The Problem
How to keep readers content, on board, and clear about what's happening — as the stakes raise and the drama grows more complex?
In the last lesson, I argued two things:
- Writing stories will become a lot easier and more satisfying if you assume that your primary job is to create (and then go on deepening) a relationship between the reader and a main character.
- The best way to start writing like that is to plan your chapters in terms of scenes. I also suggested that a normal chapter will contain one to two scenes.
The question then becomes — what is a scene?
What parts does it have? And in what order?
This Lesson Contains
- Technique: what a scene contains
- Handout: grandma tells a spooky tale
- Practice: realisation after driving
The video for this lesson (above) argues that a scene has five main components:
- orientation
- setting
- forward motion
- reflection
- exposition
On the one hand, setting and exposition are probably the easiest to grasp. Yet, in general, many writers introduce these two elements too early in a scene. It's fine to say, at the start of a scene: "The sun was low in the sky," and let that be all the setting info you need; you can return to the setting later, once the action has intrigued the reader, and start talking about the cold on the hero's neck, the mist on the hills.
Orientation is the element I most worry that non-famous writers omit, or skimp on: grounding the reader in the protagonist's point of view, mindset, goals and fears. Similarly, many writers fail to keep writing reflections and realisations as the scene progresses. They assume that the reader is now on board, that the meaning of the action is clear.
Worksheet: Grandma Tells a Tale (download)
This worksheet lets your practise alternating forward motion with reflections.
Reflections keep the scene feeling meaningful, and they also allow you to fill even quiet scenes with dramatic feeling. Small events can cause powerful reactions, after all.
As you'll see, the scene in the worksheet has an obvious ticking clock: Emily must get home eventually, and if she stays too late her parents will call (or come looking for her).
However, there is also a second clock, which Emily doesn't appreciate until later: she will have to walk through the woods to get home, and the night will have fallen, and her grandma's mysterious lover is still walking among the trees, looking not a day older than he did fifty years before.
Get the worksheet here: Grandma tells a spooky tale.
Interactive: Your Protagonist Re-orients
Even when an orientation seems unnecessary, you should still begin the scene with one. After all, you can always remove it later, in editing.
But you probably won't.
In fact, an orientation at the start of a scene is a great place to update the reader on how the character's emotions have developed, even if the last scene only ended seconds before.
Here's an example.
Imagine that Scene 5 of your novel ended with the protagonist, Maurice, deciding he had to tell his friend about his true feelings. He texted that he was coming over and called an Uber.
Scene 6 begins. He is arriving at his friend's place. Only twenty minutes, at most, have passed. You might feel tempted to skip the orientation. Don't.
Instead, use the orientation to show how Maurice's mood has developed in the car.
Here's how you might use this "instant orientation" in your own story.
PS Just like in the last class, this activity is interactive, and you can take it as many times as you like to see all the different options.
Just enter your email address to get your answers sent over to you.
Grandma tells a spooky story: Emily starts looking at her watch and glancing out the window. She thinks, how could Grandma not see how totally creepy, stalkery this guy was?? Finally, she says, “Grandma, thanks for the story but I really have to go.” Grandma winds down and seems disappointed that her granddaughter doesn’t sympathize more. She finishes by saying, “Well, he walked into the woods one day and didn’t come back. Sometimes I imagine he’s still out there waiting for me.” Oh great, Emily thinks, now I have to think about that all the way home.” Grandma hugs her and says, “You remind me so much of me at your age. He’d have enjoyed meeting you.” And Emily steps into the darkness outside Grandma’s house.
Maurice was angry at his parents for not letting him go on a date with his girlfriend. She came to the house looking like a prostitute with a mini skirt, heavy make-up and a skimpy top. His mother didn’t like the new girlfriend and told him to go to his room. She told the girlfriend to go home and to never come back.
Maurice did not go to his room, but turned to his mother and said, “What right do you have to judge my girlfriend?” He felt so angry he almost hurt his mother.
An explosion of light travelled across the heavens, and like the heavens John’s mind was in turmoil. It had been five years since his father’s murder. The murderer was now his stepfather. He had hastily married John’s mother, packed him off to Cerne Abbas to wait on the monks and then declared his father’s death was an accident. John was determined to have his revenge.
