The Storyteller’s Mission with Zena Dell Lowe

Crafting Powerful Scenes: Tone, Theme, and Plot Transitions

Zena Dell Lowe Season 4 Episode 40

Struggling to make your scenes feel dynamic and purposeful? Are you finding it difficult to set the right tone, weave in your theme, or transition smoothly between key plot points?

In this episode, we dive into the craft of building powerful, unforgettable scenes that do more than just move the plot forward. Whether you’re a writer or a screenwriter, mastering the art of scene construction can transform your entire story.

Learn practical strategies to maximize the dramatic potential of every scene. We’ll cover how to set tone, establish theme, and create seamless transitions that keep your audience hooked. By the end, you’ll have a toolkit for writing scenes that not only work but resonate, propelling your story to the next level.



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[00:00:00] Zena: some of the stuff I want to cover today includes the It's talking about what you accomplish in your various scenes.

[00:00:06] How do you utilize the scene to set the tone or to talk about theme? 

[00:00:10] Or how do you use the scene to transition at key plot points? Things like that. maybe some more strategies around, How to properly use a scene to maximize the dramatic potential of your story. 

[00:00:25] Hello and welcome to the Storytellers Mission with Zena Del Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

[00:00:36] Well, when it comes to having moments where you explicitly, and that's not still isn't even explicit, but it is explicit in the sense that I am deliberately and intentionally exploring theme for a moment in a more obvious way.

[00:00:53] I'm exploring the theme in this particular scene, but the only thing I think that gives that merit or makes it possible for me to do that. And here's the real tip, is that I'm tying it to characters, and I'm tying it to action that's happening in the scene, and props, visual things that are happening in the scene.

[00:01:20] That grounds it in something beyond just words, beyond just ideas. This is what I mean when I say we have to infuse our stories with visual images. And visual images then have a power to go past the brain because we remember the images. 

[00:01:44] and then we'll remember the theme. The theme comes last but because it's tied to something concrete, an image that's concrete, it now has legs.

[00:01:56] It now conveys a deeper level of meaning and it doesn't feel contrived and arbitrary. It feels very much grounded to the present. So it doesn't feel weird to us that we go off on this tangent because it's tied to something that's happening now that we can see and we can sink our teeth into. Does that make sense?

[00:02:20] Okay. So when you're exploring your theme, That is one of the things I would encourage you to do. Try not, resist the temptation to talk about theme without tying it to something in the scene that is visual, that is concrete. from the book White Oleander. And if you're familiar with this book or this movie, it's basically about a character, played by Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie, who's this beautiful woman with this beautiful daughter, blonde, fair, beautiful, sweet daughter, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

[00:03:06] is upset with a man that she feels has exploited her basically made a fool out of her. And so she kills him. And as a result of killing him, she gets sent to jail and the daughter gets sent to foster care. it's basically a coming of age story for this daughter.

[00:03:24] As she goes through the foster care system, she keeps sort of attaching to these female characters, however they are. And they're all very different. And she kind of, because she doesn't know who she is yet. So she adopts whatever are the primary characteristics or traits of this one. And then that doesn't work out well.

[00:03:42] And she goes to the next one and that doesn't work out and she keeps doing that until she finally sort of graduates beyond that. And. Now, she's just, she's dyed her hair black, she's got goth makeup on, she wears leather, she's rough, she's rough. And now, she's being hailed, I can't remember exactly the situation, but somehow she's gotta speak at the mother's trial, or the mother's up for parole, I can't remember.

[00:04:13] But she goes to visit her mother in jail, and her mother is just disgusted with her. And her mother is staring at her. Because of what she looks like now and the mom's judging her and at some point the daughter manages to say You look at me. You don't like what you see. This is the cost of being yours This is the cost of being yours.

[00:04:40] Let me go mother. Let me go And so the daughter is basically saying The theme of the entire story, which in essence is the consequences of our sin. The conse, our sin has consequences that are passed on to our children that have generational effects. And that's what, this poor girl is a product of the mother's poor choices.

[00:05:07] She never had a chance. The only chance she had She has as if the mother lets her go and lets her become her own woman at this point and make her own mistakes or do whatever, but the mother has to let her go and stop trying to control her or whatever the mother is trying to do. It is actually a beautiful in the movie.

