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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So we already got people filtering in, which is always a good sign.

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Let me grab the chat as well. Welcome to everyone joining us. First thing, I'm gonna let a lot of people come in before we get down to things.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: and then, if you can see and hear me, please drop your name and location in the chat, so we can see where everyone's coming from tonight. I say, tonight is tonight for me. I'm not sure what time it is for everyone else.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So we've got Italy, New York, Canada!

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: There was one, I think I saw one from Africa, West Africa, Missouri, Romania, Idaho.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Colorado, so many people. We got anyone from the Uk. I saw Marilyn from Uk. So that's good. Oh, so I'm from Portsmouth, Benedict nice.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: We've got nice nice range of people so welcome to everybody. Thank you for joining us on day 2. I hope you've been having some fun with the previous sessions today. If you haven't joined us before, then welcome. If you've joined us before, then welcome back.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: It's great to have you here? So as I've it sounds like everyone can see and hear me. I just want to go through some of the quick housekeeping. What am I saying? Housekeeping items? There we go. Can't find my words. But before we get started, because we've got a really exciting session today I'm I'm certainly excited for it.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So how to access your replays so as you may or may not be aware, every time we run a session. We record it.

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and then we pop the replays onto our hub page. Usually it's the next day because we have to wait for zoom to process the replays. It might be the next day. It might be longer than that. It completely depends on what happens with zoom so if you don't see it on the next day, or you know, just just you're gonna have to wait, unfortunately. But we will get it up as soon as possible. The replays for this event are available to everyone for a week after the event. So for this, it's until September 20 eighth.

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after the State. The replays are available for for writing Academy members only. and your offer is 40% off an annual variety, a premium licence.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So with a pre a premium license. You can unlock all of the premium features. So you've got advanced suggestions. You've got the integrations with scrivener. You've got so many different features that we've brought out now, and we just keep bringing out more. So it's it's definitely good to be a premium user this offer ends on September 20, eighth as well. So the same day that the replays are taken away.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: And now, if you want to keep talking Science fiction writing with our community.

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Then you can join us on the pro writing a community. And we'll have all sorts of writers on there. It's not just science fiction. It's any kind of writing you can imagine. So you can talk to sci-fi writing fans, or you can keep up to date with our events which we have loads. And I imagine we're just going to keep adding more. So you know, it's it's definitely worth joining our community.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid:  and then just some reminders for this session. So as usual, if you're familiar with this format. But if you're not, then we use the Q&A box for questions for our speaker.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Which we'll have time for at the end, I'm sure. And then, if you want to chat with other viewers, and you know our chats are always amazing. Everyone's very supportive. We have really great discussions about writing. So please do use the chat to get to know each other, and and leave comments for

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me and Savannah, because we love to see them and then I will add some links into the chat. I'll add them now, because I usually add them at the end, but I realize that there's not a huge amount of time to see them

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: if I add them at the end. So I'm just gonna add them now. So they're just in there now for you. But I will add them at the end as well, and you can also find everything that you need on the hub.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So that's all the housekeeping keeping items. So I'll just grab my notes. Today we're joined by Savannah Gilbo. Who? I'm really excited to hear from we're gonna go over scenes by the sounds of things. So Savannah Gilbo is a certified developmental editor and book coach who helps fiction. Authors write edit and publish stories that work.

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She's also the host of the top rated fiction writing made easy, podcast which II swear I've heard of and probably listen to quite a lot where she delivers weekly episodes of full of simple, actionable and step-by-step categories that you can implement in your writing right away.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: When she's not busy crafting her own stories, you can find Savannah curled up with a good book, a cozy blanket, and her 3 furry partners in crime which we've just been talking about. Because I've been talking about my furry partner in crime, I guess. So thank you for joining us, Savannah. I think I'm going to stop sharing my screen and hand it over to you. If that's okay.

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Savannah Gilbo: Yep.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: perfect. There we go.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, I'm I'm good.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, yeah, you're right.

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Savannah Gilbo: Hi, everybody. I'm so excited to be here today. Sarah's right. We were just talking about our 4 friends mine are right below me. I have 3, so you will definitely hear some snoring because my 80 pound baby likes to snore, so just get ready I'm so excited to be here. We are going to talk about writing scene. So I'm gonna put up my slide deck every now and then. I'll be back in this little bubble that you see here up on the top of the screen.

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Savannah Gilbo: and we'll just go ahead and jump right in. So we're gonna talk about scenes. I have some really good examples coming that are from 2 side by stories so

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Savannah Gilbo: perfectly on theme for today. As Sara mentioned, I'm a developmental editor and book coach. I have a podcast, called Fiction writing made easy, that you can pretty much find wherever you listen to podcasts and I love helping writers write and engaging stories. They're proud of.

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Savannah Gilbo: And I do that through multiple different ways. So I have a course. I have a podcast and I work with clients, one on one. So that's a quick overview of me. If you guys want to take photos during this training and share them on Instagram, I would be more than happy to reshare your posts and give you some shoutouts and some love, so you can find me on Instagram at Savannah. Gilbo. So you know, take photos, have fun, and then I will reshare them if you tag me.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So like I mentioned, we're gonna talk about how to write compelling and well structured scenes, and the goal is so that you don't waste your time or your words, and so that you can make a big impact on readers with your story.

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Savannah Gilbo: So we're gonna talk about what a scene is and what it isn't. And I'm gonna give you a definition that I think you will love.

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Savannah Gilbo: We're gonna talk about the 5 elements you need in every scene. And we're gonna go through some examples. So I have some examples from Cinder by Marissa Meyer and will by Hugh Howie. So those are Gonna be fun to look at. And then we're gonna talk about. What does it mean to write meaningful change in a scene so spoiler, alert, you're gonna hear me say multiple times that scenes need a meaningful arc of change. We're gonna talk about what that means.

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Savannah Gilbo: Then at the end, I'm gonna quickly go through my top 10 tips for writing better scenes. So, you know, taking what we learned in terms of structure, and then kind of how to elevate what you've learned about structure and write great scenes

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Savannah Gilbo: at the end. We'll have time for some live. QA. So like Sarah mentioned. Use the Q. And A. Box, and I will go through those at the end.

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Savannah Gilbo: I do have a free gift for you guys. So Sarah posted a link to this earlier. But if you wanna grab kind of a cheat sheet that goes over what we're gonna talk about today. You can go to Savannah gilbo.com forward slash Pwa.

