GETTING THE SCENES RIGHT - Part 1

INTRODUCTION In the last article I discussed getting the story right. I'll assume that you've got your basic story line sorted out, in that your chosen events happen in roughly the right order and lead to your chosen ending. However, in today's competitive markets this is not nearly enough and there are other ways to improve your work which you should explore until you've worked out the best system for developing and enhancing your work. (We're all different.)

Give your story a rest, then come back with fresh eyes ready for the next stage of editing, which I suggest is working on the individual scenes in that story. And since this can lead to minor changes in the story, you don't need your story line to be perfect yet, just basically right - and above all, gripping.

When working on the individual scenes, you need to ensure that each one makes the maximum impact it can. You should use all your writing skills to ensure that this happens - and enjoy using them! To me, this stage is more enjoyable than the first stage, because I haven't got that faint anxiety about getting the story line right, and because I enjoy using my writing skills. Other writers prefer the initial creation stage, however.

Clearly there are several ways to play each scene to show a specific step in the plot. We come back again to choices, your choices as creator. As you work on improving the scenes, you could:

1. change a scene entirely 2. change the point of view from which the scene is played 3. change individual actions within the same scene 4. simply write the scene better OR 5. decide that the scene is just right and leave it alone

There are undoubtedly other ways of changing/enhancing scenes, but I'll focus on these four as examples of the sort of thing you should be looking at - and you won't need any help if number 5 applies.

To me, the most important thing is that even after the first draft of a story/novel is written the actions are not set in stone.

1. CHANGING THE SCENE ENTIRELY You may find a better way to move the story along or to create an impact on the reader. In my novel OUR LIZZIE the heroine's father dies in Chapter 1, when she's twelve, and this has a huge impact on the rest of her life. In my first draft I simply had her at home when the news was brought that her father been involved in an accident at work, and of course she was upset. But during the rewriting I suddenly 'saw' Lizzie running through the streets, looking terrified and frantic, so I changed the scene completely to incorporate this.

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