21.29: How to Make a Scene

Introduction

0:00This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com slash writing excuses. Season 21, episode 29.

0:19This is Writing Excuses. How to make a scene. Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm Dong Wan. I'm Erin. And I'm Howard. And I'm really excited about this particular episode because I feel like the word scene is... You ever say a word so many times that it loses all meaning and you have no idea what the heck it even is anymore? That's how I feel about the word scene. We say it a lot, but I'm not 100% sure I 100% grok what it is other than sort of a feeling.

0:54Having seen the scene full of scenery, yeah, it's very overburdened. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Before we get into how to make a scene, let's go with what the heck a scene first. Let me briefly say that I cite scene sequel format a lot. And in that terminology, scene sequel might better be defined as portion of story where stuff is actively happening and portion of story where we are processing what has actively happened.

1:27And scene sequel, that pattern can happen within a scene. It can happen multiple times within a scene. And when we say within a scene, typically speaking, in theater, in cinema, and other places, the definition of scene is basically a sequence of continuous action. And that's it. Do we think of a scene as separate from a beat? Yes. Okay.

1:57Yes, because you can have multiple beats within a scene. You can have multiple beats within a sequence of continuous action. Can you have multiple scenes within a beat? Yes, I believe you can also have multiple scenes within a beat. Okay. For instance, if one of your character beats is the dark night of the soul, that is a character beat that can sometimes, you know, you have the scene where the character is sobbing into their drink in a bar. You have the scene where they are talking to their BFF and they're trying to encourage them to go back out and kill the evil overlord. And then, so you can have all of those within a single beat.

2:28The reason I was asking, it's a really common technique, is to lay out the plot of your project, whether it's screenplay, novel, whatever it is, on note cards, right? And there's two different ways to approach that. One is beat by beat, so like dark night of the soul kind of moments or the character conflict moments or things like that. And there's other ways to do it that are scene by scene, right? And so I was trying to wrap my head around the granular differences between those two things, right? And so I think I tend to think of books more in terms of beats rather than scenes, but that makes sense for me coming at it from a more 10,000-foot structural view.

3:03Yeah. And I think that if you think about the beats as a folder that you're putting the scenes into, that brought to you by me using Scrivener a lot, that I think it's easier to kind of wrap your head around how both can happen. But I don't think, you know, a scene does not require an arc. I don't think it requires a conflict to be a scene. And I think that you can have a scene that is a letter. Yeah. Or so it's just, it's a sequence of continuous action.

Tabletop Roleplay Scenes

3:33In tabletop, in like tabletop role play, the game master in some systems I've worked with, we talk about adventure design in terms of scenes. You know, the characters are going to come into the tavern, this is going to be a scene. Here are the pieces for the scene, and now we role play it. And just on that note, you know, I had an interesting challenge this year of, I recorded a many, many hours long campaign in basically one session in a week.

4:10We did a recording camp where we did, you know, 30 some hours of recording. And so going into that as the GM, I had to sort of have enough framework that on day three, I wouldn't be caught out, even though the players would make a lot of decisions that go different ways. And so the way I did that was each session note was a beat, basically. I write, here's the dominant emotion of this session. Here's the vibe. So I'd come up with an evocative title, like Into the Wilds or something like that. And then I let individual scenes emerge more organically.

4:42And then think about, okay, what's the next beat emotionally that I want to flow into for the next episode in this campaign? I hear you. And also. However, when you said a scene as a sequence of continuous events, I thought, you know, life is but a scene. I mean, what makes, like, my entire life from birth to death not, I mean, in the sense that it is a sequence of continuous events, something then it feels like continuous is the thing that stops one scene.

5:12Like, when one scene stops and another one starts, what makes it no longer continuous within the theory of fiction? Bedtime. Bedtime and scene. But this is a, this is a really good point that, that real life is continuous action, you know, from birth to, I mean, yes, sleeping, but, but a scene is a narrative constraint. And it, what it does is it has an artificial beginning and it has an artificial end. The character's life continues outside of that scene, theoretically.

5:42What we're doing is that we are, we're doing one of two things when we decide where to start and stop. We're either using it as a frame or we are using those breaks to move us in time, space or change POV. I think that's the thing that I was really, in some ways, asking, which is like, then it sounds like what stops something from being continuous is a shift in time, a shift in person or POV and a shift or a shift in place. Yes. That's what means it's no longer continuous. Therefore, a scene theoretically has ended at that moment.