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Savannah Gilbo: and there's also a an example in there from it's a scene from the Hunger games, and I've included my notes in the margin. So you'll see my notes on scene structure. You'll also see my notes of things I liked about the scene, or why the scene in particular works, and or yeah, why it works and things like that. So again, go grab it at Savannah. gilbo.com forward, slash pwa and if someone wants to pop that link in the chat just so others can grab it easy. I would so appreciate it.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so let's talk about what a scene is. A scene is a unit of story that takes place in more or less continuous space and time. It features a specific cast of characters, is told from 1 point of view, and contains a mini arc of change from beginning to end. Okay, so we'll come back to this in a second.

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Savannah Gilbo: You can take a screenshot. We also are going to give you the slides, I think. Sarah posted that earlier. But this is my favorite definition of what a scene is, because I think it's prescriptive, and it gives us stuff that we can work with. But we'll come back to that in a second. So let's talk about

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Savannah Gilbo: why, that's different than a chapter. So I know this is sarah and I were talking about this before we came on today. And we were kind of laughing at how you know. Everybody starts thinking that you have to start writing in chapters, and then they kind of realize, through trial and error that scenes are actually the way to go. So

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Savannah Gilbo: scenes and chapters are different, and they serve different purposes in your story

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Savannah Gilbo: scenes like we talked about our Mini stories that link together to create your overarching story. So they're like building blocks or kind of imagine a row of dominoes that you knock over one, and it leads to the end of your story the whole line falls down, so each scene needs to have their own beginning, middle, and end, and a clear arc of change.

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Savannah Gilbo: Chapters, on the other hand, are more arbitrary divisions within a story that exist mainly to control the reading experience. So they don't necessarily have anything to do with story structure, although you can find a ton of tips out there about like how to write a great opening chapter, or how to, you know. Close your chapter on a cliffhanger and things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: So when it's time to write and edit a story, we want to live in this world of scenes

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Savannah Gilbo: for multiple reasons. But the main one is, it will make your job so much easier to write and edit your draft.

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Savannah Gilbo: Another question I get asked is okay. Well, how do? How does scenes and chapters work together? So sometimes a scene can be just. It could be one scene per chapter. That's totally fine. Other times you can have multiple scenes in a chapter that work together to make a similar point, or to set up like a really pivotal pivotal moment, like in the climax of a story, you might have multiple scenes in a chapter.

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Savannah Gilbo: So both scenes and chapters have to work together to play a role in your stories. Pacing. But chapters are gonna be much more reader to the or much more obvious to the reader, and therefore they're a tool to control how they experience the story.

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Savannah Gilbo: So, for example, let's say you're writing

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Savannah Gilbo: a a thriller novel that take that you want it to feel fast paced right? So a novel like that you would want to have maybe shorter chapters they're gonna feel quicker to get through. The same could be true, for, like a children's book or middle grade book, because you want to give readers that satisfaction of, like, you know, finishing a chapter and moving on to the next.

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Savannah Gilbo: But if you're writing something like an epic sci-fi or fantasy story, maybe you'll have multiple scenes per chapter, and then you'll end up with longer chapters, so no hard and fast rule there.

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Savannah Gilbo: you know, it depends on a lot of different things, mainly your goal of how you want readers to experience your story.

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Okay? So just as importantly as what a scene is, we need to know what a scene is, not because this is where people could get confused or stuck.

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Savannah Gilbo: So a scene is not just lengthy descriptions of the setting, the characters, or the weather, and that's because, remember, we need that arc of change. We need a beginning, middle, and end. So you can have this in a scene. But it can't just be this.

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Savannah Gilbo: A scene is also not characters sitting around and reflecting or thinking. You know, I think we've all probably written scenes like that, or moments like that. A scene is also not random events that just seem to happen, and that don't really add to your overarching story.

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Savannah Gilbo: And a scene is not paragraphs of backstory that include explanations of the characters past. So again, you can certainly have all of this stuff within a scene or within a chapter. It's just not enough to make a scene on its own. So if we go back, let me go back to my slide. About what what a scene is. Let me grab that. I'll read this one more time with all of that context we just went over in in place

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Savannah Gilbo: so as seen as a unit of story that takes place in more or less continuous space and time features. A specific cast of characters is told from 1 point of view, and contains a mini arc of change from beginning to end.

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Savannah Gilbo: So that's the working definition we're going to go off of. And I'm going to show you kind of the components of this more in a second. Okay. So a question I get asked around this stage, or at some point in these presentations, is, how long should my scene be? Because everybody likes frameworks? Right?

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Savannah Gilbo: So the quick answer is, aim for somewhere between 1,500 2,500 words and this will depend on some things kind of where where you land. So it depends on your genre. A thriller might have shorter scenes, or something like, you know, an epic fantasy or sci-fi might have longer scenes. We talked about that.

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Savannah Gilbo: But the reason why this 1,500 to 2,500 word count

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Savannah Gilbo: is a good average to aim for is because it's long enough to convey what's happening in a moment. In time. But it's short enough to hold your readers attention and make them want to continue reading. So

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Savannah Gilbo: you know, I guess. Trust me on this one, that if you aim between this word count as a general rule of thumb. Again, you can go above this or below this when it when you need to. But this is a good thing to plan for and aim and aim for.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so how do we write? A well structured scene?

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Savannah Gilbo: The main thing, 2 main things. But the the main main thing is that every scene needs to start with a point of view characters, goal. So you need to know kind of what's going on before the conflict comes into play. So what is this person who's your point of view, character? What do they want to achieve or accomplish or learn in this scene, or what are they trying to do? And this could be as small as your character, just wanting to fill up a bucket of water so that he can make breakfast for his family.

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Savannah Gilbo: It can be as large as your character, wanting to finally confront and defeat the evil dark lord, so it can be small, it can be large, it can be anywhere in between that. But you do need to be clear on what your character's goal is in each scene. And that's because it provides context for everything else. It's going to happen.

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Savannah Gilbo: And ideally, you would set up what they're trying to do or accomplish within the first few paragraphs of your scene again, because it provides context for everything else that's going to happen. So you may or may not have heard someone talk about this before. But basically.

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Savannah Gilbo: whatever your character is focused on, or whatever you tell readers through your character, that's what readers are gonna focus on, too. So if we don't know what the characters trying to do, or why, or we don't give them enough of that context. As readers, we're gonna kind of feel like we're floating around. And we don't quite know what we should be paying attention to.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So once you know your character's goal, then we're gonna put in these

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Savannah Gilbo: 5 key scene elements. So I did not come up with these. These are Robert Mckee teaches these the story grid and Shawn coin teach these? I think they're, you know, one of the different structures you can use to write a scene. But basically, every scene needs to have these 5 things. So an inciting incident, turning point, a crisis, a climax, and a resolution. And we're gonna go through each of these one by one.

