Scenes

Bronwyn Jameson states, “Every scene should advance the story, moving the plot and the characters toward the story's resolution and conclusion. If the scene doesn’t fulfil that purpose, then it doesn’t belong in the story.”

This is a very easy thing to forget when you’ve just written something hilarious or nerve-wracking or thought-provoking or otherwise brilliant, and you want to keep it in your novel just because it’s a good scene.

Good scenes aren’t good enough.

Every scene should contain action, AKA conflict AKA proactive characters.
Every scene should derive logically from the preceding action.
Every scene should directly cause change, thus provoking the following scene(s).

(This, of course, assumes you are writing a chronological piece, and not something like Pulp Fiction or Momento.)

Vernacular: story events

A STORY EVENT creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character, that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value, and is achieved through conflict.

[Robert McKee--STORY]

Vernacular: story values

STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive, from one moment to the next.

Ex: alive/dead, love/hate, freedom/slavery, truth/lie, courage/cowardice, loyalty/betrayal, wisdom/stupidity, strength/weakness, excitement/boredom, good/evil, right/wrong, life/death, justice/injustice, self-awareness/self-deception

[Robert McKee--STORY]

Vernacular: beats

A BEAT is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by beat, these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.

[Robert McKee--STORY]

Vernacular: scenes

A SCENE is an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a characters life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, ever scene is a Story Event.

[Robert McKee--STORY]

Vernacular: sequences

A SEQUENCE is a series of scenes--generally 2 to 5--that culminate with greater impact than any previous scene.

[Robert McKee--STORY]