The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer

I had Sandra Scofield as an instructor for a week-long writing workshop at Iowa one summer. In class, she was absolutely a no-nonsense kind of teacher and got right to the heart of the matter. So does her book. Not one sentence is unnecessary. The book is filled with useful information about crafting scenes, which are themselves tiny stories with a beginning, middle and end. (Fractals come to mind.) I had an ah-ha moment when reading this book and was almost immediately inspired to pick up my short story writing again, after letting it lay dormant for nearly three years. I'm so excited to write again. I see a path and a new way to let my stories unfold. Mostly, I'm so grateful to Sandra for this book and for all of her work putting it together.

Ever wondered why some scenes work and others don't? Why readers think "nothing happened" during a scene, even though there's plenty of activity? Scofield answers those questions and more. Instead of focusing on issues like grammar or style, she demonstrates the real function of a scene within a story and the questions it must answer in order to be effective.

This is, by far, the most useful book I've read in a long, long time, and it's a must-have for the would-be writer.

This book provides excellent guidelines for keeping your writing fresh and moving along. It breaks down the mystery of keeping the reader in the moment and gives you exersize to put each idea into practice. If you are looking to make your writing more vivid or how to keep the reader in the moment with you. Then this is your book.

One of the hardest tasks of learning to write is learning to read like a writer. A carpenter sees a house differently than a real estate agent, an architect, or a homeowner. A writer must learn to read books not like an English major or a reader in an airport, but with an eye for breaking apart and studying aspects of his or her craft.

With her book, The Scene Book: A Primer for Fiction Writers, Sandra Scofield offers writers a step by step guide for skillfully crafting fictional scenes. "Events may be mentioned in summary," she writes, "even tossed away in the telling of a grand tale, but it is in scene that you capture the hearts and imagination of your readers."

While many books help writers develop three dimensional characters, improve setting description, learn to write dialogue or improve their plots, there are very few books that give writers the tools they need to create their own compelling scenes. The Scene Book gives you a language for talking with yourself and others about the components of a well- written scene. It also offers tons of great exercises to help you add layers of complexity to your own work.

In her first chapter, Scofield defines the terms she uses to break apart the different components of good scenes, the first step to demystifying a complicated art form. According to Scofield, every scene has event and emotion, a function, a structure and a pulse. It also has beats of action which keep the reader grounded in the world the writer is trying to create.

After Scofield defines her terms, she spends a chapter on each one, explaining their significance and analyzing published examples of the craft aspect she is trying to teach. At the end of each chapter, she provides exercises for coming up with your own scenes, using what you have learned.

Later chapters offer readers advanced skills, writing scenes with lots of characters, or turning a flat character into a more rounded one by having them respond in meaningful ways to what is going on around them. It is a character's response to the conflict in a scene that helps a reader connect. Scofield's well-written exercises guide writers into creating believable, moving, reactions for their characters.

Scofield's guide to writing scenes is so jam packed with strong- minded insight into the writer's craft, that it will more than likely take you the rest of your life to master everything in it. It is a book you will return to again and again no matter how long you have been writing. And each time read it, you will learn something new. The Scene Book will teach you to study the books you read like a writer.

Ms. Scofield has written a book about the nuts and bolts of creating, identifying, and evaluating scenes, scenarios, and scenics. Other books I have read have tended to be too theoretical to be of much use. I will gladly re-read Ms. Scofield's book several more times to increase my understanding of the functions of scenes, scenics, and scenarios.
Why did I say that this book is not just for fiction writers? Every reader faces a book that just doesn't work for him/her, but perhaps it is difficult to put his/her finger on why. This book helps a reader understand a story's structure and why something works or doesn't work. A reader does not need to throw up his/her hands in frustration and declare "it just does not work for me!" Rather, this book gives the reader the tools needed to determine why a story "isn't quite right."