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Savannah Gilbo: So the first thing is an inciting incident, and this is just kind of that first speed bump. If you think of a road and there's a bunch of speed bumps that get progressively harder to drive by. The inciting incident is the first one of those. So it's the first unexpected thing that gets in the way of your character accomplishing his or her goal. So it's the first little blip of conflict.

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Savannah Gilbo: and when the inciting incident in a scene happens, it can cause your character to either. Come up with a new scene goal so they might realize.

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Savannah Gilbo: You know, I can't go along with this thing I was planning, so I need to change my goal or go about it using a different tactic, or it can cause your character to adjust their scene goal.

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Savannah Gilbo: And so this is going to depend on what that inciting incident is, and then what you need your character to accomplish in the scene. So then, after the inciting incident. You're going to have multiple other blips of conflict. So those speed bumps are going to get, you know, a little higher, a little wider, a little harder to overcome, and then eventually, the the conflict is going to reach its peak.

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Savannah Gilbo: Which is the turning point. So this is the moment in a scene where the character can no longer go after their scene goal in the way they had originally planned, and turning points show up in one of 2 ways. So either something happens. This is like an active external turning point. Something happens that acts as the peak moment of conflict and causes the character to change plans.

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Savannah Gilbo: or there's more of an internal turning point where the character gains new information or realizes something that changes the circumstances or plans, and I'd say, in most cases you kinda have a turning point. That's both. So usually something happens in the world. And then

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Savannah Gilbo: because of that, they realize something right, so don't get too hung up on this. But just remember they can be external, or they can be internal, depending on the scene and depending on the story.

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Savannah Gilbo: So then, right after that your character will face a crisis, and this is a choice about how to move forward. So are they going to do X, or are they going to do y? And you really wanna pitch at least 2 decisions against each other? Because this is going to make things hard for your character, right? So if they're gonna do X, what could they gain? And what could they lose if you're gonna if they're gonna do y. What could they gain, or what could they lose?

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Savannah Gilbo: And ideally you want the stakes of each choice to be the same, or to carry the same weight.

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Savannah Gilbo: Because again, that's what's going to make it hard. So, for example, let's say that I'm a big fan of theme Parks, and someone gives me a choice. You can either go to Disneyland for free, or you can go to Knott's Berry Farm, which we have in California. And I let's say, I'm obsessed with both. And I'm like, Oh, my God, this is the worst decision, because I can only go to one right? So either way, I'm gonna lose out on not going to the other place.

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Savannah Gilbo: If it's a choice between 2 equally bad things, it could be like, what do you want? Cut off a finger or toe, you know. I mean, either way, we we don't want to lose either of those things, so it makes the choice difficult.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then so with either choice, there needs to be something at stake. This is how we make things interesting. It's also how we show readers who our characters are and what they value. Because, for example, let's say, going back to the Theme Park example.

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Savannah Gilbo: let's say that I have overarching plans to see, I'm gonna make up something. I want to be the person that has gone on the most extreme roller coasters in the world. And let's say I have.

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Savannah Gilbo: I have. I don't know. 2 2 coasters left that I have to get, and one of them is at

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Savannah Gilbo: Nots, and there's there's not one at Disneyland, whatever. So then I would take into account kind of the other goals in my life, and let's say that my best friend from High school is going to Disneyland, so I could either go to Disneyland and be with her, or I could go to Notts and tick off one of those roller coasters on my bucket list. So it's even making it a harder decision, right?

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Savannah Gilbo: So you can play with that in your own seeds.

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Savannah Gilbo: Alright. So then, after the crisis, so they can either choose between X or Y, we have a climax, and that's what did your character decide? So are they deciding X or deciding y, or are they taking action on X or y?

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Savannah Gilbo: And again, this is one of the main ways that you can show readers who your characters are, because the actions they take and the decisions they make show us what what they value, what their worldview is and things like that. So again back to my weird roller coaster example. If I decide to spend time with my friend, that shows you that I'm putting my friendship over my goal of being the most extreme roller coaster rider in the world. If I flip that decision, then

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Savannah Gilbo: you know that tells you something about my dedication to writing all these extreme coasters, and it could tell you something about my friendship, because maybe

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Savannah Gilbo: maybe I see this person all the time, you know, or maybe I haven't. And then that tells you something about my relationship as well.

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Savannah Gilbo: So the other thing to think about is that the the decision that they face is going to have consequences, no matter what. So that's how we're going to prove to readers who our character is. What consequence are they more willing to deal with, and why? And usually the why kind of adds to that their global

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Savannah Gilbo: goal or the thing they want to accomplish for the entire story.

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Savannah Gilbo: Then, as the story progresses, and as your character grows and changes, their decisions are going to start to change over time. So

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Savannah Gilbo: if you have a character who's going through an arc of change which most of our stories do as they change, they're going to start making different decisions. And then, by the end of the story, the person they've become is going to be some one who makes different decisions than who they are at the beginning. That's how you're going to show their arc of change. Right?

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Savannah Gilbo: So this is

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Savannah Gilbo: one of the main things to keep in mind is that you want your point of view character to be taking the action or making the decisions in this. In the moment. If you give too many of the decisions away to other characters. It's going to be really hard to see that arc of change unfold. And it's also going to.

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Savannah Gilbo: You know, it's your character won't have enough agency, and they're not going to be very relatable to readers. Yeah. And it starts to feel like another character story which we don't want, because obviously, there's a protagonist for a reason. Right?

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So then, after that, we have a resolution. This is a moment where we get to see how your characters decision worked out for them. So this doesn't mean, like, you know, 10 days later we see how the decision worked out, although that can happen. But it's more kind of like. Okay, now that for me and this weird example of roller coasters I've made, let's say I've committed to going to Disneyland, and that means that I'm gonna miss out on going to the the roller coaster at Notts, and I can't check that off my bucket list.

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Savannah Gilbo: So how do I feel that I've committed to that right? So how does the character feel now that they've acted on their choice? Do they feel good about what they chose? Do they regret their decision? Are there immediate consequences or their consequences? They kind of have to get ready to deal with? You know things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: This is all gonna help you establish that sense of forward momentum into the next scene. So now that everything's happened in this scene, and they've made a decision. How do they feel? What's their plan? Where are we going next?

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Savannah Gilbo: So again, imagine that line of dominoes right? You're kind of knocking one over, and it goes into the next domino. So at the end of each scene you can say, because of what just happened in this scene, what will my character do next, or what is the inevitable results of the choice my character just made?

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Savannah Gilbo: Sometimes we get a glimpse of that plan at the end of one scene, in the climax or in the resolution. It doesn't really matter where you put it. We just want to know what it is and again, this is how you create that sense of narrative drive from scene to scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So again, everything should link together in some way to the overarching plot into your characters arc ideally by either helping them solve one piece of the plot puzzle, and or by challenging their inner obstacles, so that belief, that world view, or that fear that they have to overcome in order to be successful in the plot.

