“Every scene must cause or lead into the next scene.” I ran across this particular bit of writing advice recently; it was followed by a couple of tips such as “cut any scene that isn’t caused by the scene immediately before it.” Wow, that means Ian M.
Read more →One of the things I hate writing the most is what I refer to as “council scenes.” These are the scenes that involve a bunch of characters who are trying to solve a problem (or series of problems) by talking them to death, rather than bashing something
Read more →Scene choreography or planning is a thing that some writers do up front, some do as a routine part of their process, and some hardly ever bother with even though they’re not pantsers, strictly speaking. What I’m talking about here is a whole class of preparation variously
Read more →A lot of writing books lately seem to focus on scenes – what they are, how they work, and of course how to write great ones. Most of the books I’ve read urge writers to start by deciding on the point of the scene, or the characters’
Read more →One of the first things I ever learned to hate about writing was writing council scenes. One character on stage had things to do; two characters on stage could talk to each other; three could talk and interrupt and disagree. But with every character after that who
Read more →scene: in a drama, a subdivision of an act or of a play not divided into acts….”scene” is also the name given to a “dramatic” method of narration that presents events at roughly the same pace as that at which they are supposed to be occurring, i.e.,
Read more →
