Writing Compelling Scenes: by Angie Powers

A scene at its most basic is simple action that occurs in one place and time. We’ve all heard that definition. But if you are reading this, you’re probably not really wondering what a scene is, but how to write a successful scene. And the answer to that is a little more complicated.

I think of scenes, chapters and whole novels a bit like waves. They carry a similar structure or form, and yet they can vary from the small ripple caused by a breeze to a tsunami brought on by a giant earthquake. And then there are the swells in between that are enough to make most folks sick if you’re on a small boat. The point is, you write a sentence so that your reader will want to read the next one, you write a scene so your reader will want to read the next one, you write a chapter so that your reader will want to read the next one, you write a book, well, so that your reader will want to read the next one.

So the answer to “how do I write a successful scene” is by developing your reader’s interest, and then teasing the reader.

And how do you do that?

You do it by creating a crest and a trough. We’ve all seen Aristotle’s incline. It has a high point and a low point. But books don’t really work that way. They work more like a rising tide. They push up, and pull back, they push farther up the beach, and recede a little less. So how you write an effective scene depends in part on where you are in your book. Whatever you might think of The DaVinci Code, the book has masterful cliffhangers at the end of each chapter — those chapters drove millions of people to keep reading well after they were tired and were supposed to turn out the light and go to bed. And for those of you who are worried about being literary – Dickens probably taught Dan Brown all he needed to know. But if the whole chapter had been tension, tension, tension, then the ending tension would be boring. A plateau. Neither crest nor trough. And we all know what happens when we have no tension.

So when constructing your scene, you create tension by leaving your reader with scene with a question — what’s going to happen next? Or you release tension by resolving a question — here are the consequences of what went before. And be assured, you need both. An example:

Scene one – A mother and daughter have a conversation about bread, what it needs to be ready. We all know they’re really talking about sex. The other thing WE know, and the daughter doesn’t, is that the mother is currently having an affair. So, our readers go through the scene wanting to find out what will happen. And we don’t resolve that tension, instead we end the scene on the entrance of the unsuspecting partner just as the daughter is getting an idea of what is really going on. And Cut.

Scene Two — And this isn’t necessarily chronological — The daughter goes to an old-fashioned car wash with her other parent. As they sit in the car, he reminisces about his youth, how great he felt. And the daughter tells him about her suspicions about her mother’s affair — as the soapy giant mops swish over the windshield and roof, and the world is still dark and humming. At first he doesn’t respond. And then he does. He says, “I know.” And the two of them slide silently out into the spring afternoon with the smell of cardboard pine and a high five from the car wash worker.

The first scene gets us curious. What will happen? And that occurs in part because of dramatic irony — we know something the daughter doesn’t and we want to know when she will know what we do. It isn’t the only tactic to create a question, but it’s a good one.

The second scene resolves the question. What will happen if he knows? He knows. So the next question is why doesn’t he care? What the heck is going on here? Why did he high-five the car wash worker? Even though the tension is relieved for that question – a new one takes its place and we move on. Maybe, maybe, on your very last scene, you could leave the scene without a question. But that’s just a maybe.

Writing is an exploration in emotion and your job is to know — to the best of your ability — what your reader is feeling at a given moment and to use that to create an experience that will wash away the rest of the world and leave your readers on their own wondrous, deserted island.

What strategies do you use to create curiosity in your readers?

 

Angie Powers has an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she won the Amanda Davis Thesis Award for her novel, The Blessed. She also has a Certificate in Screenwriting from the Professional Programs at UCLA. She is the co-director and co-writer of the short Little Mutinies (distributed by Frameline and an official selection of the Palm Springs International Short Fest) and was a quarter-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and at Blue Cat Screenplay Competition for the full-length screenplay of Little Mutinies. She’s twice made it into the second round of consideration for Sundance Labs and is a Cinestory semi-finalist this year. She also wrote and directed the short Hot Date, which premiered at Frameline. She is currently finishing a new novel and a short film.