About Scenes

Stories are made up of scenes. Every story has at least one scene and most have many. With novels, we often think in terms of chapters, but a chapter is just an arbitrary means of dividing the text into chunks that can be read conveniently in one setting. The scene is a basic unit of a story. A chapter may contain several, but it is conceivable that a scene will cross the boundaries of chapters, though this rarely happens.

A scene has a setting. A scene that takes place at night in a trailer is very different from a scene that takes place during the day that the White House. When a story changes setting, we change to a different scene.

A scene has a cast. Suppose we place our protagonist in a trailer at night. He does something and then leaves. That is a scene. Now, if our antagonist shows up at the same trailer and has no interaction with our protagonist, does something and leaves, that is a completely different scene.

A scene shows change. If we enter a scene one way, we should leave it another. If our cast enters the scene with hope, they should leave with despair. It they enter the scene in despair, they should leave with hope. But they should never leave unchanged. Imagine our protagonist sleeping on the couch in the trailer. If we leave the scene and he is still sleeping on the couch, then we don’t have much of a scene. Instead, we could enter the scene with him sleeping peacefully, only to be awakened by a noise, which he goes off to investigate. Or we could have him out looking for something, after he finds it, he comes back to the trailer and collapses on the couch, falling asleep.  What we wouldn’t want is for the character to be sleeping, wake at a noise, investigate and then fall back asleep in one scene. Essentially, nothing has changed in this scene and it can be cut.

Comments

Michelle D. Argyle said…
Great thoughts here! I talked to a writing friend a little while ago who said she once dealt with a writer who didn't know what scenes were. And even though I've written three novels, I sometimes have a hard time discerning when one scene ends and another begins. Sometimes the lines are really blurred, but perhaps that's where I should look at revising to make it more clear.
July 30, 2009 at 10:21 AM
Timothy Fish said…
Yeah, they tend to be much more blurry in a novel than they are in a screenplay. The very real physical limitations of movie making prevent one scene from moving seamlessly into the next. In a novel, there is nothing to prevent us from having a character discuss something with a family member at home, get in a car, drive across town and then discuss something with a friend, taking the reader along for the ride. With a movie, we would have a very definate scene break to allow the crew to set up at the new location. If we use it well, I think this can be one of the advantages of the novel format. We also have a blurry scene division when the setting stays the same and cast of one scene overlaps with the cast of another. As writers, we will benefit from knowing when our scenes change, but the reader doesn't have to know. A smooth transition can help keep the reader's nose glued in the book.
July 30, 2009 at 12:17 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more