[00:05:28] It is a speech that absolutely summarizes the entire movie. In fact, I would argue you almost don't even really understand what the movie is totally about until that speech, which is right at the end. It's actually the climactic speech of the entire story. I don't know where it takes place in the book, but in the movie, that's where it happens, but what does that mean?

[00:05:54] Okay, well, I'm tying it. I'm tying the theme to the present action, but I've also put visual cues around it and character behavior associated with it that's triggering those ideas to come out in an organic and natural way. The mother sees her in this goth thing. She's lost all of the sweet innocence. But of course she has, because she's gone from foster care home to foster care home where she's been sexually abused and exploited and she's been, you know, had to sell things and I mean it certainly isn't for her benefit that she's been in these foster care situations.

[00:06:40] And so it's organic for the daughter then to turn it around and say this is the cost of being yours, mother. Let me go. So again, when you are talking about your own theme, find a way to tie it to the present action, visual images. And hopefully character behavior of some kind, so that it feels organic to the moment.

[00:07:03] And it's amazing what you can get away with when you do that.

[00:07:07] Okay. So that's theme. 

[00:07:09] Let's talk about setting tone because remember every single scene. So here's what story is, right? Story is a scene plus another scene, plus another scene, plus another scene, plus another scene, plus another scene, and so on and so forth until you have a finished So, what you have to do is A, you have to tie those scenes together.

[00:07:36] It should flow in a way that feels organic to the reader, even if we're cutting to a completely different storyline at a particular time. Because oftentimes in novels, you're going to have multiple storylines. So you have to know when to cut away to those storylines. But they also should flow, they should also feel like one scene naturally follows the other, naturally follows the other, naturally follows the other.

[00:08:02] So there are a couple of things, and I'm sure a lot of you already know this, if not all of you do, but I'm going to emphasize it here. There are a couple of things that you just have to learn to do that can feel very unnatural. And can feel very icky in a way, unless you learn to have fun with it. And one of the things is, is that at the top of the scene, every single scene should include information that helps us understand where the character is at emotionally.

[00:08:35] Or if not where they are at emotionally, what the stakes are. What do I mean by that? Well, that's tone, right? That's tone. So if your character is in a fabulous mood because they just won a gazillion dollars, I don't know. They just won the lottery. and we just ended a scene with them winning the lottery.

[00:09:01] It probably won't work to start the next scene With them drinking themselves into oblivion. Now, maybe you are going to do that. In which case then we're going to see what, and that's part of the story is like, what happened between winning a million dollars and now they're drinking themselves into oblivion.

[00:09:21] Then you're going to probably explore that in the story. And there's a way to even tie in those two things. Right? There's a way to do that, but generally speaking, when you start a character in a scene, it's all about when you're establishing the tone of it, you think about it in terms of capturing visually.

[00:09:44] Going back to visuals, the emotional state of your character at the top of that scene. What are some of the visual things that you can point out, that without you saying, without you directly tying it into your character's emotional state, will allow the audience to see that. So even if it's at the very beginning of your story, the very opening chapter, and we're seeing their room, you And you're trying to show us some things.

[00:10:16] You want to resist the temptation to show us everything that's in the room, because that's actually not very helpful to us. You don't want to show everything. You want to show the things that are the most important. You want to choose your details, um, sparingly. You want to choose the right things and the choices that you're making should connect somehow to the character's internal emotional state.

[00:10:43] So if you have a character that is happy go lucky and positive and cheerful, then you're not going to point out the things in their room that are, that show that they are internally pensive and angsty and brooding all the time. You're gonna point out the rainbow laced roller skates in the corner of the room.

[00:11:09] You're gonna point out, and even if you, even if the room is a mess. It's a mess with flair, someone's had fun trying on all of these zany outfits or whatever. you're going to show things in that room, a board. that's got pictures all over of, of happy moments, at the waterfall with her best friends, you know, leaping, show that she's an adventurer and, you're going to show those types of things to give us an idea of who that character is, especially at the top of the story.

[00:11:42] Now, I've said this before, one of the most important things you can do in your scene is that wherever your character starts emotionally in that scene, by the end of the scene they should have moved to a new emotional place. Now that doesn't mean that they have to move to something totally opposite, i. e.

