This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
If words are the raw material of your novel, then scenes are the building blocks. If you spend time crafting solid scenes, your novel will end up a mighty castle, rather than a… pile of broken stones.
I must admit, I’ve only recently worked out what makes a scene a scene. I had comments on an early book (from my agent, so we’re not talking ‘rubbish first draft’ stuff, here) that said ‘I like this bit, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. The characters are just chatting’. It was excellent editorial advice and I acted on it immediately (by removing the fun, but pointless, chat), but I hadn’t truly understood the problem; there was no conflict.
In fairness to my confused self, if you ask ten writers what defines a scene you’re likely to get ten different answers. Some people say that a scene occurs in a specific time and location – as soon as you move location, you’re into the next scene. Others say that it’s to do with POV (Point of View) or number of words.
The conflict concept wasn’t clear, either. I could see that I needed conflict in those broken scenes, but I was confused as to the nature of ‘conflict’. I knew it didn’t necessarily mean a boxing match, but that didn’t help. Then I read something by author and teacher Holly Lisle that made things click into place; rather than thinking about ‘conflict’, she said the key was ‘change’. In other words, for a scene to work (or to be a scene, really), something has to change.
A character’s mood can change (from sad to happy, calm to angry, contented to worried). Or the reader’s perspective can change: A character that they thought was one type of person (a good guy, perhaps), is shown to have another side. The action or plot can change with the revelation of new information.
The change can be small or large, but once it’s happened, the scene is done and you get out as soon as possible and onto the next one.
For a really good scene, the change should make the reader want to continue, it should launch them into the next scene (and the next and the next). As you can imagine, this is especially important if the scene is placed at the end of a chapter.
The good news is that it’s relatively easy to concentrate on small chunks of text like scenes (as opposed to the sprawling landscape of the novel), and by crafting these blocks so that they include change, you’ll be moving the story forward with every single one.
Recommended reading: Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle