second draft

A Scene List will reveal the treasure hidden within your big baggy draft.

Unless you’re a meticulous planner and stick to your plan as you write, you’re going to find the Scene List an invaluable tool when it comes to nailing your second draft.

When I first began writing I was firmly in the “Pantser – Writing by the seat of your pants” club. This resulted in a couple of super long, rambling and unfocused drafts of about 130 000 words each, necessitating a severe pruning, back to around 40 000 in both cases. ARGH! But where to start?! When you’re staring at a pile of words and pages that big, like an overgrown mock-orange bush in your garden, you need a powerful pruning tool.

Enter the wonderful writer and writing educator, Kim Wilkins, who introduced me to the scene list which has been a much-loved tool for over a decade now.

Once I started screenwriting, writing from the premise down to the scene list and filling in the gaps from there, I could see the benefit of doing some planning first, but I still love the freedom and pure creative joy of writing just to see where the story takes me. So these days I do a little vague planning at the start of a project but allow myself some leeway and fun tangents as well. I guess you’d call me a “Planster” now – half planner, half pantster.

Here’s what you need to know to get a SCENE LIST working for you, whether you’re writing a memoir, novel or screenplay.

It’s not rocket science so don’t get scared – if I can do it, you certainly can too.

You can do this with software like Scrivener or Final Draft but I’m a hard copy girl, my brain works better when I have something I can hold in my hand and shuffle around. I love my cut and paste both ways— with scissors and glue, and the ease of computer deletions and insertions. So find the way that works best for you and:

SCENE LIST BASICS

WRITE A LONG LIST OF EVERY SCENE IN YOUR PROJECT – don’t scream. Yes it’s long and a little tedious, but the benefits will be obvious. I do mine on index cards – one scene per card, but you can do it as a straight list, hard copy or on screen. Do it in columns if doing a straight list.
NAME EACH SCENE
WHAT IS THE MAIN ACTION?
WHAT CHARACTERS?
WHOSE POV? If only one POV that’s easy J
DOES THIS SCENE MOVE US TOWARDS HOPE OR FEAR? See Suspense = Hope + Fear if you don’t know what this means.
WHAT KIND OF SCENE/SECTION IS IT? – Reflective sections in memoir? Character reflections/ action/comedy/sad etc
WHERE IS IT SET?

So you’d have seven columns for this version

SCENE NAME. ACTION. CHARACTERS. POV. H/F. TYPE. SETTING

Add whatever other details feel relevant to you and your story. EG if you’re interweaving POV characters you could colour code their POV sections to make sure you have an even balance. Or length of the scene as well – number of pages etc.

This process may take a while. You may end up with hundreds of scenes. GOOD! If you’re struggling to figure out what would be a scene, then that’s a sure sign you’re telling more than showing, and a signal to actually WRITE IN SCENES. See How to Write a Scene if you’re having trouble.

That’s us waving good bye to scenes that no longer serve the story 🙂

Once you’re done look for these key things

REPETITION – of scenes, settings, ideas, plot points (eg I’ve already realised that in my latest Work In Progress I’ve done a couple of scenes with my protagonist finding her son asleep drunk in the lounge – one has to go!) Like me, you’ll have to pick the best of the repeated scenes, or echoes, to keep, and either change or delete the other/s. Make sure you haven’t shown us a scene and then done another scene with characters just rehashing the action without adding anything new or moving the plot forward.
NOT ENOUGH ACTION – have you got a whole lot of scenes with people thinking? Is there any forward movement in your story? THIS COULD BE A GAP YOU NEED TO FILL, or you need to think more about what is at stake in your story.
TOO MUCH FEAR/ TOO MUCH HOPE – have you got as much movement as possible between hope and fear? If you’ve got a long patch of only fear fear fear, consider moving scenes around to bring balance or creating a scene of hope between all the hard stuff. Or the other way around.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO ADD? Are there gaps in the story? Is someone’s POV missing from most of it? Does a character of importance suddenly appear halfway through the second act? Have you forgotten to add any reflection?
WHAT CAN GO? This is when you call back in that inner critic and make them work for you. What scenes are there just because you really liked the feel of it, or the memory attached?

These are the cut rules. First make a separate file called “Good bits for later” where you can put your offcuts. Then,

CUT if your scene:

Repeats without adding anything.
Is off track and confusing (no matter how pretty)
Is too much backstory – slowing everything down – keep snippets to thread through
Shows a character doing something that doesn’t fit with who they are – unless it’s a potent moment of change, of course.
Is rambling, feels like padding. LESS LESS LESS IS MORE.
Is a subplot you forgot about halfway through after you realised it wasn’t necessary.
Doesn’t move the plot forward or show us something new about the character.
Doesn’t feel right anymore – trust your gut.

No more clambering through pages and pages – now you can just refer to your list!

The scene list identifies plot holes and needed character development by showing us a template of our whole book in a more manageable form. I like to lay my cards out on a big table (or the floor) to get a good overview, then I can shuffle my physical cards around, remove them, add in new scene ideas where they fit, and “see” my story laid out in full, identify any patterns and fill any holes as I go.