[00:12:01] they start totally cheerful and by the end of it they're depressed. Not at all. It can be something subtle. It can be something completely subtle. Something should happen in that scene that takes them from one emotional state to the other. And part of the reason for this is because your character has to have an arc.

[00:12:22] Every scene has an arc because every scene has a beginning, middle, and end. Anything that has a beginning, middle, and end means it has an arc. It cannot stay the same at the end as it is in the beginning. So if you have a character that you're trying to pick out the details at the beginning to show us what a joyful and happy go lucky person they are, which might include, by the way, that they're in front of the mirror putting on their makeup and humming along to ABBA as they're putting on and dancing along, beep bopping along as ABBA's playing or whatever the case may be, right?

[00:13:00] Then The telephone rings and all of a sudden the character turns down the ABBA music and looks at the phone and takes a deep breath as they reach for it. Now that might be the place that you cut away to the next scene. We don't know. We don't know, but usually you're going to cut away. By the way, here's a freebie for you.

[00:13:22] You're usually going to cut away from the scene almost immediately after they change emotional places.

[00:13:30] That's a clue for how to know how to transition into the next scene. May not be the next chapter, because you might have those dot dot dot things, you know, to separate one scene from the next, but it could be the next chapter. Generally speaking though, you end, when that moment happens.

[00:13:52] and by the way, that's why when I'm reading people's scenes in when I'm critiquing their screenplays or critiquing their manuscripts, there's so many times where I'll say to the student, I'll write on their script, it felt like the scene ended here because that was the moment that the person had a different emotion.

[00:14:11] Which means if they want to continue that scene and there's more information, Just cut to a new location or just cut to, you know, you do, you bring it somewhere else, even, even if the character reaches for the phone, you can have them answer the phone, hello, and even give us one more beat of a, yes, Dr.

[00:14:32] Grady, this is she, or speaking. Then have them leave the room while they're, Oh yes, I was just thinking about that. And they leave the room. And then we cut to now they're in the kitchen as they're getting things out. Well, yes, I know. I realized that you needed that application much sooner, but I was really hoping that because of blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:54] So you might, and then you continue. Notice what I've done here is I've continued the next scene with whatever emotional state they have, they stopped in. And then you're going to continue that scene until they change to their new emotional state. And then you've got to do something different. Does that make sense?

[00:15:17] Now, this is a little different in novels than it is in screenplay. It's a little more cut and dried in a screenplay because you just have to change. Sometimes in a novel, you won't change to a new location or have them go somewhere else, but then you need some sort of transitionary element. And this is actually where you have an opportunity.

[00:15:42] So maybe you have a scene where she's talking to the doctor and all of a sudden, I see, Oh, I understand. And now she sits on the edge of the bed. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I really, I appreciate that information. Yes. Yes. I'll, I'll check my calendar. I'll, I'll see when I can come in next week.

[00:16:05] Thank you. And she hangs up the phone. Well, now to transition, you can still stay in the same scene, but now you're still transitioning within the scene itself. would be a good opportunity to use that moment. Something huge has happened. It's completely changed our character's mood from dancing queen to sitting on the bed and just trying not to.

[00:16:33] or trying not to fold over onto herself, whatever the case may be. And now, it could be a time for exposition. It could be a time for a thematic element. It could be a time for Her to go into her head a little bit. I mean, again, we're trying to avoid that as much as possible, but you can do that in novels.

[00:16:56] You can't avoid it altogether. In fact, sometimes that is the beauty of the medium is that you can go into the character's head where you can't do that. Most of us do it too much, but you get to do it in a novel and that would be a good time. but being, being even a little cryptic, you know, like, she wouldn't give.

[00:17:15] to be five again running on the sand like she did whenever she would visit her grandparents in Miami over the summer. her grandma Eliza would take her along. They'd look for driftwood and then they'd go to the store and they'd always buy these googly eyes and these little sandals.

[00:17:33] Seagull statues with the little metal pins and she'd find a way to put it in there. She'd make this little artwork and hers was always terrible, but especially compared to, you know, being the youngest of the family. So compared to the older siblings, one time her sister managed to make something so exotic, so beautiful that at the local fair trade show, they actually bought it.