6:14Yes, but you can also do it as a frame where you break continuous action, like the, the scene where something shocking happens and there's a break and then you come back and you're still in the same moment. But it is a new scene because it's serving as a frame. I would introduce one other frame element that you can use, which is simply a shift in mood or energy, right? So you can have a scene that continues to take place immediately after, but you have a scene break or even a chapter break between those because some revelation has happened and now you're in consequence rather than a sort of ascending tension, right?

6:48Yeah. So you can have a fight, the fight can, you know, there's no time gap, there's no location shift. Often shifting those things is very useful as a signal to the reader, but it is possible to do with just an emotional shift.

Framing a Scene

7:00But the thing is, there needs to be some disjunction is what we're getting at. When I was studying music form and analysis a bazillion years ago, the instructor was grilling us and he was, he was hard on us. He was grilling us about, you know, where does this next movement begin? And somebody said, well, it begins right here at the double bar. And he says, yeah, but you can't hear the double bar. You're listening to music. As somebody who's reading the music, sure, you can see that there's a double bar there, but what can you hear?

7:34And I raised my hand and I said, well, at the double bar, the key changes and the very first note across the bar line is, would be an accidental in the previous movement. But now it's part of the new key signature. And so the very first note we hear is something that is reflected with that change. And that has stuck with me. There are things that you do on the page that the way the book might flow in an e-reader won't be noticeable.

8:07But the tone of the words that you use can completely change and make it obvious, oh, we've changed scenes. Yeah, I think that it's what you're talking about there is, is for me, a form of framing, because you're saying this is the tone or the mood that we're going to have with this. And in a lot of ways, when I think about scenes, I will flag that we are going to talk about transitions in the next episode. But when I think about starting a scene, whether it's the scene at the beginning of a work or somewhere later, I am thinking about what am I setting up here?

8:42That in the same ways that I'm thinking about what promises am I making at the beginning of a story? It's a micro version of that. It's like, here, I need to ground you so that you know where you are. I need to give you a sense of the mood. And then likewise, at the end of a scene, you also need that frame that helps with understanding. So can I can I do an example? Yeah. OK, so this is this is an example of a frame from Calculating Stars. The opening line is, do you remember where you were when the meteor hit?

9:14And the closing line of that, and it's all one scene straight through, is later when I saw where he had been standing, I was amazed that he had been able to speak of all speak at all. But of Washington itself, nothing remains. So this this frames all the action that happens in the scene and it serves to contextualize everything that has happened for the reader. And that's one of the things that you can do when you're thinking about these scenes is like, what, why am I doing this as a discrete individual unit?

9:44I want to point out that, I mean, we have we have talked a lot about, you know, defining what a scene is and why scenes exist. And it can be daunting at first. And I think a lot about when I'm trying to tidy my office. There's there's a million things in here. There's a million things you want to put in your book. It's full of ideas. And I can't even see how to organize this. At the outset, it's really not that important to label all of the boxes.

10:21It's just important to know that I have boxes and I will start putting things into boxes as I go. And as I am doing that, it begins to make sense. And so in many cases, for me, how to make a scene is it starts with. Look, I don't know the exact shape of this, but I'm going to start putting things into boxes kind of chronologically. And then halfway through the writing, the organization makes sense.

10:53Right. And some of these more complex, more fascinating structures emerge. And I and I get to explore those in an edit. Well, I think one thing that really emerges from what you're saying and also kind of going back to Mary Robinette in terms of your framing. This goes back to a conversation we had a few episodes ago about microcosm, macrocosm, right? Because a scene functions with a lot of the same rules that your entire story does in terms of it needs a beginning, a middle and an end. You need an introduction. You kind of need a conclusion. These are short because it's seen.

11:24You know, I think you're one line there at the opening and at the end kind of do that like essay introduction of like, I'm going to tell you about the thing. Here's the thing that we're talking about. Here's a topic sentence. And then here's a here's what you take away from this, which is DC is gone. Right. And so I think giving that framing really allows the reader to experience the middle and know very clearly what it was that we were accomplishing by that middle section. And I think as I'm sort of dividing myself, like instinctively between scene and another scene, a lot of it is if I start telling myself the events of my story.

