by Auburn Seal • September 27, 2016 • Follow
Published in Publishing Tips • No comments
How do eat an elephant? One bite at time. How do you write a novel? One scene at a time.
You could actually break that down further and say one sentence at a time, but I like to think in scenes when I sit down for a chunk of time to write. It feels less overwhelming for me to construct a scene in a sitting and I get a joyful sense of accomplishment when I know I’ve written through the natural arc of scene.
So what should a scene include?
You may have noticed that a scene has a similar arc to that of your entire book. The setup, the rising action, and then the resolution. Isn’t that interesting? You have a bunch of mini-stories tied together to create a larger story. I like to think of it like each day of our life is compiled to form the story of our week, our month, our year. Some of our days are action packed and some days are about recovering from those crazy days.
Scene construction can be fairly intuitive. Here’s a bonus tip. Go watch one of your favorite movies. Get your notepad and pen out and take notes as you watch. Watch the way they do individual scenes and then they way they string them together. Be prepared to pause and take detailed notes. You’ll notice that some scenes are slow and languid, informative and feel like set-up while other scenes are fuller, more active, more meaningful. But all the scenes serve a purpose. (At least all the good ones do!)
I’ve learned a lot of what I know about scenes from my own personal reading and (gasp!) watching television and movies, but also from reading other experts. Randy Ingermanson, developer of the super-awesome Snowflake method and author of Writing Fiction for Dummies, has some fantastic articles about scene construction. For more in depth instruction and some great examples, you should definitely check out his site.
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Auburn Seal is the author of eight books including historical fiction, cozy mystery, paranormal romance, and science fiction. She doesn't believe in dipping her toe in the water of experimentation, but rather jumping in and making the biggest splash possible. Her first book, Roanoke Vanishing, was published in 2013. Discover more about Auburn and her various projects at www.auburnseal.com