BUILDING YOUR SCENES

1. BUILDING YOUR SCENES Kimmery Martin kimmerymartin.com

2. WHAT IS A SCENE? A Self-Contained Story Unit Scenes Build On Each Other Each Scene Reveals Setting Each Scene Has A Hook

3. THE FIVE OBJECTIVES IN A SCENE Provide Mental Breaks Control The Release Of Information Move The Story Forward Establish Character Arcs Reinforce The Book’s Themes

4. THE FIVE Ws Who What When Where Why

5. NARRATIVE VS MOMENTUM Narrative expository explanation summary lecturing describing classic show vs tell

6. NARRATIVE By the late eighties, Carol was the only non-gentrifier left on the block. She smoked Parliaments, bleached her hair, made lurid talons of her nails, fed her daughter heavily processed foods, and came home very late on Thursday nights ("That's Mom's night out," she explained, as if every mom had one), quietly letting herself into the Berglunds' house with the key they'd given her and collecting the sleeping Connie from the sofa where Patty had tucked her under blankets. —FREEDOM, Jonathan Franzen

7. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Transitioning By afternoon, I was struggling through chin-deep murky water. I had gotten up at four o’clock in the morning—yesterday, not today—and had maybe an hour or two of sleep in the thirty-six hours since I’d been at the hospital.

8. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Relaying Events The Reader Already Knows I told her about the meeting with Donovan and Beeson and the rest of the executive board.

9. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Imparting Character Traits Rooney was about a thousand years old and still regarded women through a prehistoric filter where you told them they way it was going to be and they said ‘Yes, dear’ and went to iron some socks or something. He’d only barely managed to adjust to the newfangled idea of female surgeons and now a bunch of evil administrators were swooping in to steal his retirement.

10. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Conveying Necessary Information The patients were, to a man, all unconscious. They lay, misshapen and inflated by edema, some swollen to three or four times their usual size from resuscitation fluid and overtaxed kidneys, hooked to ventilators and infusions. The current composition of my team’s patients was weighted toward the young: there were two teenage boys, both of whom were unbelted cars rash victims with brain injuries; one drug-addled fool who had blundered onto an interstate; a fireworks-gone-wrong case; a guy in his thirties who had sawn down an oak tree, which promptly crushed him; and my guy, Silver.

11. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Conveying The Stakes Without the tube to breathe for her, she would suffocate to death in a matter of moments.

12. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Conveying A Character’s Goal At first I figured I’d ignore the message. Screw Nick. There was no need to be overly communicative with the bastard. I would engage in whatever discourse was needed form a work-related standpoint, when and if it came to that; I’d be cordial but frosty so that he got the message that we weren’t going to be pals. Bygones were not bygones.

13. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Backstory I did well in Greek, excelled in it, and I even won an award from the Classics department my last year. It was my favorite class because it was the only one held in a regular classroom—no jars of cow hearts, no smell of formaldehyde, no cages full of screaming monkeys. —THE SECRET HISTORY, Donna Tartt

14. WHEN TO USE NARRATIVE Interior Monologue As they crossed Park Avenue, he had a mental picture of what an ideal pair they made. Campbell, the perfect angel in a private school uniform; himself, with his nobel head, his Yale chin, his big frame, and his $1800 British suit, the angel’s father, a man of parts; he visualized the admiring stares, the envious stares, of the drivers, the pedestrians, of one and all. —THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, Tom Wolfe

15. NARRATIVE VS MOMENTUM Momentum Action Dialogue Experience

16. WHEN TO USE MOMENTUM The medical student behind me shifted his weight from foot to foot, probably sick to death of just standing there. “Can I help close?” he asked. “Absolutely not,” I said. “We are going to make this scar so pretty they’ll think plastics did it. But you can have the next drunk that comes in.” Only Sanjay seemed unaffected by the good cheer suffusing the OR. He studied the little body in front of him. “Maybe we should leave her open,” he said.

17. SCENE DECISIONS POV Ramping Up Tension

18. FIVE WAYS TO BEGIN A SCENE Action Summary Interior Monologue Setting Dialogue

19. FIVE WAYS TO END A SCENE Epiphany Obstacle Cliffhanger A Plot Twist Humor, Sweetness, or Profundity

20. TROUBLESHOOTING SCENES Delete The Scene Evaluate Structure One-Sentence Summary Common Culprits Eliminate Anything Boring

21. THE SCENE LIST

23. QUESTIONS