Putting Together a Scene.

Pretty much all stories are sequences of scenes. A short story or memoir might consist of just one scene. A Young Adult novel or a novel-length memoir might consist of 24 chapters where each chapter is a single scene.
A scene can be static––the action might take place in a store.
A scene can also be transient––the scene might begin in a store, move to a car, then a diner, for example––but it’s still one scene. What makes it a single scene is that the action is continuous, with no significant time gaps.

A novel-length story will move from scene to scene building the trials and tribulations of the protagonist as we move towards a climax and a conclusion, and within that framework each scene will build towards its own climax and conclusion.

So let’s look at how to put together a single scene.

In the simplest terms your protagonist needs to be somewhere doing something––and in most scenes your protagonist will be doing something with at least one other character.

As the author, the first decision you need to make is what POV you’re going to write in. You’re most likely going to choose either First Person POV, or Third Person Limited. If you feel at all uncertain about POV I would strongly urge you to use First Person as it completely takes away the need to establish POV, which can give you a somewhat complex series of problems to solve.

So, to the scene. Let’s say that Janet and John are at Target. Even before you start writing you’re probably going to have some idea of why they’re at Target, and what’s going to happen, but the scene will probably take you where it wants to go. Let your characters come to life and dictate the story.

I’m going to write in First Person with John as the protagonist/ viewpoint character.

You might begin writing the scene, exactly as you might verbally report it to someone:

Last Wednesday I went to Target with Janet. She was starting her new job and she had to get a white shirt…

This is okay, but it’s a little flat at the moment. What did John think about going to Target with Janet? How about beginning:

Last Wednesday Janet dragged me to Target.

Now we have a sense of John’s character, and his relationship to Janet––and Target––all in one short sentence.

Let’s see where the scene goes:

Last Wednesday Janet dragged me to Target. I hate shopping, but these days I get to spend so little time with Janet, that I’ll even go to Target with her.
“What do you think of this?” Janet swayed from side to side, holding a white shirt against herself.
“It’s a white shirt,” I said. “You can’t go wrong with a white shirt.”
“Actually it’s a blouse,” she said. “It’s a bit big, but if I tuck it in it should be okay.”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“I think I should try it on.” Janet ignored me and pulled another blouse off the bargain rail. “God, this stuff is all crap.”
“Yeah, it’s probably been sitting out on display for years.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. My fingertips brushed against my phone. “Imagine how many people have tried it on already…”

All right, so we’ve established the scene. Janet and John are in Target because Janet needs to buy a white blouse––we don’t yet know that she needs it because she’s starting a new job, or that she’s buying it from the bargain rail because she doesn’t have a lot of money, although we might guess that this is what’s going on.

Hopefully the scene played itself out vividly in your mind’s eye as you read it.

The mere use of the word ‘Target’ brings its own imagery of red and white. We don’t need any more scenic description than that one word alone. We could spend a few paragraphs describing Target, but if it’s an ordinary Target, on an ordinary day, then any description is superfluous. If our characters are in Target just after an earthquake, or a fire, then that’s an entirely different matter.

A lot of beginning writers like to open with dialogue, because they believe it gets us in to the scene more quickly. Let’s see how that might work.

“What do you think of this?”
“It’s a white shirt. You can’t go wrong with a white shirt.”
“Actually, it’s a blouse.”
Janet and I were in Target…

Personally I think it’s a major blunder to open a scene with untagged dialogue. Aside from anything, you don’t don’t know which character is speaking which line, and so the dialogue is mostly wasted. The dialogue is moving the story forward, but it reveals nothing about the characters. Even if you tag the dialogue it’s not much more effective.

“What do you think of this?” said Janet, holding a white shirt in front of her.
“It’s a white shirt. You can’t go wrong with a white shirt,” I said.
“Actually, it’s a blouse.”
Janet and I were in Target…

If you feel like you’re taking your first tentative steps into creative writing, then just as with the choice of First Person POV, I would recommend that you don’t begin a scene with dialogue.

Let’s go back to the scene as written, and see what else is going on.

We can see that John is so attached to Janet, that he’ll even do something he hates, just to be with her.

Janet, on the other hand, is a little dismissive of John. Notice how she just ignores his suggestion that they leave.

The scene, in fact, has very little to do with Target, or buying a blouse. What’s happening is the underlying tension in Janet and John’s relationship has been simmering for weeks, and it’s about to come to a head. There’s going to be a row. Maybe John will storm out. Maybe Janet will reveal that she’s started seeing someone else…or maybe John has, and he can’t bring himself to do what he needs to do, and the more it drags on the worse it gets.

