Scene & Structure
helps you to craft compelling scenes that move the reade
r, moment by moment, towards the story’s resolution.
You can control the pace of your novel at every turn by how you handle your scenes and sequels. If it seems to be going too slowly, you need to build your scenes and possible trim or cut our some of your sequels. On the other hand, if it seems to be going to fast, you need to do the opposite: Trim or cut some of yuor scenes, and build up your sequels.
Here are 8 techniques to speed the story along:
1. In those places where you find a developed sequel linking two scenes taht follow one another in a fairly straightforward and logical way, consider yanking the sequel entirely and simply butting the two scenes back-to-front.
2. Look for places where you might not be able to simply butt scenes end to end, but where a very simple transitional statement might get the job done.
3. Study your sequels with an eye toward trimming our some of the present verbiage. Ask yourself questions like ‘Does all this emotion have to be described?’
4. Look for places where you might have inadvertently skipped a chance to write in a big, exciting, extended scene. Analyze the dramatic potential of every confrontation between major characters, and ask yourself if you ahve possibly missed a chance to motivate them to struggle over some story issue at this point.
5. Examine all your present scenes and ask yourself if you can find ways to raise the stakes, increase the intensity of the conflict.
6. Consider the nature of your scene-endeing disasters. Have you inadvertently made any of them less disastrous and upsetting that they might still logically be?
7. Look at the timing behing the disasters you have chosen.
8. Consider the thinking of both the hero and the villain-figure in every scene, and in general.
Complement Scene & Structure with Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure.