The Right To Write

Scenes: Part 1

Scenes are the setting, the character, and the action all in one. They need to be progressing and constantly changing as to keep the topics fresh and appreciatable. But amatuer writer's seem to miss the pacing of the scene.

Scenes are a balance of time, description, and content. The progression of scenes depend on what needs to be done at the moment. Sometimes starting writers have difficulty with this balance. There are two fatal mistakes beginning writers often make.

Rapidly transitioning scenes. Most starting writers begin with the mentality that quick-paced  holds the same definition as rapid scene-paced. But no. I was reading about a quaint date on the beach in China and suddenly I'm reading about a woman milking cows in Switzerland.  I didn't know your character had the ability to teleport from an Asian coastline to Switzerland to do the daily milking. You'll lose the reader in a realm of confusion becaused he missed out on a vital details of how anything and everything happened. Take a moment. Chill your lightning speed scenes. Describe the beach a bit, expand the plot-advancement, take the time to incorporate all your transitioning scene content into one scene, perhaps. Unless you intended to start 'The Mystery Of The Teleporting Milkmaid.' If that's the case, you're good to go.

Here's an example of exceedingly fast paced scene transitioning:

I ran through the airport. I was late for my flight. The hallway flew past me as I jumped through the boarding dock. In no time, the seat cushions caressed my relieved back. The flight lasted an hour. I strolled sleepily out the plane and into a taxi. A vibrant hotel came into sight, my booked hotel.

The flight may have been an hour, but it felt like it happened in seconds. There are a couple options for getting around this problem.

First off, why do you feel obligated to show your readers he even had to go through this? If the scene has no importance, then don't incorporate it in your book in the first place. Say the actual action starts from where I end, the arrival at the hotel. Start there. Start from where I ended. Start from where the plot-advancements begin. Don't feel expected to rush through whatever unrelated-to-the-plot scenes that lead to the plot; we don't need to know that. Checking into the hotel was the beginning, not getting onto the plane.

What about rushing plot-related scenes? The simple answer is your readers won't mind enduring the description and length of each plot-related scene. And accept this, they'll enjoy it. Take all those ideas you had for five different scenes, and mash them into one, or substance your scenes with more description, dialogue, thought, anything that might fit into your scene and deepen it into a more understandable manuscript. Execute anything in your power to lengthen your rushed storyline-connected scenes but keep them relevant. Otherwise your manuscrip will constantly sound like a fictional to-do list.

And, of course, there are these two combined. Your character wants to progress from point A to point B, but the process may be gruesomely tedious. These scenarios may tempt you to rush the movement from A to B at an unrealistic pace. I can fix this in one word. Conflict. You can't just simply let your character jump the bridge. No, he needs to battle ninja flight attendants, save a child from falling out of the plane, and take control of the plane before it pummels into the Atlantic Ocean. Then, after all that's good and done, he reaches point B. Then the cycle restarts.