So, we don’t just have the protagonist somewhere and doing something, we have him somewhere, and appearing to do something, but what he’s really doing is something quite different, and as the scene develops the real reason for the characters being where they are and doing what they’re doing will come to the surface.

We have a plot and a sub-plot.

The sub-plot is that Janet and John are in Target to buy a blouse.

But the main plot is (let’s say) that Janet is going to break up with John.

So, we begin with the sub-plot, shift to the main plot, and then return to the sub-plot at the end.

This is known as the three-act-structure, and is the framework of nearly all narratives––and of the smaller components within the larger framework.

An entire novel is based around three acts, but each chapter has its own smaller version of the three act structure.

Think of Little Red Riding Hood:

Act 1: Little Red goes to visit the sick grandmother.

Act 2: Little Red battles the wolf.

Act 3: Little Red finally shares the food with the sick grandmother.

You yourselves are going to write a Young Adult story, and this is how I suggest that you approach it. Just think of it as a scene. It could be a chapter of a longer work, or it could just be a short story. It doesn’t really make that much difference at this stage.

Your protagonist is probably going to be you, yourself. Doesn’t have to be, but it’s an easy way to begin.

Choose your setting. I think for Young Adult you might want to avoid school, classrooms, home, bedroom, kitchen, family dinner table. These settings are great for Middle Grade, but Young Adult characters tend to be moving away from the family, and the interesting parts of their lives are beginning to happen away from school.

You need at least one other character in your scene, although don’t over-populate it. The antagonist, and maybe the other characters in your scene are probably going to be based on people you now, at least to begin with.

So, this how it works. Put your characters together in a setting, let them interact, and see where it goes. Really try to avoid pre-conceived ideas about what’s going to happen.

Let it happen. That’s where the magic of stories begins.

Third Person Limited.

So what are the issues connected with writing in third person limited?

The first requirement is that you need to establish with of the characters in your story is the main character. In first person, the viewpoint character is the ‘I’ character, so it’s very straightforward, but in third person you need to establish the viewpoint character by giving him (or her) an internal observation.

In third person you can still see the thoughts of only one character, and so a thought establishes that character.

You need to establish the character fairly early on in the story too.

Let’s take out Janet and John scene, and see how it might work.

In first person:

Last Wednesday Janet dragged me to Target. I hate shopping, but these days I get to spend so little time with Janet, that I’ll even go to Target with her…

But in third person limited:

Last Wednesday Janet dragged John to Target. He hated shopping, but these days he got to spend so little time with Janet, that he’d even go to Target with her…

The second sentence consists entirely of observations about John’s state of mind, so he’s clearly the viewpoint character.

So what are the advantages of third person?

1: It’s more literary.

Merely reading the two versions you can see that third person just sounds better. You are being taken to the place where stories come from. The narrator is a mysterious and almost magical being. We will never know how who they are, and this adds to the mystical nature fo the story. You might not want to appear literary or magical. You might want to give the impression of gritty realism, especially for Young Adult, and if that is the case, then you definitely want to stick with first person POV.

2: Third person gives you access to some effects that just don’t work in first person. For instance, even though John is the only character who’s thoughts we can see, we can step outside of John’s mind––we just can’t see into anybody else’s. From time to time, we can be a distant observer of the scene.

Instead of:

Last Wednesday Janet dragged me to Target…

We can write:

John slouched into Target a few paces behind Janet, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and his chin tucked down like a boxer pacing towards his adversary for yet another painful round of punches…

This just wouldn’t work in first person, and notice how the narrator moves in towards John like a camera zooming in. We could continue: John tried to remember exactly why it had seemed like a good idea to come…

3: Third person has more authority:

If John writes: …I hate shopping… it sounds irritable. We now that right at that moment he hates shopping, but maybe he’s just in a bad mood, and we might not be surprised to see him happily shopping in a later scene.

But if the third person narrator states: John hated shopping… then we know categorically that John hated shopping, and probably always would.

There’s literary device known as the ‘unreliable narrator.’ First person is always the best choice for the unreliable narrator––and to some extent first person always seems a little unreliable. It’s like you have an independent witness with third person.

So, the above are some of things you might want to think about when picking your POV.

For Wednesday’s class I would like you to set up the scene for your YA story opening.
You only need about half a page.
1: Introduce the setting.
2: Introduce the main character.
3: Introduce any other significant characters (if your scene is taking place in a cafeteria you don’t need to introduce everyone there, just the key characters).
4; Begin the action
5: Begin the dialogue
Note: You don’t need to follow the above list in any particular order.

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