It's been a while since I gave a blog post on writing, and after some discussions with a fellow author, I came to realize how good an idea it was to discuss what is probably one of the most intensive, and yet important, things when it comes to actually writing your story. That very thing is scene building. In this case, how to craft a scene and write it so that it's a great representation of your mind to the viewer.
So, with that, I hope this is an informative post for you.
Scene building is beyond important. This sets the stage for your entire story at each individual moment. While some do, in fact, take a very organic approach to writing a scene out, a lot of times that won't work. What fails at that moment is engaging the reader in this world you're trying to create. If you fail to do that, the dreaded question is asked: why should I care?
Therefore, to that end, I think there are a few of little things you can do to help yourself craft a scene that will pull the readers in and make your scene more than a collection of sentences.
1) Choose Your Character
Writing in the omniscient style is...hard. I'd almost say downright impossible depending on your cast. In fact, if you're going with that style, this whole scene building thing is gonna be a heck of a lot harder with what you'll have to cover.
For the purposes of this, we're going to assume you're not a complete masochist who loves building scenes with 10 plus characters. No, for here, we're going to presume more conventional points of view: third person limited and first person. Now, I personally don't recommend 1st person to people that aren't skilled. It's remarkably tricky, though in the case of a scene building exercise, it does allow a more narrow focus, as you're only seeing it from that character's eyes regardless of everything else.
What straddles the line is going limited: what character do you choose to tell your scene from? And more than that, there's quite a bit to consider. By choosing a character, you're not just choosing who you want to tell the story through (even if it's not directly in their own view), but you're also choosing a flow. Is this character the best to tell the story through without constantly line breaking? Remember that less is more in many cases.
When you choose this character, it's who you think is best for the vehicle of the scene and to cause minimal interruptions to it. This is why choosing a character is something vital.
2) Picking Out Importance
Certain scenes will have more details than others. Certain events have more significance.
Not every scene should be decked out with description. Indeed, three detailed sentences for a simple action shouldn't be there.
When it comes to building a scene, you have to decide whether it's important. Is the characters traveling from Point A to B important? Unless something happens, likely not. To that end, you won't need much to describe that scene. But if it becomes an expository scene, or a scene set somewhere more important, you'll want to go into a bit more detail.
Not all scenes are created equally, and by choosing what's more important over what is not, it can really help you to write a better, more detailed scene where it counts without getting your readers bogged down in pointless details. Though, keep in mind, I'm not saying to skip over unimportant things. That's just choppy editing at best. No, you want what you need in there, but the allocation of detail is determined by importance.
3) The World Doesn't End With You
The heaviest temptation for a writer is to have the scene occur as dictated. A character mentions something, that something suddenly appears. Something previously unmentioned becomes relevant, it makes its appearance.
However, this doesn't work. In 1st Person, it might, since there, unless your character is noted to be the observant type, or someone with a good memory, they may not catch all the intricacies of a scene. Regardless, that's no excuse for things to simply manifest within the story as needed. That is what we call an "asspull".
Instead, to build a scene, what you'll really want to do is make sure the world exists outside of your characters. And by this, I don't mean that one thing is going on in the wider world in some other town away from your characters. By this, I mean that there are people and places that are going to run on regardless of your characters. Perhaps at some point they'll all be affected by your characters, or perhaps they'll be affected by the story; or maybe they'll even continue on their way not even paying attention to your characters. However, they're necessary, because it makes the location feel like a living, breathing thing.
In other words, you're saying that the world does not exist just because the author says it does, but rather because it's going on around all of your characters.
This will also help when you need to bring a new element into a scene (or even a later scene). By building this world as it exists irrespective of the main characters, when those things become relevant, they will no longer exist because the characters said so, but because they were there all along and just became important now.
To use a brief example in order to explain all I'm talking about here, take the scene in Trials when Serena and Bonnie go to Malie City's malasada shop. Serena takes a moment, noting Lillie and Hau (who they're there to meet), the girl at the register and another girl at a counter, kicking her legs back and forth. While Lillie and Hau are the intent of the scene, noting those other two not only allows Hau getting the cashier's number to make sense (because she exists, after all) but when the other girl in the scene, revealed to be Acerola, starts speaking, she feels like she's already been a part of it, but doesn't just exist because it was necessary right then and there. She was already there and only now is called into prominence.
To make this simple: paint a picture for your audience. Imagine what the characters would see. Don't let the world start and end solely with your characters but let it bleed a little into what's beyond them.
4) Dialogue
Dialogue in terms of building a scene is difficult to place. Really, dialogue is a whole different beast unto itself, which is why I'm actually not going to go too in depth here and just list a basic in regards to building the scene.
How, then, does dialogue help in the ultimate building of a scene? Simply put, it's the pacing of it. The naturalness of the conversation. You don't want characters to force a non-sequitur. You don't want things to go horribly off the rails. Instead, each topic should flow into the next. Perhaps break it up with a character's thoughts so it feels like this isn't just a rapid fire ping-pong match, but something that most humans require to have conversation: thought.
That's pretty much what it is. Make the characters human in their dialogue when it pertains to the flow of a scene. They'll think about it, react to what's actually being said, continuing conversation where it's left off. By focusing in on this, not only can it help contribute to the step above in expanding the world beyond the characters, but it can also help let the reader settle in to what's being said and allow them to also get into the flow and feel what the characters feel. They may not know what's coming, but at least when it happens they'll feel it's only natural and right that it did.
Conclusion
Scene building is one of the hardest things to do for an author. The desire to make a scene just trundle along via the characters is a strong one, but if you can resist it, your writing will most certainly take a step up in terms of quality. To this end, you'll want to choose the best character for the job, while maintaining minimal line breaks. You'll want to find the more important scenes, and from there, make sure the world exists beyond your character in that scene. To top it all off, help the dialogue in the scene to flow so that the reader doesn't feel like they're divorced from it all.
If you wrangle this, you'll start becoming a better writer in no time!
Dare to Be Silly,
Epicocity
great to see
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