How To Write A Scene: Best Tips To Follow Today

Wondering how to write a scene so good readers promote your book for you? You’ve come to the right place. Maybe you planned out your plot, handcrafted an amazing cast of characters, and know your major story beats.

Now you just have to put pen to paper and let your magic flow. Only one problem, the actual writing. Scenes are the building blocks of your book. If you don’t know how to write a scene, it doesn’t matter how good your plot is. The book will fall apart.

That’s why we’re going to walk you through how to write great scenes that stick with your readers. How do we know how to do this? We’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books over the last ten years. From planning to writing, we’ve got you covered!

How to write a scene: what’s covered

• What is the structure of a scene?
• How do you start writing a scene?
• What is an example of a scene?
• Laying out your scene
• How to start a scene
• How to end a scene

What is the structure of a scene?

The structure of a scene is similar to that of a story, just condensed. You want an inciting incident, climax, and some form of resolution or cliffhanger. Just as there are tips for plotting a novel, there are tips for plotting a scene.

In fact, if you’ve planned out your book enough that you’re worrying about individual scenes, then you already have all the tools you need to be able to craft a compelling scene.

The devil of it, as with many things, is in the details. You have all the tools you need, but the way you apply them to a scene is a little different. 

Story structure

Want to know how to write a scene? Simply remember that every scene is just a miniature story. There is no specific length that your scene has to fill, no set number of scenes that you have to have per chapter or per book.

A scene is simply a small story focused around a specific problem and moves the larger story along. All your scene needs is at least one character, conflict, action, and some kind of resolution or change—the same ingredients of a story.

Your scene may be so long that it spans an entire chapter, or it could be so short that it only fills a paragraph. All that matters is that it is complete and moves the larger story forward. 

Keep in mind, once you start writing a scene, you’re no longer in planning mode. The scene is where pen meets paper and your story starts to come alive, but that means we have to focus on the details. 

Concentrate on the sensory details. Be specific with the actions your characters are taking. Get the words right. These aspects each play a part in how to write a scene.

How do you start writing a scene? 

We suggest you start writing a scene by referring to your plot structure or outline if you have one. If not, simply plunge your
character into some sort of trouble.

Consider these questions as you study how to write a scene:

• What is the conflict? If you don’t have conflict you don’t have a scene.
• What is the opening mood? Is the character happy, sad, angry? Is everything going good, bad, etc.? You need to know how things stand at the start so you know how it should change at the end.
• What is at stake? Why is this important to the character? You may not fully reveal this to the reader yet, but you need to know why the characters are doing what they’re doing and why it matters.
• What happens? Break the action into beats. Plan out the major actions and reactions that need to happen in the scene. This will help you keep the pacing interesting and find the turning point. If you prefer to write by the seat of your pants, you can come back and do this after you’ve roughed out the scene.
• What is the closing mood? We need to know how things stand after the scene is over. Did things change from happy to sad? Good to bad? If nothing changed, then you don’t need the scene. Something important to the story needs to have changed. 
• What is the turning point? The turning point is the moment when things irreparably changed. 

So let’s focus on the details, and look at how we need to approach a scene.

What is an example of a scene?

A scene could be as simple as a character going into the grocery store, running into an old colleague they hoped never to see again, and leaving the store without making a single purchase.

How to write a scene with a turning point

An example of this type of scene is one that introduces tension to the story. Consider a young college student returning to their dorm at midnight, only to find that their keycard doesn’t work.

Turning points and change are the most important part of a scene. Without change, the scene doesn’t have a purpose. The change can be in the character’s mind, their circumstances (mentioned above), or something else.

Regardless of what it is, to learn how to write a scene that matters, something important needs to change from the beginning to the end of the scene. This contributes to the overall story arc.

How big or life-shattering this change is depends on what the scene is doing. It may be a minor turning point for a minor climax in the middle of the book or the turning point of the scene may be the major turning point of your whole book.

Perhaps more importantly, though, that change needs to be meaningful to the plot or main theme. It can be as simple as your character moving a box from one side of the room to another, but that should have an important effect on a future scene. 

The effect of the change doesn’t have to be immediate, but your audience should never be able to look back and say, “What was the point of that? That didn’t lead anywhere.”

How to write a scene that’s meaningful

For instance, in the example when your character moves the box from one side of the room to another, maybe in a later scene we discover that the box contained a delicate piece of measuring equipment.

By moving the box, they broke it. This gives the scene meaning because now, when the owner comes to use it, they get an incorrect reading. This sends the story down an entirely new path. 

Even if the scene is focused on a minor character or side plot, it should all move the story forward toward the overall climax. This is how to write a scene that sticks with readers.

If you can’t draw a direct line from the actions in your scene to the end climax of the book, then it probably shouldn’t be a scene you keep.

Laying out your scene

Now that we know what our scenes need, we can start laying out the individual scene beats and learn how to write a scene that moves the story forward.

