Ways to Write Scenes
Scenes are the building blocks of our stories. Learn different techniques to bring your stories to life.
One-Line Scene Outline
This is something that I picked up from Brandon Sanderson. He writes and thinks about his scenes in a sequence to the end. So, instead of writing out his scenes in an in-depth way, he writes one-sentence descriptions of what happens in his stories. Then he fills in the story based on that.
This isn’t something that I would suggest to someone just starting out, but if you can hold all the information of your scene in your head and convey it to yourself in one sentence, more power to you! Using this method will allow you to see how your story looks and flows on the page before writing it.
8-Step Process
Author C.S. Lakin has a simple step-by-step process that she uses for fiction that involves selecting the scene’s position within the story, identifying its purpose and high moment, focus on highlighting any conflict, show character change, and a bit more.
Instead of setting up the different parts that she sees as the scene elements, she suggests authors write it out or put it into whatever format they want as long as they identify the different parts.