[00:17:59] Oh, that made her mad. And for the rest of the summer, she tried and she tried. She just wanted something as good as her sister's, but she could never do it. And that was the last time she ever made a driftwood piece of art. You know, so, I mean, I've gone off on a complete tangent at this point, right? But it's a tangent born out of the moment.

[00:18:22] Of her despair, depression, the longing to return to that innocence or, but then some, somehow then you have to find a way to wrap that up and tie it back into the present moment, you know, if, what she wouldn't give for that to be the greatest of her problems. Once again, you know, she thought it was the end of the world, that her artwork never got, her stupid driftwood artwork never got chosen for the stupid county fair or whatever.

[00:18:56] now she knew there were things that were much more difficult to endure.

[00:19:02] And now, and you can leave us hanging there if you want, but that's always a good thing to do to help transition. When they have that moment. So, the point is, in the scene itself, you can either end the scene when they emotionally transition or you can transition to something new that still is triggered by whatever happens in the scene.

[00:19:24] Does that make sense? Okay. Now, in that, then, set, that's the tone. The tone is always, in my opinion, related to A, the character's internal emotional state, or of course, genre, and expectation. So, if, but, but, but they're tied together, right? Like, if you're writing a horror novel, where it's supposed to be scary, or a thriller, where it's supposed to be scary, then when your character, There's two ways to do that at the top of a scene.

[00:19:59] To, to, you want us to be scared for the character. We, we, we need to feel. If it's a thriller, the stakes are suspense. We should be on the edge of our seat not knowing what's going to happen next. And there's two ways to accomplish that. One is if the character themselves is in that state already. They're walking into a creepy room

[00:20:22] with a baseball bat because they heard noises and they're stepping lightly and then crack. They step on a piece of glass and it sounds super loud and they freeze listening. They are terrified and therefore that's setting the tone, right? You're setting the tone of the piece. But notice what else I did in setting the tone.

[00:20:46] I'm using tone is always tied to what's in the environment.

[00:20:51] The best way to set tone is always to figure out what's in that environment and how do you use that environment to convey tone to your audience. So that's true when I said your character was cheerful and happy go lucky and we looked at the roller skates with the rainbow laces and the flared outfit.

[00:21:13] she clearly went through a tornado and now she's got the radio on and she's bebopping in front of the mirror and she's putting on her lipstick. So it's tied to the environment. Tone is tied to environment. But There can also be irony, where you could have something cheerful like that taking place, and then we find out she's actually a serial killer, hacking people's body parts off.

[00:21:41] I mean, you could do that sort of thing, but that is, that would have to be consistent then with the entire novel. That's called darkness. So if you're doing something like that, it's probably, you know, you've got to be consistent with that. So the, the other primary way of getting it is if the character doesn't know they're in danger, but we, the audience do.

[00:22:03] So how would you accomplish that? Well, that would be like little red riding hood. Right?we see Little Red Riding Hood. She's got her little cape on, her little hood on, and the red hood, and she's got her basket full of goodies, and la la la la la, and she goes skipping along. But, we're watching her from behind bushes, from the point of view of some sort of stranger, That's watching her and she's unaware of the danger that lurks there.

[00:22:36] Now that kind of thing is easier to portray, I think, in a. screenplay than it is in a novel, but it can be done. now, some of the ways that it can be done is if you, again, use the environment. you can show us things in a novel, or you can do it in screenplay too, but you can show us things that the character doesn't see.

[00:22:59] Unless it's first person, I think. Trying to think this through, because if it's first person, everything that, all the information that we're getting is coming through the character's head. But if it's third person, yeah right, third person omniscient, that's where the narrator, it's all coming through the narrator's head.

[00:23:19] So the narrator can describe how,little red riding hood skipped off into the forest, unaware of the snake that was slithering behind her or whatever. I mean, I know it's a wolf, but you know what I'm saying? showing us the danger that lurks. Now it brings up the stakes. So notice what I'm saying is that the stakes are coming into play.

[00:23:40] Whenever you're setting tone, you're also somehow conveying stakes. What's at stake?

[00:23:48] Now, a lot of times I think writers spend too much time. I mean, it's tricky, right? Because we're told that we have to use all our senses. You know, what do they see? What do they smell? What do they taste? What are they touching? And one of the things I would say to you is that the best way to convey all that is to have it unfold as the scene unfolds.

