Scenes: The Bricks That Build

Well, everyone. Here we go again.

Setting out on yet another journey to yet another year of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Today officially starts the month of October, or for me, The Beginning of the Madness. Madness being NaNoWriMo prep month It's also the month where I promise that I will start blogging regularly, but we'll see how that goes.

Let's have a little of my history with this event. This October marks the end of my first full year as a WriMo, or NaNoer. I discovered it last year at about this time, and I believe my thoughts were, "what do I really have to lose."

I won NaNo 2014 with a final count of over 69,000 words, having reached the 50k goal a week before the end of the month. I also participated in April's Camp NaNo, reaching my goal of 40k words in the month.

All this to say, I've been fairly successful with NaNoWriMo, and I'm excited for another month of high word counts and high caffeine intake. 

However, first I must face the cantankerous beast that is the dreaded novel outline. Once upon a time, I was what they call a "panster" (derived from the age-old human art of 'flying by the seat of your pants'), but never again. Perhaps more on that in a later post. Anyway, ever since once disastrous attempt at "pantsing", I've been a die-hard plotter.

I've got my premise, I've got my characters, and I've got a lot of ways this story might go. However, as I sat down to my outline, I realized something.

I'd forgotten everything I knew about scenes.

So, here I sit, armed with a search engine, pen and paper, and my Broadway Spotify playlist. In this post, I hope to explain proper scene structure, while learning it myself.

Yes, let's!

What Is This "Scene" You Speak Of?

Before I began writing, I don't recall having a very good idea of what a scene even was, save from the 'scene selection' menu on DVDs. Now, I've got a better understanding of them.

Scenes are the individual occurrences in your novel.

If you have ever looked at a movie script, you'll see that it's divided into scenes. Let's look at the Original Trilogy Star Wars movies. Scenes there are very easy to pick out, because the transitions seem to be pulled straight from Windows Movie Maker.

Ah, yes. The wipe! A favorite, to be sure.

A scene is meant to give your protagonist something to overcome, to better develop a character, and generally bring your novel closer to the climax. It's a little step into getting the complete story you're after, a little hill on the way to the top of the mountain.

How To Write A Good One

I have to say, I'm a bit new to this. In my last rough drafts, I thought very little about individual scene structure, which means I have to think about it in subsequent drafts, which makes me sad. I decided it'd be better to give them a little more thought this time around.

So, I've been searching the world wide web for good ideas on how to construct a scene that actually works, and I've found a couple pretty interesting resources. However, I find the best way to learn something is to watch someone else do it.

We're going to analyze a scene from the Chronicles of Narnia and see how Lewis did it. The scene I have chosen is from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the ninth chapter, The Island Of The Voices.

Lucy and the magician's book

If I were to outline this scene, here's sort of how it would look.

SCENE __

LOCATION: Island of the Magician

• The Dawn Treader sees the island in the distance and sails to it, landing there.
• It seems deserted, save the house in the distance.
• Lucy gets a rock in her shoe and has to stop to take it out.
• While stopped, she hears voices discussing trapping her friends.
• She waits for them to leave and then goes back to Caspian and the others, reporting what she has heard.
• The crew nears the house, but after hearing Lucy's story, makes the decision to go back to the ship.
• They know they will be stopped by the voices, since they are invisible.
• The voices surround them and threaten their lives if Lucy does not agree to go and undo the spell of invisibility they have cast on themselves.
• There is some disagreement among the Narnians over this, but in the end Lucy decides that she will go into the magician's home in the morning.
• The voices are pleased and invite the crew to supper, which is accepted.

Okay, so. If you break this scene down and look at the structure, it's much like novel structure, but on a smaller scale.

You've got

(1) Inciting incident. The story of this chapter really starts when Lucy gets a rock in her shoe and gets separated from the group. It happens early in the scene, to introduce us to the conflict.

(2) Conflict. If there is no conflict in your scene, it should not be in your book. Just like in your overall novel, your protagonist/focus character needs to have something to overcome. This will keep your story interesting, and prevent the dreaded sagging middle. In this scene, the conflict is between the Narnians and the voices (later revealed to be Dufflepuds, but we'll call them voices for now).

(3) Reaction. Your character(s) need(s) to react to the conflict or dilemma placed before them. Maybe the conflict in a chapter is that your brave hero has reached a very literal fork in the road and he does not know which way he should go. Perhaps your other characters are pressuring him one direction or the other. At the end of the scene, he needs to make his decision. In this example, Lucy decided that she should go and attempt to undo the spell. 

Then, the scene ends and we are given a new scene with a new inciting incident, new conflict, and new reaction. This is a loose pattern to follow, but it will give your rough draft structure and enough steam to keep your reader interested and excited all the way through.

Scenes can be rather tricky, but I find the best way to learn them is to analyze what other, successful authors have done and learn from their expertise.

I hope to be making another post soon as we all prep for NaNoWriMo, so keep an eye out!

-Madison

How do you plan your scenes? Any tips or techniques you use?