What, Exactly, Is a Scene?
I should know this by now.
Yet, I’ve struggled for years with what, exactly, a scene is.
The dictionary definitions are useful only to a point–the point at which I start trying to craft scenes. That’s when the wheels tend to fall off the bus. But I’ve been using a technique recommended by Robert McKee in his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (HarperEntertainment, 1997) that has suddenly clarified things for me.
Apparently, I’ve been confusing scenes with outcomes.
McKee recommends outlining scenes on index cards before writing any of them.
What I’ve discovered in writing my one- to three-sentence scene descriptions is that sometimes they’re not scenes at all. They’re outcomes such as, “X discovers that Y has the diamonds.”
That may be the necessary outcome, but it doesn’t describe the scene in which the discovery is made. The description might go something like this: “X catches a glimpse into Y’s car trunk and sees a suspicious bump under the carpet. When Y goes into the house to retrieve his briefcase, X peels back the carpet and discovers the diamonds. X puts the carpet back and acts like he hasn’t seen anything when Y returns.”
Okay, so this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering discovery.
But for me, it’s a big breakthrough. My little stack of index cards has taught me something crucial about scenes.
My current working definition: A scene consists of actions in one place and time that deliver an outcome necessary to the story arc.