Scenes are the building blocks of your story

Whenever someone announces, “That was a great story!”, typically what they’re communicating is that the author constructed a series of memorable scenes that advanced the plot at a good pace and kept their interest the entire way. Plot is always important – the very essence of a back cover blurb – however, if you want your readers to be engaged in your story, strong scenes are vital. Beautifully constructed scenes that seamlessly move a plot forward while also providing key character development – that’s the stuff readers crave!

In almost all works of fiction, 80% of your writing time will be spent choosing, constructing, writing and editing scenes. For this reason, knowing how to manage your scenes effectively can not only improve your storytelling, it can also save you several drafts and countless hours.

This online self-paced course, Fiction Essentials: SCENES, builds on some of the core principles from our introductory courses, as well as delving deeper to give you concrete methods to plan, construct, write and edit compelling scenes.

This course will help you do the following:

• Construct your scenes so that narrative tension builds – both within the scene and within the overall story.
• Create vivid, memorable settings.
• Decide which elements of your story require scenes and which should be summaries or skipped over entirely.
• Plan your scenes to include all the story drivers relevant to your characters.
• Use dialogue to deepen characterisation and move the plot forward.
• Identify common pitfalls in writing scenes and develop techniques that avoid them.
• Edit your scenes to improve both them and the overall story.

Writers often have one of two problems: they have an idea for a story but no idea how to tell it; or, they are telling their story but they are not satisfied with the result.

In both these cases, it comes down to choosing the right scenes, picking your point of view, constructing a tight, interesting situation, and putting your characters on the page in a way that engages readers – and then ending the scene in a way that makes readers want to turn the page!

As an author, you’re no different to a director creating scenes for a film. Scenes are simply how you tell your story and this course will help you to look at them in entirely new ways, guiding you away from common mistakes and giving you the nuts and bolts techniques to improve your writing.

By the end of this course…

Completing this course will give you a greater understanding of how scenes work in creating effective fiction. In particular, you will master the art of constructing compelling scenes, deciding which scenes to write, and editing your scenes for maximum engagement from readers.