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Savannah Gilbo: And if a scene doesn't do this, or if it doesn't kind of push your story toward the global climax in one way or another, then you should either figure out a way to connect it to that spine of your story, or consider cutting it all together. So this is a really good

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Savannah Gilbo: these are good tools. If you don't use them. When you're writing, you can come back and use them when you're editing. So I know a lot of writers that don't use these 5 commandments to write, and that's totally fine. They come back later and they say, Okay, this scene feels flat.

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Savannah Gilbo: Oh, it's because I don't know what the characters crisis decision is in the scene. So I'm either going to add that or I'm going to cut it and figure out what to do.

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Savannah Gilbo: And this is also what it means to write a meaningful arc of change. So remember, I talked about that earlier. I said, we want our scenes to include a meaningful arc of change and meaningful just means that it impacts the bigger overarching story. So it's warranting a place in your story. And you can, if you're working with an editor. And let's say, let's say we're working together. And I say, Hey, what's the deal with this scene like? What's the purpose? Because right now I'm not seeing the connection.

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Savannah Gilbo: If you've kind of done this work, you can say, well, here's what I've intended it to be. If it's not coming across. How do we workshop that, you know? So it's just giving you another tool to look at your writing through which I think is super important.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So I'm just looking at the chat. I know I'm going fast. It's because I have a lot in here. I have more slides than I planned, and I know that you guys can re-watch it. So forgive me for going a little fast. I actually just naturally talk fast, cause I get excited as well, so noted I will try to slow down a little, but you can watch the replay, too.

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Savannah Gilbo: All right. I'm gonna grab a sip of water before we go into our first example, we're gonna talk about this structure multiple times. So

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Savannah Gilbo: it's gonna sink it. Okay, let me just grab a sip of water.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, cool.

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Savannah Gilbo: Alright. I see some people in the chat. Fast is great fast is fun. Yeah, it's cause I get excited. I could talk about. I could talk about this all day, and I love looking at different examples.

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Savannah Gilbo: Alright. So let's look at Cinder, which is a young adult. Novel by Marissa Mayer. Let me know in the chat. If you've read this. I'm just super curious. I see some people have great. Okay

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Savannah Gilbo: in case you haven't. I'm just gonna read you this very quick. 2 slide summary that I made up of the scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: So cinder our protagonist. She's a 16 year old cyborg mechanic. She's waiting for her android Eco to come back with a new mechanical foot for her. So the one she currently has is rusted. It's super old doesn't fit, and she needs a new one. So while she waits, Cinder disconnects the wires between her mechanical foot and ankle, and she cleans out her rusted socket. Okay, then, as she's waiting.

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Savannah Gilbo: a young man arrives at her booth, and the retina display in her eye identifies him as the Prince Cai. So the Crown Prince of the Eastern Commonwealth, and he's a big deal cinder feels self conscious because she's a cyborg which is a second class citizen in this world, and because he's the prince, and he's handsome and all that fun stuff.

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Savannah Gilbo: So Kai is surprised to see that Cinder is a young woman, because based on the reputation of cinder the mechanic. He thinks she's gonna be either a man or she's gonna be a much older person. So either way he ends up asking her to fix his android Nancy, and he says, You know, we need to be careful. Nancy has sentimental value and all that stuff.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then, when Cinder hears this, and he says it's important to fix Nancy because she's she has sentimental value to me. An orange light in her retina display, says, this guy's lying.

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Savannah Gilbo: So then, coincidentally, Eco returns with a new steel plated foot for cinder and cinder kind of pushes her to the back of the booth before Kai can see that she has, or that she's a cyborg. So Cinder distracts Kai by saying, Okay, yes, I'm going to fix Nancy. It's gonna take a week. And then he says, Okay, I'll come back the following week, and I'll pick Nancy up, and then he leaves

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Savannah Gilbo: so eco! Meanwhile she's starstruck. She's just like so into the Prince Cinder, super excited to tell her step, Sister Peony that the Prince came to visit, because peonies obsessed with her as well. And then she begins attaching her new foot, thinking about how her step mother is going to be super upset, that she spent money on a new foot, and all these things, and then

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Savannah Gilbo: people start screaming in the street, yelling about the plague, and they realize there's break over at Chang Sasha's booth. So couple booths down in this market. So Cinder immediately closes the door to her booth, and she and Eco wait to hear the sirens of an emergency hover and they take Chang Sasha away. Okay. So now, going back to our framework.

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Savannah Gilbo: we want to start with the goal. So I'm gonna give you the goal. And then we're gonna play a game for those of you in the chat. So her goal is to switch out her old cyborg foot with the one Eco retrieves for her without drawing any unnecessary attention to herself, because again, she's a cyborg, and she doesn't want people to know that necessarily. Because they're second class citizens. Okay, so what? Based on that example, I know it might be hard to play along. But what do we think is the inciting incident?

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Savannah Gilbo: And as you're typing, I'm gonna just spoil it because I know we're gonna run out of time. So a customer arrives at the booth, and it's Prince Kai. So yeah, Mark, you got it. Hi, Mark, good to see you here.

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Savannah Gilbo: So exciting. I love when I've worked with Mark before. So I love it's fun seeing people show up in the chat that I've worked with. Okay. So Prince Kai comes. And then as they're talking there's some, you know other conflicts. Because, you know, she doesn't have a foot attached and all the stuff.

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Savannah Gilbo: So the turning point happens when Chang Sasha screams and she realizes that Chang Sasha has the the plague. Okay? And this is kind of that peak moment of conflict.

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Savannah Gilbo: So then her decision is, do I let Cinder run to save? Save

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Savannah Gilbo: does does Cinder run to save herself and let Eco be trampled by the crowd? Should we both stay put to to protect ourselves as best we can, and risk maybe catching the plague like? What's what's the better of both wh world. Here.

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Savannah Gilbo: Cinder pulls the metal door closed. That's the climax. So that's the decision she made. It looks like slides are not syncing up. Okay, only for some people. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe Sarah, I'm guessing people should refresh if they're

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Savannah Gilbo: I'm not seeing the right video, but maybe let them know in the chat, and I'll keep going so the resolution, then, is that cinder and Eco are staying put for now, and an emergency hover takes Chang Sasha away. Okay, so can you guys see, based on kind of the description where we have, you know, earlier, we said, this is kind of the conflict.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then they make a tough decision. And then there's a decision made. And then this is the result.

