Why Your Scenes Don’t Work

Here’s how most novices write a scene. They try to describe a scene as realistic as possible. The end result is a scene that’s boring because reality is boring. So the number one reason why most scenes don’t work is because the writer tries to describe reality.

To fix this problem, don’t try to make your scenes as realistic as possible. Try to deceive the audience as much as possible.

When you write a scene, don’t explain everything right away. Try to mislead the audience into thinking they’re seeing one thing but they’re actually seeing something else. In the following scene from “Twisters”, the hero is a female storm chaser who studies science to maximize her chances of success. While she’s waiting for a storm to chase, in comes a man named Tyler and his friends, roaring into the scene, acting wild and totally unscientific as possible.

Not only does Tyler look undisciplined and wild compared to the hero, but his actions make it look like all he cares about is catering to his YouTube audience regardless of the consequences. This first impression of Tyler makes him look like (as one character puts it) a “hillbilly with a YouTube channel.” In other words, Tyler looks like someone who doesn’t care about the dangers of storms, doesn’t understand the science behind storms, and only cares about putting on a show regardless of whatever is going on around him.

The purpose of that scene is to make Tyler look completely unprofessional compared to the hero. Yet, this is all a deception because as we’ll later learn, Tyler actually does care about people and respects the storms.

This deception is necessary because art immediately creates an emotional reaction in both the hero and the audience towards Tyler. From this point on, we’re convinced Tyler is just a publicity hound seeking attention but gradually we’ll learn that this is all an act. As we learn this, we come to sympathize and understand Tyler at the same time the hero does.

So that first scene introducing Tyler is written to deliberately deceive us.

When writing your own scenes, look at how you can mislead and deceive the audience. Most importantly, make sure your scene has a specific purpose. In the “Twisters” scene, the purpose of that scene is to introduce Tyler and make him look as silly and useless as possible so everything in that scene contributes to the idea that Tyler is just a hillbilly running around chasing storms that he doesn’t fully understand.

When you clearly define your scene’s purpose, make sure that scene does nothing but focus on that one singular purpose. In the following scene from “Jaws”, the purpose of the scene is to reveal the motivation of Captain Quint and why he’s so obsessed with finding and killing the shark. Quint explains how he was on the USS Indianapolis, a cruiser that had been torpedoed and sunk while sharks feasted on the surviving crew. By the time Quint gets done explaining what he had gone through, there’s no doubt why Quint wants to kill the shark.

Ultimately scenes don’t work when they lack a clear purpose from the writer’s point of view. What are you trying to accomplish by writing a scene? You aren’t just telling a story. You’re also setting expectations (making us think Tyler is just a hillbilly who doesn’t understand science in “Twisters”) or revealing motivation (explaining Quint’s obsession with sharks in “Jaws”).

If all your scene does it advance your story, it’s not doing enough. Make sure your scene does more and that will only make your overall story stronger as a result.

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