As we kickstart our fall writing goals, let’s refresh the ways we can put our scenes to work.

Writing Tip for Today: What are some ways to make scenes work better?

Give Scenes a Why

Fiction writing comes to life through scenes. Readers can envision the story unfolding as if it were a film or stage play. Every scene requires certain elements to accomplish the story’s purpose.

One way to beef up scenes is to review the necessary elements: These include a time, a place, a character (POV), Concrete Sensory Detail, a Purpose and more. You can review the eleven elements HERE.

Purpose is one area where writers sometimes lose sight of the goal. Every scene must somehow drag us farther into the story. It cannot march in place. Ask yourself why this scene in this position of the story? The purpose should always be something that the character does or thinks to accomplish their goal. And don’t forget that most of the time, your character has to lose and regroup.

Try to avoid many scenes where your characters aren’t moving around in some way.

Give Scenes Motion

Avoid writing many “sitting and thinking” scenes. A scene with only one character on stage makes action more difficult (the character has no one to interact with). This is what I call the Wilson Principle, after the Tom Hanks’ “Cast Away” movie where a shipwrecked Hanks invents a volleyball to talk to.

Get your characters out from behind a table. In life we tend to spend lots of time sitting around with coffee or some type of food or drink. The problem with these table scenes is that readers only see characters from the waist up. This leads to a feeling of inactivity and drains excitement from the readers’ experience.

Avoid beginning each new chapter with the same setting (unless the character is imprisoned or marooned). If every chapter opens with a character washing dishes at the kitchen window, there’s action, but it feels repetitive. Vary the places you set your scenes.

Give Scenes Tension

Your job as a fiction writer is to keep readers engaged. This requires ratcheting up tension from scene to scene. Any time you let off the gas, readers feel deflated. Avoid this by carefully adding tension or conflict even in quieter aftermath scenes. Tension should increase up to the climax scene.

Conflict isn’t always about physical conflict. People have wars of words, feelings and attitudes. Build more conflict in your character’s goal by making sure the stakes are high (what happens if the character loses? The SO WHAT? TEST) and that the obstacles (bad guys or opponents) aren’t pushovers.

Avoid placing your highest tension near the opening of the story. As the advice goes, if you burn down the whole tree before readers have a chance to understand all the motivations, heartbreaks or losses occur, they have no place to go but down in tension. Tune up your scenes and put them to work!