Fiction Notes

Tag: scene

  • Does Your Scene Pivot: Creating Turning Points

    I’m revising my WIP novel one scene at a time and finding places where I need to do lots of work. Specifically, I want scenes that pivot. A scene is self-contained section of the story. Characters come into a scene with a goal and they either reach their goal or not. The scene should have…

  • 5 Amazingly Simple Ways to Transform Quiet Scenes into Exciting Scenes

    Today, I worked on a difficult scene. It wasn’t a big action-packed scene; those are easy. Instead, it was a transition scene that moved the story along a week and had the potential to lose the reader with it’s lack of tension. Donald Maass, in his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, repeats this signature mantra,…

  • Scenes: The Skeleton of a Novel

    You’re a human being: you can stand up, sit down, or do a somersault. That’s because you have a skeleton that gives your soft tissue a structure. Likewise, it’s important to give your novel a structure that will hold all the soft murmurings about characters, places and events. It begins with understanding the structure of…

  • Off-Stage Scenes Rarely Work – Unless You Are Scarlett

    Here’s a common problem that I see in first drafts: the main action has happened off-stage. Think about Scarlett O’Hara and the other southern women sitting at home waiting; in an attempt to avenge his wife, Frank and the Ku Klux Klan raid the shanty town whereupon Frank is shot dead. But the raid takes…

  • START YOUR NOVEL: A Fiction Notes book

    START YOUR NOVEL: A Fiction Notes book

    My latest Fiction Notes book is now available! Six Winning Steps Toward a Compelling Opening Line, Scene and Chapter You want to write a novel, but you don’t know where to start. You have a great idea and—well, that’s all. This book explains the writing process of starting a novel in six winning steps. CHAPTERS…

  • Bad, Worse, Worst: Plan your Plots

    Every scene must end in disaster. Really? EVERY scene? OK. Most scenes. I only say that every scene must end in disaster because if I give writers wriggle room, they run with it. So, yes, let’s work on the premise that every scene must end in disaster. What disaster? How do you choose? Progressions. In…