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Savannah Gilbo:  okay, I see some people saying, Yes, okay, great. So

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Savannah Gilbo: what's the arc of change in this scene? There's a few things we could call out. So I just made a giant list. The first one is that at first Cinder had a too small foot. By the end she has the right foot

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Savannah Gilbo: cinder normally lives in hiding, and now she's been more exposed. So not totally all the way exposed, but just a little bit more cinder was safe from the virus, and now she's in danger.

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Savannah Gilbo: Cinder was a stranger, Takai, and now she's helping him with the robot. Cinder was following the rules, and now she's broken them

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Savannah Gilbo: her stepmother's rules, I should say, and then Cinder was having a normal day. And now it's abnormal. So there's like all these different things we could say or changing, it doesn't necessarily matter

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Savannah Gilbo: how we describe the change. It's more just what's changing. And how does this how is this meaningful?

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Savannah Gilbo: So what I would say is, is spoiler, alert for anybody who hasn't read it. If you don't want to hear the end, maybe mute this, or, do you know, don't look at your screen for a second, but based on the big picture story and the central conflict with the lunar people and the Lunar Queen.

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Savannah Gilbo: We have to. As authors. We have to think about it from the big picture. So the meaningful arc of change.

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Savannah Gilbo:  if I'm the author. Okay? So she's met. She's now met. Prince Kai Cinder is on the surface of the scene. She's in danger from the plague right in general, because the plague is on the street every day. We never know when it's gonna pop up there's an asterisk to this, and I'll explain that in a second. She's also more in danger because she's exposed to Chang Sasha, who for sure has the plague?

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Savannah Gilbo: But if we zoom out to the higher level

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Savannah Gilbo: once she has taken Kai's android and agreed

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Savannah Gilbo: to fix Nancy. She's unknowingly in possession of knowledge that will bring her into the central conflict with the lunar Queen, and this is going to put her in actual danger. So to me, the the biggest arc of change, or the most impactful thing here is that she took that

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Savannah Gilbo: android so the arc of change is in alignment with the global story because it plays on the global stakes. And we're gonna talk about that in a second, so you'll see what I mean.

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Savannah Gilbo: But I put an asterisk here because again, I'm gonna spoil something. So if you don't want to hear it, I'll give you a second to mute it. Cinders not actually in danger from the plague. So, although readers are led to believe this, it's kind of just a mask. Cinder doesn't know she's not in danger from the plague. It's just a it's like a way to mask the actual thing that's happening. And as a as a writer we might

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Savannah Gilbo: worry that. Okay. Well, meeting Prince Kai and getting this robot or this android, it might not be that interesting to readers. Right? So we can add this layer of external on the surface conflict to help

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Savannah Gilbo: mask and make a scene more interesting.

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Savannah Gilbo: So again, with this in mind, you could go. The I see Jim in the comments. The plague is a real problem. It's

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Savannah Gilbo: it's kind of a red herring in the scene. Cinder doesn't know she's immune to it.

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Savannah Gilbo: So for her it feels very real. Also, it's a very real issue in the world. And we find out we find out that someone spoiler, alert. The Luna Queen is behind it. So

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Savannah Gilbo: okay, so what do I mean here when I say the arc of change is an alignment with the global story. Well. there's there's 2 ways, I think, about genre again. This is not a concept I came up with.

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Savannah Gilbo: a lot of people in the industry talk about genres in different ways, but the way I look at them is there's commercial genres versus content genres. So I'm guessing most of you are here because you're writing science fiction, right? So this is your commercial genre. It's how your books going to sit on a shelf or on Amazon or whatever, and it's usually gonna be with kind of a qualifier attached. So young adult sci-fi adult sci fi

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Savannah Gilbo: dystopian sci-fi, you know it's it's kind of, hey, reader, this is the book you want. Here's the book you need but then, underneath that for the writer. We need to know what kind of sci-fi you're writing. So are you writing

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Savannah Gilbo: an action story like Cinder, where there are life and desk stakes. Are you writing a mystery that takes place in on a space station with, you know that where the stakes are more about bringing

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Savannah Gilbo: justice or getting justice for the bad guy, I mean for the bringing justice to the bad guy. You know what I'm trying to say. Or is it? You know, a romance that takes place on a different planet. So we need to, as authors know what's underneath the commercial genre or what kind of sci-fi we're writing

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Savannah Gilbo: to understand. So I'm gonna go back to Cinder here to understand why a state client or a scene like this would be meaningful. Because when I look at this and I say, Okay, taking Nancy, the android

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Savannah Gilbo: puts her in danger, even though she doesn't know it yet. I, the author, would. I'm pretending to be her. I would need to know that to say this scene warrants its place in my story. Okay? So if you want to learn more about genres. There's, I have an episode on the podcast you can just search for that or go to my website

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Savannah Gilbo: but

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Savannah Gilbo: it's important to know. Okay, so what's great about the scene? The 5 commandments in the arc of change to me are super clear, no matter how you look at it. So if you look at it on the surface level she's exposed to danger, right? We know what kind of story we're in. If you look at it under the surface or from the author's perspective. It's the same thing.

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Savannah Gilbo: And this is kind of what I just said. There are on the surface stakes that the reader sees, and also behind the scenes stakes that the author is putting into play. That will come out later.

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Savannah Gilbo: Also, I think it's a great setup of cinders, normal world. So both the external conflict she's already facing being a cyborg, and she's a second class citizen because of that. And she's an unwanted child. So her step mom was forced to adopt her. And we see the internal conflict and the be that she faces because of that external conflict. So I think it's a really good example.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, we're gonna move on to our example of an adult sci-fi story wool by Hugh Howie, when I grab a drink of water, let me know if you've read this or seen the show in the chat.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, lot of notes. Okay, some. Yeah, show. Okay?

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Savannah Gilbo: So if you've seen the show, you'll you'll recognize the scene. I picked one that was kind of in in both the book and the show.

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Savannah Gilbo: I'll read you an example for people who haven't seen or read it. So Holston is our character in the scene. He's the sheriff of the silo, which is 144 floor underground community of humans. He is climbing the spiral staircase to the top of the silo, reflecting on how the spiral staircase has been worn down by centuries of humans.

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Savannah Gilbo: He thinks about how his wife Alison died, and how that year they had won the lottery that would have allowed them to have a child, but they were ultimately unable to conceive.