12:01Like if I'm like, OK, and this happens and that happens and that happens. A lot of times I will naturally say like and then like across town, she did this and this and this or and then after everybody had taken a breath, like I feel like I naturally that's not the way that I would actually put the scenes together or transition between them in my head. But at some point I feel like, oh, something has changed. Let me mark that in the way that I am explaining to myself, like, what do I actually need to put in this story? And each time that I kind of naturally have some sort of break in the way that I say it to myself, that feels like where a scene break should go.

12:40Time to drop it in a different box. Exactly. And speaking of, it is time for us to take a scene break and then we will be back. At Gen Con this year, Writing Excuses is doing a new thing. We're hosting something called Network the Gathering, along with the Ray Bradbury Center and Maurice Broaddus. This is going to be on Thursday, July 30th at 8 o'clock in Ballroom 4 in the Marriott. Part of this is something you can participate in. I mean, besides networking, we're going to have something called Lightning Readings, which we do on our cruises. This is like a sampler pack of readers.

13:12Each person does a two-minute reading just enough to get a nice taste. Come listen, network, and then stick around for prizes. You can get a ticket in the Gen Con scheduling system for Network the Gathering, Thursday, July 30th at 8 p.m. in Ballroom 4 at the Marriott.

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15:42Okay. I feel like I now have a good understanding of what a scene is. I'm glad we straightened that out for you, because it's nice that you'll be able to start writing. It's nice. I feel seen and heard.

16:00Oh, boy. Sorry. Straight to jail. But I now want to know how to make a scene, which we started getting into. You started talking a little bit, Howard, about, like, putting things into boxes. But, like, if you've decided, okay, I think this is the scene. I think this is, like, the frame that I've got. How do you make sure that your reader agrees with you that this is, in fact, a scene and that it feels like a scene or anything else that's required in making it? So I have a series of scene prompts that I use when I'm writing because I run into this.

16:32Like, I will have written down that I've got, you know, that they need to do something like, they go back to the planet. And that's all I've got. And it's like, I know that they're going back to the planet, but what happens there? Sometimes I know. It's like, they find a bunker. Bunker. Well, okay, great. Where do they find it and how? So I have these scene prompts. And I'll say right up front that these are not things that you have to have. These are just prompts that I use for myself to make sure I'm thinking about stuff. The first is, what is the purpose of the scene?

17:05Like, what narrative function is this scene serving? Why is it here? And often a scene will have more than one narrative function. Then I think about, what are they doing? So I might have finding a bunker, but what are they doing when they find the bunker? Are they actively looking for it? Are they searching for seashells on the beach? Like, what are they doing? I think about who is present. I think about where we are. I think about when we are. I think about the mood that I'm trying to evoke for the reader.

17:37And then sometimes also the character's mood, which is often synonymous. And then what their goal is, because their goal is sometimes like not to find the bunker. They need to find it in the scene, but that's not their goal. Their goal is to get like the perfect seashell for their grandmother. So what is their goal and what is their action? And then sometimes the purpose of the scene is the barrier, the interruption. And sometimes their purpose is to find it. So like, I think about these things as a series of prompts.

18:11And then I have two that I use sometimes and sometimes not. Sometimes I'll use afraid of, like where is their angst sitting? And then sometimes I'll use, what are the consequences of this? Sometimes I decide that before I go into the scene. And sometimes I decide it later. I love that thinking about the plot function of a scene, right? And, you know, I think that list is incredibly useful in terms of how are we finding our way into that plot function, right? Of understanding where this fits in the overall arcing narrative. One other thing I wanted to bring up in terms of thinking about scenes is,

18:43this might be a distinction without a difference, but in my head, it's like a book has a mood, but a scene has a vibe, right? And the vibe of the scene does not need to match the mood of your book, right? Your book can be contemplative or spooky or whatever, or romantic, but an individual scene can have a vibe of humor, of being scary, of being depressing. You know, like you can have these moments that are more about what are the characters experiencing in this particular scene that will overall serve the mood of the entire book.

19:17But if it is consistent throughout the same vibe from scene to scene to scene, it's going to feel very flat. You want different energy in different moments. Some is like a high energy action beat. Some is a very scary beat. I don't know. Just think about that as terms of like making your scene distinct from the scenes around it by also deciding not just what the plot function is, what's the vibe? In cinema and in comics, anytime you change scenes, you have to pull the camera back far enough

19:52that we can see that we've changed locations, we've changed characters. I found this a lot when writing Schlock Mercenary, is that I couldn't lead with what I called inset panels, close-ups on faces. I can't begin a scene that way because you don't know where that face is. You just have an orange or a red background. That's not enough information.

