dialogue is not a transcript of two people talking.

Dialogue is not where people say please or thank you or have a good day, or

introduce themselves by name.

Dialogue should never just convey information.

All dialogue, and in fact every sentence you write should do two things, deepen our

understanding of the character speaking that dialog or advance the plot, or both.

A scene requires specific intimate details about yourself, your surroundings, and

the people you are writing about.

Intimate means details that a reader will not be able to see or

notice by themselves without your help.

Say for example that your character walks into a strange room and

is nervous because he's there to talk to his boss at his boss' house.

Then he sees a gorgeous red velvet couch.

Your character then notes that there are scratch marks on the couch's corners.

That means the person who owns this couch probably has a cat.

This makes your character feel comfortable, because character likes cats.

And the character likes cats because that character's favorite pet as a child

was a house cat named Bujums.

Now, think about what just happened here.

Your character noticed the scratches.

Realized there was a cat somewhere, then shared with the reader how comfortable

he felt because he recognized familiar scratch marks on the couch's corners and

knew there was a cat there.

The character grew up with cats and

relaxes because anyone that lets their cat scratch up a nice, beautiful red velvet

couch must be a really relaxed guy, specific intimate details.

Next, a scene requires an inner point of view.

What are you thinking, feeling and processing?

The wonderful writer Ann Hood refers to this as the three Rs, react,

reflect or reveal.

Now let me explain.

Whenever it's time for

a character to explain what they're feeling about a particular action, a prop,

another character or an obstacle in their path, they should do one of three things.

React, this means they do something active right in the moment.

They kick down a door, they pick up a chair, they pull out a gun, etc.

Second, they can reflect.

This means the character thinks about what they're faced with in the moment and

internally weighs their options.

If they kick down the door, they could break their foot or

there could be somebody there with a bar stool behind that door ready to hit them.

The third thing they could do is reveal.

This mean our character reveals something about themselves to the reader

that helps us understand who they are, and

how they're gong to respond to this action, prop, character or obstacle.

Perhaps the last time your character kicked down a door,

he got shot in the leg so this time, he's going to look for an open window.

Five, all scenes need a definite starting point and a stopping point.

Great scenes start with an action.

They end when that action has been resolved in some way.

So if your character scene started by trying to get into a house,

the scene ends when your character has either got into the house or

it's decided not to go into the house.

In the next segment, we're going to take a look at a few examples of text, so

we can more closely examine the difference between showing and telling,

and how a scene reads on the page.

[MUSIC]

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