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Savannah Gilbo: When he makes it to the top floor of the silo. There's a cafeteria. And there's this big projection on the wall of the outside world. So it's a big TV screen. We can see the outside world. The projection scene shows a hill with a brown, with brown, lifeless vegetation beyond, of which is the top of a familiar and rotting skyline. So the outside appears very

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Savannah Gilbo: bad. It's just dead. Holston then gets to the top of the staircase. He goes into his office, where Deputy Marnes greets him.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then, to Martin's confusion, Holst Holston puts himself in a holding cell where prisoners go before they're sent out to clean. So in this world cleaning is the silos form of execution, and the condemned go out of the silo to clean the cameras that show the people in the silo a view of the outside world before they eventually die, because of the toxic gases in the

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Savannah Gilbo: outside. So expressing a desire to go outside is in itself a crime punishable by cleaning. And Holston has basically just committed himself to being sent out to clean and to die.

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Savannah Gilbo: So his goal in this scene. He wants to go up to the holding cell and inform the mayor that he's ready to clean.

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Savannah Gilbo: Then the first little blip of conflict which I like this example, because you'll see that.

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Savannah Gilbo: The conflict is.

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Savannah Gilbo: it's positive in the sense that it's about life. But it's negative in this, in terms of his goal. So the first little blip of conflict is the kids remind him of the joys of life. There's a bunch of kids running around laughing, and they're giggling. And, you know, triggering memories of his past, and what he lost out on when his wife died, and when they weren't able to conceive and stuff like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: So it's not a negative thing in in objectively, but for him, this is, it's conflict. So then more and more things happen as he goes up to the top, and then the turning point is, he passes the spot where his wife

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Savannah Gilbo: asked to go outside. So she that's how she died. She asked to go outside outside, and he's also in the same spot where he could look and see his wife's dead body on the screen. So he knows he's he's in this kind of vulnerable spot.

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Savannah Gilbo: then his crisis is kind of it's one of those. It's not super literal on the page, but it's kind of like. I can look at that screen and see my wife's dead body, or I can ignore it and keep walking to the cell. So if he looks at his wife's dead body on the screen.

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Savannah Gilbo: He might not go through with his goal up here, which is to go to the cell and form the mayor. He's ready to clean. If he just keeps walking, he's more likely to

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Savannah Gilbo: accomplish his goal. So his decision is, he just keeps walking, and he ignores the screen, and the resolution is that he puts himself in the cell, and he asks the mayor to tell, or he has to see, the mayor because he wants to tell her he's ready to go outside, so he accomplishes his goal. Despite all this conflict, that kind of makes him feel that pull to turn back.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so what is the arc of change? I pulled out a lot of possibilities. So he was free in the beginning. Now he's inside of a jail cell.

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Savannah Gilbo: He was safe, and now he faces a death sentence.

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Savannah Gilbo: He was personally impotent. So he's kind of a victim of this system. And now he's taken back a little bit of his personal power, which is interesting. He was considering cleaning, and now he's he's decided. So he's acted upon it.

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Savannah Gilbo: He was operating in secret now he's exposed. He was in a group of people so meaning people that are afraid to go outside, and now he's he's alone, both

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Savannah Gilbo: mentally and in the jail cell.

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Savannah Gilbo: So which one of these is meaningful, and to know that we would have to know kind of what the main story is about and what the genre is. So the the conflict in this story is around

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Savannah Gilbo: is between the people that start to learn information, and those who run the silo and don't want people to know that information. So

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Savannah Gilbo: at the start of the scene, I would say, this is the primary arc of change in the scene. Olson is safe, but he lacks personal power, even though he's the sheriff, so he's kind of a cog in the wheel of the system, and he's got this bug in his ear that says things are not as they seem.

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Savannah Gilbo: By the end of the scene he's taken back his personal power in the only way he can by acting on Intel from his late wife. But in turn this has given him what he believes is the death sentence. So I have an asterisk here, because if you've read the book or seen the show, you know probably what I mean, I won't spoil it.

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Savannah Gilbo: So this arc of change is in alignment with the global story. This is a science fiction story. It's a society storied content-wise, because at the end.

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Savannah Gilbo: I'll spoil this part. But we're gonna I won't tell you who wins, but we're gonna see kind of a rebellion. So who holds the power. And really it's who holds the information, because in this story information is power.

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Savannah Gilbo: So this scene works because the 5 commandments and the arc of change are clear and meaningful.

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Savannah Gilbo: The back story that is shown in this scene is relevant to what Holston's doing. So we learned that his wife relayed information about the outside world, and now he's acting on his faith in her rather than staying here without her. So we need that back story to understand what's going on.

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Savannah Gilbo: And then there are surface stakes again in this scene, kind of like we saw in the cinder scene. So the surface stakes are we? We're wondering like, why is he giving himself over to clean? We understand his wife died, and all this stuff.

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Savannah Gilbo: you know. But we're worried about him. There's also behind the scenes stake. So if I pretend to be the author, I know that he's in terms of the silo. He has no personal power. He's ignorant to the truth. And then this is kind of his step towards learning the truth and taking back that little piece of personal power.

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Savannah Gilbo: It's also a really interesting example of an opening where the character is not the central protagonist. So

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Savannah Gilbo: we change to a different protagonist in story. And and this one was, you know, you typically hear, like, don't do stuff like this. But this one was executed well, so I wanted to throw that in in case you're writing story like this, and you want a good example.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay? So quick. Note on word, count, people always ask me like, well, what was the word count of those scenes, since we're using them as example. The one from wool is about 1,500 words, the example from cinders, about 3,200. So still on that ballpark, the one from Cinders a little longer. That's okay. If you're writing sci-fi or fantasy which I know most of us are. You're gonna have scenes that are longer than the recommended word count that I gave you earlier from time to time.

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Savannah Gilbo: when in doubt. I do still want you to aim for the guidelines of 1,500 to 2,500, and then, if you come up with scenes that are longer, just be mindful about the type of exit or exposition that you're including within that scene, and make sure it's all necessary.

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Savannah Gilbo: If your entire draft is full of scenes that are 5,000 words that's probably indicative of a bigger problem. So you'll just want to double check that.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so let's see. So we're going to go into 10 tips for writing better scenes, just checking through the chat to see Letisha, or Latia. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. I'm sorry if I'm not, she said. It feels like the giver. And yeah, it's the same the same content genre underneath

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Savannah Gilbo: both of those stories. So good. Good. Catch there.

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Savannah Gilbo: Alright, Lisha, sorry. Yeah. I'm sometimes I'm so bad at names. I try to get them right. All right. So 10 tips for writing better scene, and then we'll have some time for QA. I'm gonna try to go through this little fast cause. I'm looking at the time here.

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Savannah Gilbo: So tip number one, stick to 1 1 point of view. Character per scene. This doesn't mean don't use multiple point of views. It just means stick to one characters perspective per scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: So I recommend this because it's gonna create a more immersive reading experience because you're grounding us in that person's perspective. Also, it helps you avoid head hopping, which can be jarring for readers.