20:24And so when I think of scenes, one of the first things that comes to mind for me is, what do I need to put on the page in order to ground the reader in the new mood slash vibe slash beat slash whatever? What do I need to do there? And the second thing is, because I watch a lot of movies, I guess, the idea of in late, out early.

20:57The idea that I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend a whole page writing my way into a scene before things get moving. Um, I might have to, because I don't yet know what's happening, but my goal- You don't want to read it. I don't want to, I don't want to make you read it. Yeah, my goal is to start things as quickly as possible. And so there's, there's those two competing ideas. I have to ground you, but I do not want to spend so much time doing it that you feel punished for me having made a scene change.

21:32And I will say that, that the rules are, I think are a little bit different on the page because you don't always have to pull the camera back. That often you can start in on a single close detail, but you absolutely have to have it be a grounding detail. I think one thing, uh, I love the idea of the vibe because I think I was listening to your list, Mary Robinette, and I was like, so organized, much wow. Uh, but I'm like, meanwhile, in chaos zone, uh, because I think a lot of times I will just, I put a new scene in because it feels like the thing that the character kind of wants to do, which is the same thing you're saying.

22:07Yeah. Just a lot less, like, less, a lot less organized in my head. And a lot of that is, I go back and do a lot of reverse outlining and figuring out, okay, I guess I made a scene here. Is it working for me? And so, you know, I will, I have a piece that I was working on where this woman wants to confront the other woman, like her, her boyfriend's other girlfriend. And so she's in a whole scene being really mad about this girlfriend. So I was like, oh, I guess, I guess she's like, I'm going to find her. I was like, okay, well, I guess, I guess she probably does that. So, so she's like, I found her.

22:39I'm like, okay, so this is that part where she finds that woman and then stuff happens. Um, and you're literally making a scene about someone making a scene. Exactly. Exactly. She's going to go and like scope her out at the bar or whatever she does. And that scene didn't work for me. As I was going back and rereading my entire story, I felt like the vibe was off of like this part. I was like something about this thing where she finds the other woman is just like, it's like dying on the page.

23:10Like I'm reading it and I don't want to read it and I'm writing it like, and I really love these characters. So then I'll, I will go back and feel like what I was missing. What, like, what did I really love about this scene? Like, I love the way she sauntered into the bar and that was really cool. But then I don't know. The other woman's really boring. After being built up in her head, I feel like she's boring in this scene. Yeah. So I was like, okay, let me go back. And like, when I redo it, I will try to make her more interesting, which then changes scenes down the road.

23:40Because I'm like, if I make her more interesting, because this is not true, she is petting a fluffy white cat and cackling, then she now has a fluffy white cat that I have to account for in scenes down the road. Listen, we all love a bar cat. I will, I, I have, I have run into that exact circumstance where I. Really, petting a fluffy white cat in a bar? Okay, it wasn't, it wasn't a bar. It was a bodega. Um, the, the, the circumstance where I, I have a scene, an important piece of the story that I feel needs to be told and I try to tell it and I don't love it.

24:14It breaks the mood. It breaks the vibe. It breaks the flow. It breaks something. Um, and I, I lean into my humor toolbox and the tool I call noises off, which is, um, the story you tell yourself about that scene is going to be way more interesting than the story I told myself. And so I skip the scene entirely and have, to use your example, you know, she reports back, yep, found her in the bar. Um, and, and she has like, you know, toilet paper in her nose. You got, she got punched in the face and that's all we know.

