So last night there was no Halloween Horror Movie and instead I and my wife entertained friends as we played board ands card game. The film series will return as I have several more films that I plan to watch before Halloween.

Today I want to talk briefly about scenes in fiction and from a writer’s view what are the elements of an ideal scene. An ideal scene in my opinion would have all the elements discussed below and an ideal story would be composed of nearly all idealized scenes, but ideal and perfections are goals rarely obtained.

Advance The Narrative:

One critical purpose of a scene is to move to story along. The tale has a beginning and progresses to an end and each scene should move the reader and the events in a logical and satisfying way towards that conclusion.

Reveal Character:

Stories are about people. Even when those people come shaped like aliens, fey, and monster, they are meant to be relatable and that means they are still at heart people. When we finish reading a scene we should understand something about the character that we didn’t before the scene began.

Present Conflict:

A strong scene is one in which there is conflict with stakes on the table. That is not to say you need to have a fist fight or such in every scene that would be far too exhausting the experience and write. All a conflict really means is that there is a character who has a goal and there is an obstacle preventing the easy achievement of that goal. It can be as simple as the character need to get on a particular metro bus and is already running late. Will they reach the bus stop before the bus? That is conflict.

Raise the Stakes:

Each scene with its own conflict has its own stakes, but the story overall has its level of stakes and one powerful purpose of a scene is to increase the potential loss from failure. What may have started out as a mild trouble if it came to pass can be amplified by a scene and that process can be repeated until a loss becomes intolerable. This is the process of building towards climax.

Amplify the Atmosphere:

Each story has a mood it is trying to build for the reader and an ideal scene builds on the mood. A horror story is comprised of scenes that unsettle and a comedy has scenes that produce mirth.

Illustrate the Theme:

I usually discover the theme of my story as I write it, and that’s even after I have produced an extensive outline but still it is an element that is critical to a powerful tale, the theme. The story should have an overall theme and the best scene illuminate the theme or themes often with different and subtle ways. It’s generally bad to whack the reader over the head with your theme, then you have a lecture not a story.

Establish People, Places and Things:

Exposition is often treated as a dirty word, but it is an indispensable part of story telling. However a scene that does nothing but establish is often critiqued as being expository. More than any other element this is one that must be combined with some other purpose.

So off the top of my head here are the things I think scenes need to do and the more of these your scene can do simultaneously the better the scene will play.