cutting

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

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start,” sang Julie Andrews in the sound of music. Now, while this may be a very good place to start learning your ABCs and Do Re Mi’s, it’s really not the best place to start your story.

These days we have the very short attention spans of those addicted to scrolling through social media or flicking through Netflix shows, to deal with. We can’t afford a meandering beginning to our novel, memoir or, most of all, our short stories. We need to hook the reader IMMEDIATELY! Yes, right away we have to establish a quest, question or character who is so compelling and complex that our reader wants to keep turning those pages as quickly as she can.

The best way to do this is to start with ACTION: A scene where your character is doing something that demonstrates their unique, intriguing personality and establishes, or at least gives us a giant clue as to what is at stake.

WHAT IS AT STAKE?

What does your character have to lose? Will the world end if Jack Reacher or James Bond doesn’t defeat the evil overlord? Will a family become destitute if at least one of the sisters doesn’t marry a rich man? Will a teenager die of mortification if she doesn’t get a date to the school dance?

What is at stake may be something as seemingly insignificant as that date, but it must feel vital to your protagonist. The reader has to care whether the character will achieve their goal or not. Remember: SUSPENSE = HOPE + FEAR!

SET UP YOUR CENTRAL QUEST OR QUESTION

Using what is at stake, establish within your first few pages the central challenge for your character. Will James Bond defeat Goldfinger and save the world? Will one of those sisters marry a rich man and save her family from poverty? Will our teen get a date?

Make sure your opening pages are setting up this question as it drives the narrative forward and compels your reader to turn pages. Remember that your first readers are your potential agent or publisher.

BEWARE OF BACKSTORY

A common error made by new writers is the, what I like to call, “Charles Dickens Opening”. Eg: I was born… It’s important for writers to know in detail the backgrounds and upbringings of their characters, but the most important elements of this can be woven into your story later, once you’ve established forward momentum by your central quest or question. So if your opening is full of wonderful detail about your protagonists early childhood, and perhaps even the history of their family; if you say to potential readers, “But just wait till chapter 4, that’s when it gets really exciting,” then it’s time to create another file called, “Bits I love and may need later” and CUT CUT CUT!

CUT TO THE CHASE

A wonderful rule to follow, whatever you’re writing is:

GET IN LATE AND GET OUT FAST!

Start as close to the central action of any scene as you can (with it still making sense) and get out before you write too much and bring closure where none is needed. Leave that scene ending open, so your reader is left wondering what happened next. Leave gaps for the reader to fill in themselves. This is the joy of reading.

Wonder Woman scissors to make cutting fun 🙂

By all means, write that backstory. Write it all down, but then go back and find where the action really starts and cold heartedly cut that backstory. Remember you can always weave it back in as flashbacks or just one liners here and there that give us clues about a character’s past. Reveal that past slowly. And most importantly CUT ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T EITHER DEVELOP CHARACTER OR FURTHER YOUR PLOT!