24:46Yep. I found her. We talked. I'm done. Had enough. And, and then we move on with the rest of the story. Well, one thing I want to also point out is we've been talking about scenes in a very contained way, right? The individual scene is an, a moment in time of a series of actions that happen in this continuous way. There are ways to complicate that, right? There's ways, you know, one other solution you can add to that is like how we're saying, skip the scene and then sort of layer in flashback of how the scene of the bar unfolded inside

25:16the action of what she's doing after that. Right. So you can mix consequence and, you know, whatever the event was as you're unfolding it. Right. So you don't have to think, I mean, the, the spine of the scene is still continuous events, right? The spine of the scene is still what is happening moving forward in time, but you can deeply complicate that in different ways as you think about how to construct a scene. I'm going to be really problematic for this and say that I actually think that flashbacks are separate scenes within a, and, and the reason is we'll talk about this when we get

25:50to transitions, because I think there's a difference between a scene break and what I call a through scene, which is where one scene flows directly into another scene. Question for you. I mean, I know we're digging into semantics, but that's kind of what this episode is in a certain way. If you have a moment where she's walking down the street, there's two lines of her walking, three lines of her thinking about what happened at the bar, two lines of her walking, are each of those individual scenes, or do you feel like you have two scenes layered on top of each other that you're cutting in between? And that's more of a transition question rather than a scene question. A scene witch?

26:20Yeah, it's a scene witch. Yes, I'm going to- It's a scene layer game. Oh my gosh. Yes, I think it's a scene witch. Do we need to transition into another episode about transitions? Not just yet, because I have one person more thing, but go with the scene witch. So I want to distinguish between memories and flashbacks. Yeah. So memory is, she's thinking about it, that is part of that continuous action. It is part of what is happening in that moment versus a flashback. Sometimes you see them go into italics.

26:51Sometimes it's just like where the character, there's a separate thing that happens that is a moment of continuous action. So for me, those are two scenes that are happening simultaneously that you're cutting back and forth between. Right. And I guess I was thinking more about memory in this case. Okay, memory is part of that. I guess all I'm saying is you can play with time inside an individual scene and sort of whether or not it's a scene witch or an individual scene, I think it is useful to think about,

27:23but also in some ways is a reminder that you can use character interiority to complicate what a scene can feel like in really useful ways for your reader. Yeah. And I think this is kind of pulling back from the scene, which sadly for the moment, but I think one of the things that I will do in figuring out what should be in the scene is somewhat similar to your list, Mayor Robinette, but I am a simple woman. And so I will... I only use the scene on that.

27:55I don't use that list all the time. This is the point where the narrator cuts in and says, no, she's not. She was not a simple woman. But I often just, I go with my like who, when, where, why, and how, which is like kind of what you're talking about. But I will say like, what is off? Because a lot of times if I'm thinking about a scene, it's because I don't like it. If I'm, if I like it, I don't think about it. It's just like, it's part of the story. And so I will think like, where is the issue? Like I was saying in that scene, the who was the issue. The who was boring.

28:25Therefore, I needed to change maybe what they were doing to make the who more interesting. And in the interest of tools, not rules, the tool there is a lot of the structure that we're talking about with regard to scenes is a troubleshooting tool for you. You only run into it when your brain tells you there's something wrong with what I just wrote. I think what's really interesting is the scene is such an elemental building block of what a story is, that each of us individually have expressed very core ideas of how we approach things.

28:55You know, Meraunet, you have a lot of structure here. You know, I'm, I'm vibe forward, right? Like, I just want to stress that I have a lot of structure sometimes like that is the toolbox that I, well, specifically, I am going to call this out specifically that toolbox is something that I reach for when I am having a bad brain day on, on good brain days. I'm just going on vibes and following the story, but on bad brain days or when I'm trying to do pre-planning and I don't know the story yet, that that's a toolbox. And I don't, even there, I will sometimes use it as a troubleshooting thing later.

29:27Sorry. I just need to. No, a hundred percent. The idea that. I'm partially making a joke here, but, you know, I do think there's also something interesting about, there's something so deeply rooted about what a scene is that we're sort of very much leaning on very internal structures of how we think about our approach to creating things. Yeah. Anyways. I just don't want people to think I'm organized. I don't want people to think Aaron is simple. No, that's so true. Well, with that, now that we have judged ourselves thoroughly, it is time for your homework.

29:59And what I want you to do is to sort of take that index card, do a little bit of looking at scenes in something that you have written. However you define scenes is really up to you because I can't see what you're doing. So take a scene or two and then look at what sort of are the, take through the list that Mary Robinette had, do who, what, where, when, why, how, mark the vibe, take everything you possibly can and write it out about those scenes and then change something.

30:33Look at those. And when you look at it, say, is there something in here that I can change and rewrite that scene? This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

30:46Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dong Wan Song, Aaron Roberts, and Howard Taylor. This episode was engineered by Marshall Carr Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. For more information, visit writingexcuses.com.