[00:24:14] You don't have to do everything all at once. So as the character is acting in the scene, as they are doing something, they should always have a reason for being in the scene. They shouldn't just be furniture pieces that are just sitting there waiting for something to happen to them. They're in the scene for a reason.

[00:24:31] They're after something. There's an objective. So as they pursue their objective, whether it be the the meta goal or the mini goal, you can allow a lot of that stuff to unfold as they're pursuing it, whatever they're seeing or smelling or whatever, more organic pace, but you have to set the tone.

[00:24:54] And so think of tone as always being related to two things. One. It's being related to the genre itself. What are you trying to convey in your genre? Or what's the, what is the tone of your genre if there's a tone associated with it? So clearly with a thriller, there's got to be suspense. All novels, though, need suspense.

[00:25:18] Even if it's a romantic comedy. And that's just stakes. But sometimes, certain genres, You know, bank on those sorts of emotions even more. if it's a tragedy, if it's a comedy, whatever sort of genre it is, you're trying to make sure. That you're somehow your each theme is reflecting that in the form of stakes and where your character is at emotionally at the start of that scene.

[00:25:47] So the tone is also associated with your character's internal emotional state. Okay, so transitioning. Now, here's another thing that you probably already know about, but in terms of transitioning to the new scene, or the new idea within the scene, as we talked about, I think it should always come from the scene itself.

[00:26:09] But this is where you can feel like it's getting fake and contrived. And often times it is, but you get better at it. And that is the last line of any scene before you transition to a new chapter should be dramatic. And it's like a, think of it like this. It's like a momentary hit of dopamine. It's a momentary hit.

[00:26:35] Zing! Something that gives us dramatic flair that compels us to want to turn the page. And you know this already. If anybody's read, or the Dresden files. If you're into fantasy sci fi.

[00:26:49] He's really good at the end of the scene. Even if the scene was winding down because he just got some other information. He will always end the scene with something dramatic that makes you what, well, wait a minute. What? Where'd that come from? Now I have to turn the page and keep reading even though it's three in the morning, right?

[00:27:10] Now, how do you do that? There's a couple of ways that you are able to do that. One is if at the end of your scene, as they have had this new epiphany, they come to a new place emotionally, whatever, boom, something happens.

[00:27:26] Just, you know, like it seems like they're finally like getting a handle on something and then boom out of nowhere. And, and, I mean, it can't be out of nowhere. You can't, you can't have like just. It has to be part, like you have to set it up, but it might be that maybe they had, maybe they were supposed to change the tire a while back, but they felt like they were in too big of a hurry and they really wanted to get out to the country to see so and so before it got dark.

[00:27:55] So they're driving like a bat out of hell. They're rehearsing the speech that they're going to deliver to Mr. Ferguson when they get, when they get to the country estate. And like, And they're working through it and trying to figure out, because that's the other thing, your character should always be working through it, they should be discovering it as they go.

[00:28:12] And then they finally, yes, that's what I'm trying to say, that's what needs to happen, and then, boom, the tire blows out. And now the character is swerving all over, heading straight for a great big tree. Now, you can go back, in the next, now, that's a good place to either cut to a sub storyline, You know, a different storyline.

[00:28:34] We've left people where the character is hanging. If you will, it's a hanging point, a cliffhanger, or you can continue from there,either way, every single chapter has to end with some sort of cliffhanger, but it doesn't always have to be an action. It can be something verbal. trying to think of an example.

[00:28:56] I mean, they're all over the place, but one of the things that comes to mind is, and this one feels particularly contrived. So, you know, don't judge me too. work at these and you get better at them as you go, but it might be a character that says something like, I always knew that I would have to confront, my demons at some point.

[00:29:22] And then, Little did he know the demon was just around the corner, you know, so you're having some sort of line of dialogue and giving it a button. Wait, the demons just around the corner. What does that mean? It's still a cliffhanger. It's not as big as boom, the tire goes out and they're,headed straight for some big tree, but it's still a cliffhanger because you're letting us know something is about to happen.

[00:29:47] But notice it's always associated with stakes. It's always something that raises the stakes. We're about to go in, we go into exciting action. Because remember, at any point in your scene, your character is either just coming down from high action, or they're in high action, or they're just about to go into high action.

