Struggling with Scenes

I think a lot about how to create powerful scenes, both in my writing and my teaching. What is it that makes a scene stick with you? What are the elements that go into creating that picture in your head that takes you deep inside the story on the page?

Conversely, what makes a scene fall flat, drag, not do its job to advance the plot or deepen a character?

Some of the qualities of a scene are ineffable and have to do with voice and style. Where the scene occurs, what has gone before and how it was prepared can also have a deep impact on the effectiveness of a scene.

But I think there’s something to be gained by taking the concept of scene out of its context a little and dissecting it—with the object of being able to put it back together better. So, for this post, I’ll focus on a single aspect of a scene.

Situation is at the foundation

I think one of the biggest issues I see when I’m working with clients is just making the space characters occupy in a given scene clear without bogging it down with description. In order to do that, you have to have an image in your own mind as to what the space (indoor or outdoor) looks like.

Will that image translate exactly to your reader? No. Nor should it. The act of reading is an act of imagination. I find it utterly mysterious and magical how a collection of words on a page can conjure up such distinct and lively images. Those images are only suggested by the writer. They are brought to life in the mind of the reader. And each reader’s sense of what a scene’s location looks like and feels like will be different.

This fundamental fact is part of what makes the process so difficult to achieve well. How much of what you see should you try to convey to the reader so they are well situated but can let their imagination go to work?

Of course, there’s no hard and fast rule. But if you’re having trouble with a scene that just doesn’t feel right, or that you know leaves a reader floating around in an indeterminate space (and we’ve all done that), you might want to step back and ask a few questions as you start to write:

• Has the reader been in this place with the characters before?

• If so, what was the atmosphere/mood? And is that aspect the same in this scene or different?

• Is there anything about the place that is essential to understanding the action in the scene?

  • I think of a thriller scene, where someone is attacked in a kitchen and must work their way to the knife block to pull out a weapon, for instance. Where is the block? What’s in the way that prevents the character reaching it? etc.

  • And don’t forget to engage all the senses in this description—the sweat on the victim’s palms; the darkness; the cool marble countertop, for instance.

And those are just the physical characteristics of the space. Your job as a writer is to figure out what you need to say, and perhaps more importantly, what needs to be left out.

I give an exercise in my Character Choreography Course where I ask the student to over-describe the place of their scene, digging in deep and thinking of everything that might be noticed, with all five senses. Then start paring back, cut, cut, cut until you know you’ve situated the reader in a way that doesn’t inhibit their own imagination.

What you choose to keep will depend a lot on the nature of the scene, where it occurs in the plot, and where it is in the arcs of the participating characters.

TV has a lot to answer for…

Now, I love watching TV and movies. This is not an indictment of the entertainment, which can certainly rise to an art form.

What I mean, though, is that as consumers of stories, we have grown accustomed to accepting someone else’s interpretation of the physical space a scene occupies. That visual experience fixes the scene in a certain form in our minds, thus removing the necessity for our brains to supply it.

I think that’s why cinematic stories are accused of being a lazy form of entertainment. That by no means diminishes their appeal, to me at least, I hasten to add.

It also explains why we can get so heated about film adaptations of our favorite books. As readers, we have a distinct idea of where we were in the story, what the places looked like—even in the most or least evocatively described settings. It can be jarring to suddenly have a house we’d pictured in one way presented to us as completely different.

What’s the answer? Exposure.

Something I’ve taken to doing lately is watching every adaptation of all of the novels I love, from the earliest available to the most recent.

For instance, Emma. I have been able to watch five of them:

• 1972 BBC mini-series version (this one is missing from all the lists I looked at!)

• 1996 movie with Gwyneth Paltrow

• 1996 movie with Kate Beckinsale

• 2009 mini series with Romola Garai

• 2020 movie with Anya Taylor Joy

There was an earlier Emma, 1948, which I have not found, and most lists include Clueless in the existing Emma adaptations.

Setting aside for the moment the different characters (and I do have my favorites but not sharing them here), each one gives such a distinct sense of the setting—the structures, the town, its atmosphere, the rooms etc. I find myself utterly fascinated by how each director interpreted the location, (understanding of course that their interpretation might have been limited by availability).

What I mean by exposure, though, is that seeing all these different settings has in some way purged any specific image of what the world was like from my mind. The reason for that is partly that Austen does very little describing. For instance, here is Austen’s introduction of the Crown Inn ballroom through the eyes of Frank Churchill:

He saw no fault in the room, he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No, it was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the very number for comfort. They ought to have balls there at least every fortnight through the winter.

As far as economy of description goes, I think this is a winner! It gives a sense of the size and quality of the room, and just before this, we see Churchill looking in through a ground-floor window to assess it, so we know that about it as well. Of course, she was writing for readers who would have been pretty familiar with such settings, and I imagine would have assumed they would supply from their own experience a place that would work for her characters.

Perhaps this economy is one of the many reasons adaptations of Jane Austen are so very popular. The novels leave scope for both the readers’ imaginations and any erstwhile directors, while still providing enough detail.

That’s an extreme example of course. Sometimes more detailed descriptions are necessary. And much of the place can be evoked through the characters’ reactions, internal and external.

If you want to know a little more about my philosophy of scene building, I invite you to check out my free half-hour workshop, Why Character Choreography?

Now, back to figuring out my own scenes!