The Structure of a Scene
A scene tells a mini-story with a protagonist (not always the hero of your main story) trying to achieve a goal that an antagonist (not always the villain of your main story) is actively trying to block. At the very least, every scene needs to consist of an Intriguing Problem that creates an ongoing Conflict with some sort of Resolution.
Scenes rarely exist in isolation. Instead, scenes link with other scenes to tell a bigger story. To link scenes, you need two additional items: Setups/Payoffs and Cliffhangers. Setups provide information that often seems trivial at first, but which a later scene pays off later by explaining its true significance.
Cliffhangers leave the conflict resolution in the air, which pulls the audience into the next scene.
By leaving a conflict unresolved, cliffhangers force us to find out what happens by waiting for the next scene. That next scene’s Intriguing Problem is actually the previous scene’s cliffhanger ending.
While cliffhangers typically link adjacent scenes, setups can link to later scenes (not always the immediately following scene) through a payoff.
There can be a number of scenes in between the scene that plants the setup and the later scene that provides the payoff. Yet this link between setups and payoffs provides continuity between your scenes so information appears to flow naturally. By planting crucial information earlier in the story through a setup, the later appearance of that information feels logical when it appears as a payoff in a later scene.
(The above is an excerpt from my new book “Making a Scene: Writing the Structure of a Scene.”)
A scene tells a mini-story with a protagonist (not always the hero of your main story) trying to achieve a goal that an antagonist (not always the villain of your main story) is actively trying to block. At the very least, every scene needs to consist of an Intriguing Problem that creates an ongoing Conflict with some sort of Resolution.
Scenes rarely exist in isolation. Instead, scenes link with other scenes to tell a bigger story. To link scenes, you need two additional items: Setups/Payoffs and Cliffhangers. Setups provide information that often seems trivial at first, but which a later scene pays off later by explaining its true significance.
Cliffhangers leave the conflict resolution in the air, which pulls the audience into the next scene.
By leaving a conflict unresolved, cliffhangers force us to find out what happens by waiting for the next scene. That next scene’s Intriguing Problem is actually the previous scene’s cliffhanger ending.
While cliffhangers typically link adjacent scenes, setups can link to later scenes (not always the immediately following scene) through a payoff.
There can be a number of scenes in between the scene that plants the setup and the later scene that provides the payoff. Yet this link between setups and payoffs provides continuity between your scenes so information appears to flow naturally. By planting crucial information earlier in the story through a setup, the later appearance of that information feels logical when it appears as a payoff in a later scene.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”Making-a-Scene-book”]