[00:30:08] Like, that's where your character is at, at any given time. Because that's the point of characters, they're always in a state of action. state of heightened reality. So you have to end the scene going into a state of heightened reality where we raise the stakes because of something dramatic that happens or some idea that infuses upon the scene or some connection, or it might be the characters thought themselves and all of a sudden he realized.

[00:30:36] Marty wasn't being honest with him after all. Okay. Well, what does that mean? I don't know, but then we cut to the next chapter and hopefully we're gonna find out, right? Anyway, you get better about that, but you have to leave cliffhanger stuff To transition you always have to do that and sometimes it feels really arbitrary and weird But you have to find a way to end the scene and the way to do that is to figure out where your character is Ending emotionally.

[00:31:05] That's why you have to understand where that new emotion has come from and then either The dramatic thing comes out of that new emotion because that is the dramatic thing They saw something on the page. Could this be the key to getting Billy out of jail?

[00:31:24] Or, they have the new emotion, and whatever you're commenting on, or whatever the button is, is opposite of that. And it depends on where you're going in the story. She finally realized she was madly in love with Mr. Darcy and she had to go and tell him at once, little did she know Mr. Darcy was exactly at that moment proposing to Simone, her greatest enemy.

[00:32:00] I don't know. I'm making this up except for the name, Mr. Darcy. Not to be confused with Pride and Prejudice. Okay. All right. So transitions, tone, themes, it's all tied to the scene itself and the arc of the scene itself. And in terms of strategic ways to introduce a scene, it should always come out of character action and where they're at emotionally.

[00:32:26] One of the things that I do, and I strongly encourage you to do this, 

[00:32:30] before we get there, There's actually something even more important that applies to all writers.

[00:32:36] in all stories regardless of genre and that is your story's structure. Did you know that there are seven crucial plot points that every story must hit in order to satisfy the audience? And if you miss even one of those crucial plot points you risk losing your audience's attention forever. This is why I've created a free training video for you where I break down exactly What these seven deadly plot points are no matter what genre you're working in These are the essential plot moments that you need to hit in order to deliver a powerful compelling page turning story So be sure to check out my free training video on the seven deadly plot points.

[00:33:20] It's going to transform your writing. Just click on the link provided in the notes or head over to thestorytellersmission. com and you can start watching this free training video right away. 

[00:33:29] One of the things that I do, and I strongly encourage you to do this Too many times we start scenes where the characters are just sitting there having a conversation or there's nothing happening, right? And I would encourage you at the top of each scene to figure out. what your character is doing. What are they doing?

[00:33:50] And by the way, if you're writing screenplays, your, your actors will love you for this because there's nothing worse than trying to justify dialogue and action when you don't have anything that you're doing at the start of each scene. So I always try to figure out, okay, why is this character entering here?

[00:34:09] A lot of times what you'll have is a character will enter a room, to, you know, say your main character enters the room to ask mom some questions and lo and behold, mom will, mom will just be there to answer all the questions. Mom's doing something. Both characters have to be in the middle of life. What is mom in the middle of doing and why?

[00:34:32] You have to always remember what are they doing? What are they trying to accomplish? Nobody is just sitting around waiting to be of service. I don't care how saintly you are, you're doing stuff. We are doers. We are actors. We take action. So all characters have to have something that they're pursuing. So your job as the writer is to know what the character is in the middle of doing and then allow the two characters to come together in the midst of that.

[00:35:02] It actually makes for a more exciting scene because then there can be more conflict. Because maybe your character really does want mom to just sit down and give you the greatest life advice, but mom is busy. Making the baby's formula, the baby's crying, and the phone is ringing off the hook, and the milk just spilled all over the counter.

[00:35:24] And so your character is trying to get mom to address this very important issue, but mom's got a thousand things, she's sidetracked, she can't, and, you know, what kind of conflict is that gonna raise in the scene? It allows her to for more dramatic excitement to happen when you do that. So in terms of getting into a scene, think about the environment, think about what your characters are doing and how that plays into whatever is about to unfold.

[00:35:56] That's how you use scenes also as an extension of the character and their journey or their arc.

