How to write scenes that readers love
As it is above, so it is below.
What does general story structure teach us about scenes?
Story structure has what I consider a nested quality, which simply means that patterns on the macro plot level are repeated down to the most infinitesimal speck of your sentence structures. As it is above, so shall it be below and the way you design your story is no different.
Plots—in general terms—consist of three simple parts: the beginning, the middle, and the end. But a plot, kind of like your life, is difficult to plan from start to finish as one unit. It’s simply too big.
The best way to figure out the details to tell your story is to set a goal (the main character dies at the end) and then drill to a smaller, more manageable level to plan your way to that grim ending. By that reasoning, you might think that you could start with writing an opening line, trot out your best Dickens’ imitation—“it was the best of times, it was the worst of time”—and go from there merrily typing until you hit everyone’s favorite phrase, the end.
Think again.
Just as gazing up at the monolith of plot is too expansive for one person to apprehend its full dimensions, looking down on the sentence with a loving but constricted gaze is too small to understand a story in its fullest expression.
I want to propose a middle way: the scene.
What is a scene?
A scene is the basic building block of story. Like story, scene is also constructed of a beginning, a middle, and an end.
A scene is unique because it’s the smallest unit available in story that accommodates different approaches to writing; big enough for one to put a lot of time into planning—really working out the details of that beginning, middle, and end—while being small enough that others can easily design a scene just by following artistic instinct.
Further, the size of a scene also allows for the writer to keep their sanity during the process of designing a story because it’s small enough to manage without wanting to quit but big enough that it isn’t so boring to write that you’ll be lulled into a stupor. More importantly, a story that’s well-designed at the scene level nearly always hangs together at the macro-level of plot.
How are scenes structured?
Scenes are constructed with a beginning, middle, and an end but a more useful way of thinking about these concepts are as a hook, a build, and a payoff.
The hook of your scene introduces us to the world that the characters are in right now. This consists of setting and exposition (a mercifully short explanation of any necessary backstory) but also what’s at stake right now. Every character wants something all of the time and the hook is where that’s identified through action, dialogue, gesture, or narration.
You could write the hook of your scene about a woman who’s been having a tough go at it, mostly because she’s a chronic liar. Her life is sluggish, friends non-existent, career stupefying and her performance is suffering as a result. She’s on her last legs with the bosses and has been told that the next time she’s late to work she might as well not even bother coming in.
Things don’t seem like they’ll end well, except when your hook opens she’s made a resolution to get her life together. Our heroine is up early, eating a wholesome breakfast, even hitting the road for a quick run just to get the endorphins flowing. She luxuriates in a hot shower, whips out the expensive exfoliants and lotions—her phone cranked up with some power tunes—then she’s in her best clothes and out the front door with almost 15 minutes to spare.
In this hook we know something about her past, even more about what she stands to lose, and a clear desire for something better in her life. To transition a hook into the build, introduce a threat that can stop that character from getting whatever it is they want.
The build is where things get juicy. Our character is now under threat—externally, internally, supernaturally, whatever. In the build of your scene they plan, plot, agonize, threaten, flee, or attack whatever is getting in their way. Some call this introduction of the threat a crises question.
Let’s return to our remotivated heroine. Finally, finally, things are going well and she’s taking control of her destiny. To make the morning even better, she packed her lunch—to avoid going out to eat on her credit card—and she can feel it swinging against her hip as she glides outside to leave. Everything’s perfect.
Until she gets in her car. It won’t start. It appears that she’s driven way too far with her gas light on.
Our heroine is crafty, she’s taken a picture of her last flat tire just to have visual backup in case she ever needed to lie to the boss and skip out of work. She can easily send the old picture of the flat tire now and save herself some embarrassment. But she’s turned over a new leaf and wants to be someone that people can trust.
Does she save herself with the built-in excuse or tell the truth and face the consequences of her decisions? This crisis question and what our heroine chooses to do is exactly what makes up the build in a scene.
The pay-off that closes a scene is the pivotal moment where a scene turns. You’ll hear this a lot: plot is a character making decisions under pressure. On the micro-level so is a scene. The pay-off is where the character finally does something to respond to their circumstance.
Sort of.
Not every scene is the result of an action by characters. Most should be but it’s not necessary. Scenes can turn on action but also revelation, surprise, coincidence or a reinterpretation of past events. The intensity of the conflict and agency of your character—as well as the gravity of the stakes—is higher when scenes turn on action, less so on revelation, then surprise, etc. All of these techniques for turning scenes should be present for your story to feel balanced and lifelike but plot should mostly be advanced by action since, to repeat, plot is just characters making decisions under pressure.
Let’s return to our pay-off and turn the scene on action. What does our heroine do? She takes a deep breath. There’s nothing more she wants in the world at this moment than to be someone else. Someone people trust. Respect. Even admire. Our lady decides she can’t get there by lying and puts her phone away. Her friends have all left or she’s told them off so there’s no one to call for a ride. Hell, this woman doesn’t even have a gas can. Emergency preparedness hasn’t ranked high before today. She decides, fully understanding that she will be late, to walk to work. 6 hard miles in terrible shoes. If she can’t keep her job, she can at least regain her conscience.
That’s a crazy choice, right? Sure, but that’s how characters are. It’s good for the writer though. Whatever wild decision a character makes in the pay-off just sets up the hook for the next scene by laying out the new stakes that result from this decision. You can repeat this process—with some other techniques included—all the way through until you have enough scenes to comprise a finished story.
Writing scene-by-scene, focusing on the three elements—hook, build, pay-off—is difficult at first. Some of it will come naturally but many times you will attempt a build that’s clunky and inconsistent with what you’ve written before, other times the pay-off won’t be quite dynamic enough to set-up the build of the following scene. That’s okay. Take some time practicing this technique on something other than your current story to get better at it. When you feel comfortable, apply it to your work in progress.
It just might be what you need to hook, build, and pay-off that important novel you’ve been trying so hard to finish.