Grandma tells a spooky story: Emily’s reaction. Emily feels a twinge of guilt. Grandma had been living alone out here for so many years. Maybe she’d begun telling herself stories. She would ask her parents if grandma could move in with them, in town. It would be good for grandma, and Emily would love to have grandma nearby for her steady support.
Emily asked her grandmother, “When did you have a lover? All I remember is grandpa.”
Emily’s grandmother looked feral on most days, like an abandoned lost cat, except when Emily was around. This was the first time Emily glimpsed her soul. She saw that talking about this man and her young days, a gleam of nostalgia appeared over grandmother’s usually scattered gaze, and her features seemed to arrange themselves into a younger, sorted version of herself.
Emily knew then: it was both the power and the bane of the women of the family – this ability to obsess over something or someone.
“Who was this man?” she asked again, pulling her grandmother out into the present from the morass of the past.
“Ohhum,” Nanna smacked her lips together, a little upset about being disturbed from her intangible meal, and said, “This was before your grandfather.” The gleam replaced moist glistening and a single drop threatened to fall down from spindly white lashes, “He left. The young man left for the woods one night and never came back.”
“Do you think he’s alive?”
“Oh, how I wish.” Nanna grabbed Emily’s softer hands in her hard bony ones, smiling the ghost of a smile. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to see him again? Dashing charmer that he was!”
Note: video is too quiet. I’ve turned the sound all the way up and still have trouble hearing it.
Try it again now!
Grandma tells a scary story, Emily’s reaction:
The room had cooled several degrees, and the pimples on Emily’s skin brushed against her t-shirt.
‘Grandma, who was this man?’
‘He was the light in the dark,’ her eyes had glazed over staring past her. Emily had never seen her Grandma so fixated. Who was he and where did he go? All thoughts and hope of dancing forgotten Emily wanted to know more about this stranger and how he had her Grandma in a trance all these years later.
This lesson is great at pushing me to feel the shifts in mood that people really go through. I’ll use it in my WIP.
The light had shifted in the room. It grew late. She pushed her grandmother to continue her story.
“What did he look like? How did you meet him?” Emily’s dour mother had driven into her the need for proper introductions. They were demanded by the locals to keep out the bad apples.
Was this man one of those? But this was her mother’s mother, and her mind couldn’t set right the image of her beloved tender grandmother as someone who did anything daring and dangerous. Yet as her grandmother described the pale man with the yellow flecks in his eyes, Emily’s breath became shallow. The older woman’s voice slowed. And as a blush bloomed in her old face, time seemed to stop.
Emily’s thoughts travelled to the woods. Having never quite understood why the village girls trembled at the mere mention of the woods, she had always secretly admired those whose confidence, or perhaps it was simply their occupation, led them into the thickly dark place that swallowed light. She felt a thrill, thinking of the shadows that now lengthened and darkened.
Would this change with her grandmother’s old story of this long-forgotten strange man that came from the woods?
Her feet tapped and her mind grew restless, chasing the very same shadows that would soon vanish into the darkness.
Emily tells her grandmother she has to use the bathroom and exits the room. She goes into the bathroom and shuts the door, then calls her mother. “Mom, don’t worry. I’m at grandma’s. I think you and Daddy should come. Grandma might need to go to the doctor. She’s reciting Daddy’s screenplay again… like it really happened.”
Grandma tells a Spooky Tale:
“I take it you met this guy before you and Grandpa got together?” said Emily. She kicked herself as soon as she asked it, thinking that she might regret the answer.
“Oh, I have photo of him! Let me go get it! said Grandma, completely ignoring Emily’s question.
She’d never seen her Grandma act this way. It was as if her eyes were off in some far-off place and not with Emily anymore. She didn’t want to see a photo of this guy. The whole story was freaking her out. This hadn’t turned out to be as encouraging as she’d hoped, and she suddenly just wanted to get home. And fast.
In your scene diagram (15:46), does the “sequel” come in once all those listed things are done? Or is it woven around at the end in the final reflection or exposition? Thanks!
A true “sequel” would come at the very end. The protagonist has tried to do something and failed (or succeeded) and now they must consider what they have done and try to figure out what to try next.
However, that diagram also suggests that moments of reflection can come anywhere in the scene — it doesn’t all have to wait for the sequel.
Is that helpful?
good, concise lesson
Wow, I love this. Thank you.