[00:36:04] Because it might be that while she goes into the kitchen to try to get some great advice to mom, she gets in there and not only can she not get the advice she needs from mom, but she realizes mom is drowning. And so she ends up being the one to help mom. Instead of getting her own things answered, she picks up the baby and cleans up the counter while mom's making the new formula and answers the phone, and then you can have the character even say, well, it looks like I'm going to be on my own for this, huh, kid.

[00:36:34] And so then mom finally gets off the phone, got the new phone. I'm sorry, baby. What was that? Nothing, Mom.I just want to make sure you're okay. I can see you have, you know, Go ahead and feed Charlotte. Okay, thank you, honey. Oh, Mom kisses her on the forehead and leaves the room, leaving the character without the resources she needed, so now she has to figure out.

[00:36:54] Something on her own, but how she's are, she went into the scene needy and thinking she was going to get the answers for mom, but she ends it realizing she has to rely on herself. Cause mom is in no position to be able to help her. So it's on her. She's got to figure it out on her own.

[00:37:13] And that's part of the character's journey, isn't it? That's part of their arc, because maybe it's a coming of age, where they're growing up over the course of it, and they're realizing, Oh, Mom isn't just going to be available to me 24 7. I've got to learn to handle these things on my own. Or maybe that's a mistake.

[00:37:30] Maybe she thinks that, but really, she should have interrupted Mom and said, Mom, I need your help. I know you're feeding the baby, and the phone's ringing off the hook, and there's a mess in here, but this is urgent. And so maybe she made the wrong choice in that, but either way, it's going to contribute to where she's going in the story.

[00:37:47] She won't learn that lesson until later. So that becomes a setup, also, and it raises the stakes. Because, no, if there's a pedophile trying to lure you, you don't go walk into it. Right? You don't do that and try to catch him to get him arrested. You get help from adults. I mean, that was a terrible, dark example, but you get my point.

[00:38:08] okay. So how

[00:38:11] do you know if a scene is working or not?

[00:38:15] Well, you feel it.

[00:38:20] you feel it. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, You feel it. Unfortunately, there's no check mark. There's no list you can mark off to say, okay, I did all this in my scene works. There are things we've just gone over a list of things that you should try to do. But even if you accomplish all of that, it doesn't necessarily mean that your scene is going to work because it is also about pacing.

[00:38:54] It is also about Reality, credibility, believability. And that means being in touch with your character's internal emotional state and tracking with it. And not trying to impose onto the narrative certain things because you, the writer, know they have to happen. But allowing them to happen in the right time frame or in the right way.

[00:39:18] You have to feel it. When you plan to write a story. You think it, but when you write the story, you feel it. You have to check the thinking at the door in a way you've already done all the thinking and now you feel it. And so sometimes what'll happen, here's how you'll know it's not working. You'll know it's not working if certain things that the character says or does takes the audience out of it.

[00:39:54] There's a couple of ways that it can take the audience or reader out of it. One is, is if it's confusing. If we're like, wait, what? I don't understand. Anytime I'm confused and I don't understand what's happening in a scene, there's, there is the kind of confusion where I don't know. What's behind something?

[00:40:15] But that's mystery. That's different than, wait, what's happening? Where is she? Some of the things that cause confusion to me, by the way, are, for example, if a writer is not spatially aware, So

[00:40:34] if the character is talking to their sister and this guy is pulling up in a car, the guy that she has a crush on and she's like, Oh man, there he is. He's so cute. and then they have a conversations that's three pages long before the guy walks up in the car. I'm like, what in the heck? Where did he park in Egypt?

[00:40:58] Right. That doesn't make sense. You it's spatial awareness. And that's going to take me out of the story. I mean, that's a confusion where I'm like, okay, this person clearly doesn't have it. Where is the character? Why did it take him so long to walk up? They only have a couple of lines of dialogue that they could exchange before he gets out of the car and approaches.

[00:41:16] Unless they see him way in the parking lot, in which case, how does she know how cute he looks? Because that violates my sense of credibility. They would only see the car and they wouldn't be able to see his face if he was that far away. So see little things like that. You have to be aware of spatial awareness, or it violates credibility, it violates what I believe, and it causes confusion.

[00:41:40] Because I'm like, well how did they know? What, do they have binoculars sewn to their face? Right? How could they see his face if he was in the parking lot? But that wasn't clear. So anytime there's confusion, now, sometimes the confusion is that a character will say something that I'm like, what, where is that coming from?