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Savannah Gilbo: and it's easier to write a well structured scene because you can track that point of view's point of view. Characters, goals, conflict, and the decision they make and things like that

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Savannah Gilbo: tip number 2 is to establish the proper amount of context at the beginning. So where and when is the scene happening?

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Savannah Gilbo: So we want to ground readers in time and place at the beginning of each scene, especially in relation to the scene that came before it. So where is the scene taking place? How much time has passed since last scene, and things like that

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Savannah Gilbo: if the time or place is unclear to people, they're going to try to go back and figure out what they missed, which means you're pulling them out of their out of your story, and they're not fully immersed. So just something to keep in mind.

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Savannah Gilbo: Tip number 3 is to give your character a specific goal in each scene we talked about that a little right. What does your character want to achieve, learn, or accomplish, or what are they trying to do.

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Savannah Gilbo: And this is super important, because without a clear and specific goal, your character won't feel realistic or engaging.

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Savannah Gilbo: And you can't structure a scene if you don't know what their goal is. So if they, if they have no goal, nothing can get in their way, and then there's no conflict. So there's no story.

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Savannah Gilbo: Tip number 4 is to make sure each scene includes a mini arc of change. We talked about this throughout the entire presentation right? So we want the goal. And then those 5 commandments to help us create a mini arc of change. And all of these mini arcs are what add up to create your overarching story, and that overarching arc of change. And this is again a great lens to look at your scenes through when it comes time to edit. So if your scenes don't have that meaningful arc of change what can you do to fix it?

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Savannah Gilbo: Tip number 5. Make sure your point of view. Character has agency. So your point of view, character needs to be able to make decisions and take actions to move the story forward.

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Savannah Gilbo: no matter what situation they're in. So even if they're, you know, imprisoned, or somewhere where they don't have that kind of external agency, they still need to be taking initiative to do something about their circumstances, even if that has negative or unforeseen consequences. And this is because more often than not it's those unforeseen consequences that make a story interesting and that force our characters to grow and change.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, tip number 6, show what your character is thinking and feeling. And notice, I said, show. So this is showing it's not telling. We want to show what they're thinking and feeling.

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Savannah Gilbo: So we wanna let readers inside our characters heads. Because this is kind of our super power as novelists. Right? We don't get to be in the head of characters on TV shows, necessarily. But we can be in their head in a novel. So what are they thinking? What are they feeling? How are they processing the events of the scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then, obviously to do this, you know. Well, you're going to need to understand who your character is. So this is why, it's important to do some character work before you write, or if you're more of a panther, at least at the end of your draft, so that you can make your story better on revisions.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, tip number 7. Try to advance at least one subplot in each scene. So again, this is probably more of an editing tip, but you know. Use it as you want to. Subplots develop right alongside the main plot. This is what helps us add complexity and depth to our stories.

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Savannah Gilbo: It also lets you set up things so like within the subplots that are gonna come into play later without having to build an entire scene around that thing. I see that happen a lot.

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Savannah Gilbo: So in each of your scene, just consider how you can move at least one of your subplots forward. So how can a subplot cause conflict bring clarity and things like that?

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Savannah Gilbo: Tip number 8. Use the story present to trigger backstory and exposition. So anything that you include that's like a description of people, places, memories, history, the world, things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: It should all be directly related to what's happening in the moment. In the scene. If not, you probably don't need it in this scene. You can put it somewhere else.

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Savannah Gilbo: When it's relevant to what's happening in the scene. It's context, it's not an info dump. So that's people always ask me, how do I know if something, you know, if it if it's an info dump or not.

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Savannah Gilbo: Is it context, or is it not? Is it relevant, or is it not? So the key is to only include information that readers need to know to understand what's going on. Otherwise you're just gonna put in too much and risk losing their attention

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Savannah Gilbo: and then tip number 9 only include dialog that's relevant to the scene. So dialog should be used as a way to establish context or character goals cause or worsen conflict, reveal decisions or changes and things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: If it doesn't do any of these things, then you probably don't need it. It's that simple. We can trim it down this is not a first draft problem on that note. So just something to keep in mind as you're drafting. I did a podcast episode recently on dialogue as well. And one of the things I mentioned in there is. If we know our characters, goals within a scene, it makes writing dialogue way easier because you're not, you're not having to overthink it. You're just including what they would do, based on what they're trying to accomplish.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay? And finally, tip number 10 make sure the scene contributes to the global story. So we talked about this right? We want to think in terms of our external plot. So every story or every scene in our story should push us forward to the main climactic moment, where they're either going to succeed or fail in accomplishing that main story goal.

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Savannah Gilbo: We can also think in terms of our character's internal arc. So every scene should force our character to face some kind of conflict and make decisions that's going to help them grow and change, because this is how you express that arc and express your theme.

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Savannah Gilbo: So I know that was very, a very fast quick! 10 tips but again, make sure you watch the replay. If you wanna take more notes or hear something again.

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Savannah Gilbo: But with that you now know how to write compelling and well structured scenes, so that you don't waste your time or your words, and so that you can make the biggest impact on readers with your story so hopefully that very fast overview gave you some new tools to work with and got you excited about writing in scenes. I'll put up the link to the freebie. One more time I saw a few people came in late, and they were asking for this link.

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Savannah Gilbo: So. I put together a cheat sheet with an example from the hunger games. And my inline comments on that scene. In this guide you can go to spanagob.com forward slash pwa to get it.

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Savannah Gilbo: and I see we have about 12 questions in the QA. Box, so I'll go ahead and answer those soon as I take a sip of water.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so let's see, I'm gonna go to some questions here.

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Savannah Gilbo: RM. Says, with those thinking reflective moments be the sequel in the scene. Sequel system. Okay, this is a good question. Scene. Sequel is just kind of another way to look at scene structure.

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Savannah Gilbo: and and if you like that model better, feel free to use that versus the 5 Commandments I showed you. But think about there's a couple of ways to think about it. So a scene sequel could.

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Savannah Gilbo: Maybe I should go back to this slide. Hold on, let me find this slide, because it's easier if I have my little pointer. Let's see here

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1 s.

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Savannah Gilbo: The problem with having 120 slides is you have to go back and find find the exact one you want.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, almost there.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, here we go alright. So a scene sequel. A scene can have all of these things in in the Dwight Swain model of scene, sequel.

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Savannah Gilbo: or and is in a sequel, can have all of these things. So what I mean by that is let's say you're having a battle scene. So you know, bad guys infiltrate the space station we're fighting. I have to make a decision. I'm the character. Who do I want to go protect this person or this person, so that might be my my actions. Scene

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Savannah Gilbo: then I might have a sequel that's kind of like. After the excitement of that action scene, we're licking our wounds. We're kind of in the in a different part of the space station whatever, and someone comes in with news. You know, Captain, so and so died. And this is our situation. So now I'm the acting commander, or whatever, and I need to make a decision so that could be your sequel. And it's like a quieter moment still, with the same same elements like this.

