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We all want to write scenes that grip our readers and keep them glued to the page! Easier said than done, right? Well, here are four tips that I try to keep in mind every time I sit down to craft a scene. They aren’t 100% fool-proof, but they often help me find that extra oomph to make my scene’s sing.

1)  Make Sure Your Scene Has Dramatic Action.

The number one reason a scene falls flat is because it doesn’t have any dramatic action. Dramatic action is the action the protagonist takes to resolve the problem he has suddenly been faced with.

In STORY, Robert Mckee talks about dramatic action as “story events” and defines them as an “event that creates a meaningful change in the life situation of a character and is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict.”

Well plotted stories are built on stringing together the scenes that have dramatic action. These are the important moments within the character’s life that move the plot forward. For example, we seldom see a character go to the bathroom or sleep, because there’s no dramatic action in these moments. Instead, we pick the scenes that are the most exciting and meaningful for the reader to read.

2)  Is There a Significant Emotional Change in the Scene?

A great way to tell if your scenes have dramatic action is to check and see if there’s a significant emotional change. If the character starts the scene happy and leaves it happy, nothing has happened. But if a character starts happy and leaves sad, then something has happened in the scene to change their life situation and make them sad.

You can track the emotion of your scene by drawing emotion faces (happy faces, frowning faces) at the opening and closing of your scenes. The emotion should reflect the emotion your character carries into the scene, and the emotion the character carries out of it in when it’s over. If the emotion-face is the same, for example both are grumpy faces, then you don’t have any dramatic action in the scene. This indicates that the scene may need to be cut or revised.

3)  Set Up Reader Expectations

Setting up expectations helps the reader to feel the emotional change in a scene. If we know what a character wants and expects as she enters a situation, the reader becomes more invested. They want to see if the character succeeds or fails. You won’t have any reversals and surprises if you haven’t set up any expectations for the reader.

It’s much more exciting to watch a scene where a character scales a cliff if we know he’s afraid of heights, or we know his family is trapped at the top, or we know he thinks he can’t do it. It’s rewarding to see the character defy his fear. It adds tension if we know each misstep means he’s one step further away from saving his family from that fire-breathing dragon above (of course … you’ve got to set that up that dragon!).

4)  Stop Protecting Your Characters

Even though we’re told to “torture our characters” it’s really common for us to protect them instead. Have you ever written as scene and decided to:

• Have an important conversation interrupted by another character/event.
• Had a character freeze up and avoid talking about their feelings in internal monologue.
• Had your character avoid asking an important question? Or had another character avoid answering it?
• Hinted to something, not once, but over and over and over again, and never unveiling the truth until late in the book.
• Bailed your character out of a situation before it reeeeeeally got tough?
• Avoided writing a scene because you the author felt uncomfortable?

All of that, is protecting your character (or in the example of the last one, yourself). The most common culprit is interruption. What’s happening is we start a scene, but the second it gets to the tough questions or uncomfortable conflicts, we bail our characters out of the scene and ask our readers to wait.

Sometimes we think we’re creating mystery and tension by drawing out the answers to questions, or avoiding the main conflicts. In real life we absolutely avoid questions and conflicts. But in drama … well, we want the drama!

Don’t cut off the scene before it gets going. Don’t avoid the dramatic action!

Stop protecting your character by allowing her to wander, avoid, and be bailed out of situations. Lock your characters in a room and make them deal with their conflicts! Be brave and get to the guts of the scene.

Happy scene-writing everyone!

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     Writing with coaches?  Like "Dancing with Wolves," these two phrases don't sound right together.  Yet, this exercise not only got coaches to write, they wrote well. I have done this particular exercise with adults and children, but my most successful session was with a group of middle school coaches.

     The writing workshop was the last item of the day for this school visit. It was a Friday afternoon. A Friday afternoon after school. I don't remember the details, but I had agreed to do an hour's after school writing workshop for faculty. I did think that a Friday afternoon after a long week would not have been my choice. I also assumed I would be working with language arts teachers.

     Imagine my surprise when a group of bedraggled teachers in sweats, sneakers and lanyards stumped into the library, pulling on Gatorade bottles. There was no mistaking their identity.  These were coaches.

     I don't know whose idea it was to make coaches (none of whom taught language arts) sit through an hour of me on a Friday afternoon. Maybe they were being punished. All I could think it was "OMG this is going to be the worst workshop ever. Thank God I already have my paycheck."

     Bad, bad me, for all my preconceived notions of coaches (OK, I have to admit I am still harboring my own middle school issues with PE teachers, but still, it wasn't very professional of me).  However, once I gave out the instructions for this exercise, those pooped-out specimens of physical health and education, sat up straight, and surprised the living heck out of me with the quality of their writing. So what was the magic exercise?

     Today's workout comes to you courtesy of my friend and Vermont College MFA faculty member Louise Hawes.  Louise, I don't remember if these were your exact instructions, but this is how I interpreted them for my own use.

       1.  Under no circumstances should you give the slightest advance hint as to what the exercise will be.

     2.  Tell the students to think of two unusual things they have heard that day, and to write them down.  They should be only one sentence each, and should be from two different conversations.
The emphasis is on unusual.  "Open the window" or "Shut up and sit down" do not qualify for this sort of thing.  One of the best results of this exercise came from the quote "Hey grandma, you wanna piece of this?"

    3. On a sheet of paper write the first sentence at the top of the page, and the second sentence towards the bottom. (The idea is that the paper can be creased and ripped apart without damaging the writing.) You don't need to leave room for more writing...that will be done on a second separate page.

    4.  Do not indicate who is speaking, how they are speaking or where they are speaking. Just the sentence. Period.

    5. Fold the papers and put them in a hat, box, something where the papers can be mixed together.

    6. Each participant should choose two pieces of the papers. If they should happen to get one of their own sentences, no big deal.  No swapping allowed.

    7.  Now, taking these two pieces of conversation, the student invents characters for the speakers of each sentence. Then they will concoct a situation/scene in which those sentences are spoken. This is one scene. It should have all the basics of a story...characters, setting, something of a plot. This is not meant to be a finished story or even a part of a story. The point of the exercise is to take two unrelated
sentences and characters and work them into a scene.

     With my own students this has by far been their most favorite exercise over the years. And those coaches?  They had written down oddball snippets they had heard from their students during the day.  They had a blast scribbling away at their scenes. I usually only allow twenty minutes for this but the coaches were having so much fun I let them go for half an hour.

    I never insist that my writers "share" their work unless they wanted to. Everyone of those coaches (and their must have been two dozen of them) wanted to read their work out loud. The hour workshop turned into almost two hours (and I nearly missed my plane.) The cool thing was that those teachers had not only written terrific scenes, but they were really surprised and pleased by how well they had done.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

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