[00:42:01] Because it's not, they haven't justified it yet. They haven't fully giving, given me reason to believe that the character would say that thing. It feels like it comes out of nowhere. So that's a way to violate it, or to cause confusion. If they do something that I don't believe or don't understand, If I simply don't understand the scene or wait, what was that scene even about?

[00:42:27] Wait, what just happened? That happens a lot when I do manuscript critiques where I'm like, I don't understand what is this scene? What, what were you trying to do here? What were you trying to accomplish? So a lot of it has to do with what the author's intentions are in terms of the purpose of the scene itself.

[00:42:48] If you, the author, don't know the purpose of the scene, there's a good chance that I, the reader, I'm going to be confused,

[00:42:57] but those are just ways to know it's not working and we need those ways. But the only way to know if it's working is if it works. Now, obviously, your readers, this is why I believe it's so important to have first readers that are actual writers who understand the same principles you do. You write https: otter.

[00:43:20] ai I was confused by this. So see, we're going to get it wrong. There's going to be lots of times, no matter how good we are. that we get it wrong. That's why we have to have our first readers who tell us, or we're going to think that we've conveyed that important piece of information about the spaghetti stain on the blouse, which shows that the little sister borrowed it without asking and went to the Tasty Freeze and ordered spaghetti.

[00:43:50] We think we've conveyed that, but then the reader's like, I don't understand the importance of this spaghetti stain. Oh. And so when that happens, when you get that feedback, don't argue. Don't say, well, you don't tell them you missed it. Well, you clearly didn't understand what I was doing here. Yeah, that's the point.

[00:44:08] They clearly didn't understand, not because they're stupid, but because you didn't convey it. And I think it's funny how people will be defensive about that sort of thing when the person's only trying to help. If they don't understand something, that is liquid gold. You want people to tell you when they were confused.

[00:44:29] Because confusion is the kiss of death in story. So whenever anybody tells you, I didn't understand this, don't argue, say thank you, that's great, that's great information. They may not have a solution, you may not have a solution, but at least you know that there's a problem. Now maybe 10 people have read it and they're the only ones that were confused.

[00:44:51] Then you don't have to deal with it. Everybody else got it. It's fine. That's why you always want multiple readers. Generally speaking, if it doesn't make sense, multiple people are going to say that. Or, if it's one really qualified person, then I would say, they're probably right. But maybe you don't believe them.

[00:45:08] Okay, still, thank them for that information and then give it to somebody else and say, Hey, tell me what you think about this. Like, if you really think you did cover that and it should have been clear and maybe they just weren't reading carefully, then good. Trust yourself, but still don't argue. Does that make sense?

[00:45:23] Because it's really where people get lost, where they get confused, that tells us a lot about where our scenes are going. Now the other thing is, how do we know if a scene is working? We know it is working if we feel it, but part of the feeling of it is, how

[00:45:40] do I say this? We feel satisfied. We feel good. we don't feel like we've been set up. We don't feel, it's all the things we don't feel. we don't feel like we were tricked or that it, doesn't feel contrived. It doesn't feel formulaic. It feels organic. It feels natural. It feels like everything unfolded in the right way.

[00:46:06] And we're just excited. You know, it leaves us with this. feeling of being compelled to turn the page, rather than, which has happened to me a lot, I'll get done with the chapter and I just, I'm dreading turning, Oh God, I gotta keep reading this. You know, like I'm dreading it because it's just not working.

[00:46:28] But even if all the ingredients are supposedly there, it's just not, it's not drawing me in. I don't care. It's how, it's always how it makes me feel.

[00:46:42] Now another way that you know it's working or not working is if. You're just bored, or it doesn't make you feel anything. It just didn't do anything to you at all. A good story is comprised of chapters, each of which makes you feel something. So if you read an entire chapter and you, the reader, don't feel anything, then the chances are your audience isn't going to feel anything and that chapter isn't working.

[00:47:15] So, you see how nebulous that is, and I pride myself on being concrete, and taking abstract ideas and, and putting them in concrete forms. Unfortunately, the only concrete I can give you is the stuff that tells me the negative things that I feel. I can't actually, it's just a hard one. You know it works. If it works and everything 

[00:47:40] comes together. 

[00:47:42]