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This is Elizabeth Stark in the Book Writing World. Welcome to Plan Your Book, Week 10, Detail and Scene.
Story—whether non-fiction or fiction—unfolds through scene. A voice-driven narrative might contain diatribes from the protagonist’s perspective, and yes, we can hover around inside some characters’ heads as they muse and ponder, but really, story is what happens. Think of talking with a best friend who’s just gone on a date with someone your friend describes as odd. Do you want your friend’s analysis and abstract musings, or do you want the juicy details, do you want, in other words, to decide for yourself what really happened based on . . . what actually happened?
A scene, then, is something you could film (with the added benefits that writing allows, like interiority and associations). Think in concrete details—what something looks like, smells like, feels like, tastes like, and sounds like.
Remember character arc? We looked at how your protagonist moved from one state to an opposite state, from happiness to misery or visa versa, for example. Well, you want that kind of movement in each scene as well. Something changes, something reverses course, turns around or is revealed. Sure, your characters are also eating dinner, sleeping, sitting around bored, maybe—but we don’t need to see those parts of the story, unless they are germane to your set-up, unless something unexpected is about to blow everything apart.
So look at a possible scene from your book.
Where do you find them? There are about five listed in your Aristotle’s Incline answers, just for starters. You may have possible scenes jotted down on those infamous index cards. Abstract ideas or your own unanswered questions can be converted into scenes by putting them onto specific people, playing them out in concrete situations. Each problem and solution in your problem/ solution list contains a scene or more than one scene. And the fact of there being a problem and an attempted, but usually failed, solution means that things are going to change.
Okay. Have you picked a scene from your story or invented one?
Answer the following questions about the scene you’ve picked, and then write a one-page scene in which something changes.
Here are the questions:
1) Where does the scene end?
End? Yes, where does the scene end, what changes, what unexpected event or revelation occurs?
Okay, now:
2) What is an opposite place to begin that scene? You can go back to Aristotle’s Incline: what is the status quo at the start of the scene, the set up that is about the change?
Once you know the answers to these questions, drop down into the world you are describing or creating and take your reader through the concrete moments that build toward the revelation or reversal in your scene. Remember to address the senses and make or let things actually happen. Have fun. If nothing else, have fun.