5 Tips for Writing a Great Scene

By georgelthomas on 27 Sep 2022 • ( 4 )

Hi everyone, I hope you’re all well and finding ways to feel creatively fulfilled. Today I’m talking about scenes.

A great scene is the backbone of any good story. It’s what drives the plot forward and keeps the reader engaged. But how do you craft a great scene?

Well, there are a few key elements that every great scene needs in order to be successful, so without further ado, here are:

5 Tips for Writing a Great Scene

1 Strong Characters

Generally speaking, scenes need characters to push the plot forward so ideally, you want your own characters to be relatable, interesting and memorable. Your readers need to be able to visualise and connect to your characters in order for them to care about what happens to them, so it’s important to keep that in mind when you create them.

2 Scene Conflict

The characters should be facing some sort of obstacle or problem that they need to overcome – this is the conflict. The conflict can be another character such as the story’s antagonist, it can be a physical obstacle, such as a locked door, or even an internal obstacle such as fear or anxiety.

3 Plot

Each scene has to be relevant to your plot. There should be no extraneous scenes that have zero connection with other parts of the story. Scenes linking together in a chain of cause and effect are what make up the plot.

4 Pacing

The pacing of each scene, and indeed the overall story need to be considered. Scenes, where not much is happening, will slow down the story, and action-packed scenes will do the opposite. Both types of scenes are equally important in engaging your readers but it’s a good idea not to have too many of either in quick succession. It’s up to you how fast or slow you unfurl your story but it’s something you should consider carefully.

5 Description

Be it characters or setting, whatever you’re describing, it should be vivid. Your readers should be able to take the words you’ve used to describe something and recreate an approximation of what you see in your mind in their own. It can be helpful to describe smells, tastes and textures as well as how people or things look in your story world. A handy tip for description is to take the most interesting aspects of the scene or the most striking and describe them with strong, simple words.

Hopefully, these tips will help you to strengthen the scenes you write.

As always, thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate it!

Until next time,

George