You can do all sorts of colour coding and add special ratings, EG: for Thrill Seekers I had a “Bleakness scale”. Yep, I needed to add a lot of light to balance things out.

Any questions, just ask in the comments or drop me a line.

I’m offering a free online writing workshop in December for subscribers to my newsletter so remember to sign up by the end of November to get the link! SUBSCRIBE HERE.

I hope you’ll find the scene list as useful as I have. It takes work, but once you see how powerfully it reveals the strengths and flaws of your MS, you’ll know it was worth it!

Lots of love

Edwina xx

Write this setting!

I’ll admit I haven’t always found writing setting easy. As I wrote my books I could see scenes playing out clearly in my head and thought the reader would somehow also see it the way I did by osmosis or some other magical device, because I wasn’t giving them much in the way of setting detail. These days I’ve come to realise just how important setting is, and the load it carries, not only in establishing our story worlds and grounding the reader in that world, but also the essential role setting plays in developing the tone of a piece of writing and in illustrating emotional undercurrents.

Writers of fantasy, sci-fi, magic realism and historical fiction take note – worlds that are not easily imagined by a modern audience demand that the writer spend more time and page space on developing their story setting. This story world needs to be placed in time and space with key sensory physical and cultural details described so the reader is able to visualise where the story action is taking place and is familiarised with the mores and ethical laws of this new world.

For example, a sci-fi novel set on a planet controlled by women where there are three moons but no sun, with trees as tall as skyscrapers and all dwellings are within the trunks of those trees, needs much more description than a story set in a modern shopping mall. A fantasy medieval world with modern gender sensibilities also needs greater description – not only of the physical but also of the societal aspects of the world. We need to give the reader enough clues about the story world, and demonstrate consistency in this world, both physically and culturally, so that they can relax and not have to strain over imagining where the action is taking place. When we are writing a piece based on a modern, familiar setting we don’t need to fill in as much detail, but we still need to use a few telling clues to establish where and when we are. See GROUNDING YOUR READER for more.

SPECIFIC UNEXPECTED SENSORY DETAILS

Artwork by Karla Dickens, photo by me.

One of my favourite writers, Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, once shared with me her tips for writing, and using these specific unexpected sensory details was one of the best. When we write prose rather than screenplays, we have the advantage of being able to use all of our senses, while screenwriting is confined to only what we can see and hear. So USE ALL FIVE SENSES in your writing. Show us the shapes and colours and give us the sounds but also include smells, and taste if you can, and the visceral experience of the body. The key is to make these details interesting. Choose the unexpected.

For example, if you’re describing a teenage boy’s bedroom, we expect to see piles of dirty sports clothes, and some band posters on the wall, but we don’t expect to see a frog halfway through dissection and a collection of taxidermy projects lining the shelves. The cave dweller who had a crooked little finger that showed up every time she did a handprint is instantly recognisable through this one unexpected detail. Use the power of the unexpected in your setting descriptions!

Setting is not just the house or room or forest or sea or ship or castle or dungeon, it also includes what I call the “props” – furniture, decorations, contents of fridges or bags or other items in that setting. By choosing what you want the reader to focus on through your description of these specific unexpected details you can illustrate their personalities before they even appear on the scene.

TRY THIS!

Describe a character through the contents of either their pockets, handbag or fridge. What clues can you give us about this character by what you choose to show us?

Artwork by Paul Yore, photo by me 🙂

T. S. ELIOT’S OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE

The poet T. S. Eliot famously wrote about using objects to illustrate character emotions instead of baldly stating the feeling. For example. Instead of saying: Pam was totally frazzled, we could show Pam packing an overnight bag in a rush, but forgetting to close it properly so when she goes to leave everything falls onto the floor. Think of that old song “My Grandfather’s Clock” – the clock stops short, never to go again, when the old man dies.

TRY THIS!

Use an object to illustrate emotion in your story.

Setting details can also reveal emotional undercurrents to a story and set the tone of the whole piece. Shakespeare often uses the weather to illustrate the emotional turmoil of his dramas. Storms and droughts and wild winds or gentle rain can all play a part in establishing the emotional setting of a scene.

TRY THIS:

Add drama to a scene of conflict through using weather details – a blazing sun hammering down, a torrential downpour about to wash the hut away?

For a great exercise in the use of setting details to illustrate tone and mood try Rodney Hall’s 10 Sentence Story Starter exercise. You may even end up with a brand new story.

In a similar way, setting details used well in dialogue, can completely change the meaning behind the spoken words. There’s a big difference between “What time is it?” Rosie squints and slowly lifts her head from the pillow. And “What time is it?” Rosie hurls the cold saucepan full of soup at Bob’s head.

Remember the key to good setting is the use of SPECIFIC UNEXPECTED TELLING DETAILS.

Have you got any tips for writing setting? Do let me know in the comments!

Lots of love

Edwina xx