How to write a scene: pacing

One of the most important things that you need to get right when learning how to write a scene is the pacing. You want to shoot for a kind of ping-pong pacing…in other words, an action-reaction kind of pacing. 

How to write a scene that bores your readers? Try something like this: “He went to the store, bought milk, and went home.” Instead, learn how to write a scene that engages your readers.

Consider the following points in how to write a scene:

• He went to the store, but the owner was already closing
• He tries to convince the owner to let him in, the owner says no
• He starts to leave depressed, the owner relents and lets him buy his milk
• He goes to buy the milk, but he realizes he forgot his wallet
• He and the owner fight
• He runs away and steals the milk

That is a much more interesting scene. It has conflict and it has a turning point. Action-reaction can be between two characters, your character and nature, or even your character and themselves. Every action should have a reaction that is the catalyst for more action.

Learning how to write a scene in this way allows you to control the pacing and tone of your scene, the speed of the reactions, and the weight of the reactions.

If you want a light, fun tone, you may speed up the pacing with very little time between each action-reaction pair. Each reaction may have very little weight. 

For a serious tone, you may slow it down so that the importance of the action and the impending doom of the heavy reaction can be felt by your reader. Keep these two processes in mind as your learn how to write a scene for your story.

How to write a scene: outlining

How deeply you plan out your story beats will depend on the kind of writer you are and whether you’re a pantser or a planner.

If you’re a pantser and write by the seat of your pants, you may want to just start writing. That’s okay (but you should still come back to this step afterward!). If you’re a planner, you may want to plan out every little detail. That’s excellent, but don’t let yourself get so bogged down that you never actually write the scene.

Lay everything out, and make sure the scene is going where you want it. You may find that it needs to be reorganized or that a part of the scene isn’t necessary.

Three tried and true methods for how to write a scene are to:

• Write out the story beats with pen and paper or in a Word document. Write in where your scene starts and what the ending change is. Try out several methods to get from point A to point B.
• Storyboarding can be a great method if you’re more visual. You can draw out the major beats as you see them in your head (even if this is just using stick figures). This can be a great, quick way to picture the scene and fill in the gaps.
• Index cards are another fantastic method. Write your scene beats on index cards, then physically lay them out, reorder them, or remove some. You can try out many different variations quickly without constantly rewriting.

Regardless of your method, once you’ve figured out the pacing and laid out the individual story beats, you’re mostly done with how to write a scene that aids your story. You’ve done the hard part. Now you just need to fill in the gaps. 

How to start a scene

Creating a strong beginning and ending of your scene will help you fill in any remaining gaps your outlining didn’t quite complete. There’s no exact way that you have to start a scene, but the general rule of thumb is you want to capture your reader’s interest quickly. 

Just like the first page and first chapter of your book need to get the reader interested enough to read on, every scene in your book needs to do the same.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but probably 90% of your scenes will start one of these ways:

• You can start en media res. Start with an action. This is one of the easiest ways to hook your reader early on.
• You can also start with dialogue. Dialogue is very similar to action. It should be compelling or entertaining, and just like physical action, you can start en media res. Jumping into the middle of a conversation can be an extremely compelling way to start a scene.
• You can also start by setting the stage for the scene. If the setting is very important to what is going to happen, or if it’s particularly interesting, then starting by describing the scene can be a great launching pad. 
• Lastly, you can begin in the mind of your narrator or main character and let their thoughts begin the scene. If you go this route, it’s recommended that you do so if there is some internal conflict.

The key to all of these is action. Something needs to be happening or it needs to be clear that something has just happened or is about to happen. Opening a scene where the characters are just talking about the weather isn’t recommended unless the point is to throw that normality on its head in a sentence or two. 

How to end a scene

How to write a scene with a strong ending means it must end with change having occurred. There should be a moment where there is no turning back. However, once you have the change nailed down, the actual ending is very much up to you.

Here is a list of several good ways to end a scene:

• You can end in the middle of the action with a cliffhanger, similarly to how you may have started en medias res. Be careful about doing this too much. It can lose its appeal and become annoying if overdone.
• You can end in a realization of some kind.
• You can end with a hint of what’s to come.
• You can end with loss.
• You can also end with a victory or a solution to a problem.

Only end with a complete victory if it’s the resolution to the final climax of your book. Otherwise, you should always hint at more trouble to come.

You want the end of your scene to compel the reader to keep going. Don’t give them a comfortable place to get off the ride until the final scene of the book!

Make sure there is some mystery to solve, problem to overcome, or loss to avenge, and you’ll have people tearing through your book to get to the end.

How to write a scene: take your first step

Learning how to write a scene can be difficult to get right, but we often make it more difficult than it needs to be. 

This is where you really begin to write your book. The planning phase is over. The actual writing starts. If you can master creating compelling scenes, then you have the building blocks to create any book you can imagine. Take your next step and use our free resource below!