Figuring Out What Works: Writing Scene-By-Scene

Like most writers, I find it easier to break down my stories into smaller, more manageable components. A book can be built scene-by-scene, just as this blog is growing, post-by-post.

Books are composed of chapters. Chapters are composed of scenes. Scenes are composed of sub-scenes. Sub-scenes are composed of paragraphs. And paragraphs are composed of sentences. Yes, I’m stating the obvious, but it can feel good to de-mystify huge projects.

I tend to think on the scene level, then figure out how the scenes might fit together to form chapters. I also prefer to write chronologically. If a scene is proving too difficult, I break it down further into sub-scenes (which I define as any smaller subset of a scene). And if that’s still too difficult, I zero in on just the paragraph I’m writing. Hell, if I have to break it down to sentence level to muscle my way through a tough scene, I will.

Completing a scene in a day is a realistic, achievable goal.

Completing just part of a scene (a sub-scene) is even more reachable.

Completing one good paragraph is very do-able. It makes this whole “writing a book” thing feel less intimidating.

If I can write one good paragraph, it follows that I should be able to write a good scene. And so on … providing I manage to weave the story together in a satisfying way.

I tend to think of each scene as its own short story with a beginning, middle, and end; a scene being a section of the story with a unique blend of character, dialogue, setting, and situation. And when I complete a scene, it feels satisfying, like I’ve made real progress.

To make the scenes flow together, I think in terms of both “scenes” and “sequels”. I also try to use the famous Trey Parker/Matt Stone “therefore/but” technique, which just happens to be perfectly suited for writing scene-by-scene. (But this paragraph is a whole can of worms I don’t want to open right now.)

So far, I’m not exactly reinventing the wheel here. Lots of writers think in terms of scenes. But tomorrow’s post will show how this way of thinking has helped me develop a unique and interesting writing technique I’ve never seen anyone else use before.