Approaching a scene: “Start late, leave early,” building the scene around the main conflict, and utilizing both “plot” and “angle.”

Writing compelling, well-paced scenes can be one of the hardest challenges any writer faces. It can be especially hard when you’re new to the craft (and even for those with years of experience) to know just when to start a given scene. What to tell and what to show, what to omit from the page and what to include, and so on.

There is certainly nuance to these decisions, and instincts are often one’s best bet, but here are some things you can turn to if you find yourself stuck.

“Start late, leave early”

This is the concept of starting a scene as late as possible and ending it as soon as the main purpose of the scene is achieved.

A pitfall many writers fall into is starting a scene way before it needs to start. A cliche example might be a character waking up in bed, going through their whole routine, and heading out the door, all for nothing much to happen at all. Writers often imagine their scenes as they would a movie, a medium in which visual cues and information can be presented to the reader in fractions of a second (in a movie, you could show a character waking up and going about their routine in a montage—something that could only take seconds). In writing, though, such extraneous and frontloaded exposition can really bog down the pacing, as it takes readers about a minute to get through a single page in a book.

“Start late, leave early” does not mean skipping over important information (be careful of this, especially at a novel’s beginning!). Rather, it means judging which moments in your story are inessential or skippable and then cutting them. For example, travel is something that can often be cut, unless something very eventful and important to the plot happens on the journey. Usually, you can cut characters driving, walking from one place to another, even entering buildings. Think of what’s essential and go from there. If you feel like your scene needs better worldbuilding, you can always add in details later. It’s easier to sprinkle details in during editing than throwing them all in at once and being told you need to cut them later.

Building the scene around the main conflict

Every chapter or scene in a book must further the story.

This seems obvious, but it’s easier to get carried away with a scene or chapter or get sidetracked altogether, especially when drafting for the first time. And that’s okay! Just make sure you reread your work and look for moments that don’t seem to contribute to the larger vision (this can be hard, for as writers, we can become attached to every scene we put time into. Editors can help you spot these superfluous moments).

I was editing a chapter recently that led in with a very long and not-all-too-purposeful conversation. Then, right at the end of the chapter, something “suddenly” happened, but by the time I reached that point, I’d read through ten pages of very little happening, so that moment almost didn’t register and was not as impactful as it could have been. Because the earlier conversation was a bit repetitive and digressive, that last moment could have indeed happened at the start of the chapter, opening it up with a bang, so to speak. The author then could have backtracked and given us information leading up to that moment as necessary.

Remember, you do not always have to write scenes as they unfold (although that can be fun too) and can use summary and reflection (in moderation). You can absolutely start off with the incident and backtrack, thus hooking readers from the start. Of course, you probably shouldn’t structure every scene and chapter like this, but essentially, try to identify the main point of conflict in a given chapter and see how you can maximize its impact on the reader and the story.

A compelling scene’s two friends: “plot” and “angle”

I’m a firm believer that scenes should always be operating on several levels. At the surface, you have the plot itself, which reveals itself through mostly scene, dialogue, and, when need be, summary. Where scenes truly get interesting, though, is when angle and perspective come into play. Every book is written from a perspective of some kind, but the tool of perspective is most up for exploitation in a multiple-POV (or simply just a limited POV) story—that is, any perspective that aligns with a single character at a time and allows you to lean into their biases and the way they interpret the world.

It’s going, “X is what happens in this scene but Y is what the scene is about.” It’s considering the “angle” through which you will be exploring these events. Whose perspective will be the most interesting for this part of the story? How will you be presenting the plot?

So, off the top of my head, let’s say the scene is about two parents arguing. If using an omniscient perspective, a writer might write this scene pretty objectively, focusing on the dialogue, actions, and feelings of the two arguers. In a limited perspective narrative, one’s first impulse might be to take the perspective of one of the two arguers. That can certainly be interesting, too. But if the narrative allows it, completely depending on what you want to do with the story and who it follows, wouldn’t an interesting angle be to tell this scene through the point of view of an eavesdropping child? If under 10, you could explore things that would seem confusing to them, but be obvious to the reader. If over 10, the child’s perspective could still be interesting and more nuanced, and there are all sorts of potential dynamics to explore there as well. Alternatively, other interesting perspectives to take could be estranged relatives or neighbors (say, the argument happens in the kitchen at a family gathering or house party). 

In this example, the “plot” is the argument and whatever the result of it might be, but the “angle” is the way the argument is framed. Angle doesn’t necessarily have to be only dependent on POV; it could be influenced by previous events and characters’ backgrounds or personalities. So, say the scene is written from the mother’s POV, but something she witnessed or experienced in her day or life is informing how she looks at and reacts to the current argument. That would be another way to make the angle interesting.

These might seem like relatively basic points, but they can really spruce a scene up, and to be honest, I don’t see enough people truly playing around with angle and dramatic irony, which can be delicious to read as a reader.