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Savannah Gilbo: Other people interpret that as like a scene in the Dwight Swain model is, it includes an inciting incident turning point

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Savannah Gilbo:  and depending on the scene. It could be a crisis in a climax. And then the resolution is the sequel.

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Savannah Gilbo: Or the crisis climax. Resolution is a sequel. So it's kind of squishy. How you want to think about it. I say, when in doubt, just do what makes sense to you. personally, when I have writers that, like the Dwight Swain model, I say, Okay, if you're going to do scene and sequel, your scene should have these 5 elements, and your sequel should have these 5 elements. The sequel is just going to look quieter, and it's going to be more internal than your scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: So I hope that helps Rm, let me know if you have follow-up questions. I'm gonna go back to my slide with the with the freebie on it. Okay? And so let's see the next question. Let's see

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Savannah Gilbo:  I'm gonna say this name so wrong. I'm sorry. Neo Neocie, tell me if I'm saying that wrong or right she, they said in screen writing a scene is bound to the place or time. Do novels work that way, too. So screen writing is a little different cause. If we just think about what?

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Savannah Gilbo: What's involved in an actual scene? In a movie, we need to work with costume designers, set designers all that stuff, right? So it makes sense that in in a movie or TV show, we're gonna look at scenes a little different because it's gonna contain so many other

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Savannah Gilbo: parts of the world, and like pieces and people so usually in screenwriting, they keep a scene to one location.

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Savannah Gilbo: Because they they need to, for how, how they're gonna get things done in a novel, though we might we might need to show things through summary like, I'm thinking I always go back to the Harry Potter books as examples. But in the first book there's

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Savannah Gilbo: over Christmas break. There's like one I would call it one scene. Okay, I see. Neo neo easy. Okay. I think I got it. I don't mind people butchering my names. Yeah. Oddly enough, people butcher my name a lot, too. I get, called Samantha, and I just answer to it now. But okay. So back to the topic.

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Savannah Gilbo: let's see, I don't even know what I was saying. Oh, screenwriting. Okay? So in novels in Harry Potter there's a scene where there's one goal they have over Christmas break, and it's to find more information on Nicholas Flamel. So over that break.

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Savannah Gilbo: and over that scene they they go to the library. They do some homework. But it's told via Summary. So it's kind of like, you know. The first 3 days of break went by quick. I learned how to play wizards. Chess. We did this. We did this.

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Savannah Gilbo: and there was this one day where the twins were throwing snowballs with this teacher. Blah blah! Blah! So it's it's in a summary. It spans multiple locations. But it's in a scene. So the scene is about. Do they find information on Nicholas? Smell or not?

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Savannah Gilbo: So I hope that helps let me know if not.

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Savannah Gilbo: Let me see, I'm just gonna mark this as answered, and then you have a follow up about the summary of cinder. There's a scene before Kai where Chang actually took her child away from Cinder. Yeah, so this is part. Okay. Let me let me re-explain that.

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Savannah Gilbo: There's a moment in the scene before Prince Kai comes into the picture, and it's Chang Sasha walking by with her daughter or kid I can't remember, and she says to the Kid, don't you know? Don't go near

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Savannah Gilbo: Cinder because she's a cyborg yuck, whatever right? So that's just a moment within the scene. It's not

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Savannah Gilbo: It's not big enough to be its own scene. It's just like part of what happens. It's part of the conflict that sets up Cinder's normal world. And then it's it's within that overarching scene where Cinder has a goal of finding her new foot.

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Savannah Gilbo: So hope that helps.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. And then Gene says, is turning point crisis, the middle of the scene. It can be it's usually after the halfway point if we think about it.

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Savannah Gilbo: yeah, I'd say it's usually after the halfway point. If you like math, it's between like the 50, the 75. Usually again, that's not a hard and fast rule. So don't stress out.

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Savannah Gilbo: Hi, Jim! I see you, and

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Savannah Gilbo: and I hope that helped. Let's see. Go to the next one. Rm. Says, are the 5 points of a scene equally distributed? Or do they fall at certain percentages more along the lines of the 3 Oct structure. So yeah, I kind of just spoke this with the last question.

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Savannah Gilbo: It's it's similar in weight to the 3 Oc structure. So the turning point. If if it's that peak moment of conflict, it's going to happen much later, you know, at least past the halfway point, maybe more to that. 75 80% point again, not a hard and fast rule. The more you practice this type of scene writing, the more you're going to start to feel it.

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Savannah Gilbo: And you'll just instinctually know. Okay, let's see,

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Savannah Gilbo: I'm just looking through to make sure I answer the most. I'm gonna answer all the same questions first, then we'll go back to the miscellaneous ones. Okay. So Jen says, these scenes seem like big pivotal moments. Can we use the same principles for more mundane scenes? So actually, the cinder scene is that both scenes are the very first scene in the book.

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Savannah Gilbo: So

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Savannah Gilbo: in terms of, I'm just thinking of those plots, they in terms of the context of the story. They are kind of more mundane scenes. Things get a lot more exciting later on. When you say mundane scenes, that kind of gives me a red flag in my brain, cause I'm like, well, you might be showing one of those scenes, or one of those moments that's like exposition or its characters sitting around and things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: But so yeah, the answer is, you can use these same principles, and you totally should. And you're probably gonna realize that what you're calling mundane maybe isn't a full scene. Just what I see happen with riders. So an interesting thought experiment, you know. Try it and see what happens.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, anonymous with multiple points of view. Can each individual view on the situation be shown

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Savannah Gilbo: or so across multiple scenes focusing on that same moment. So in theory, you you can do this. I don't recommend doing it, because

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Savannah Gilbo: think about the reader's perspective. If we see the same thing happen from 4 different perspectives. It's not that interesting. You can only kind of pull this off if you have something really drastically different. That we're gonna learn from maybe another character's point of view. But I still

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Savannah Gilbo: don't recommend doing that. And I'd rather see you challenge yourself to say, how can I get the same information to the reader.

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Savannah Gilbo: and maybe use it as a way to create some conflict with the point of view character? So if I'm character A, and I witness character B and C. Do something, how can character a. Maybe not interpret that totally correctly.

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Savannah Gilbo: and then come to find out the truth later, or create more conflict in the moment because of that.

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Savannah Gilbo: So it could just be fun to think outside the box. But always keep your reader's perspective in mind.

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Savannah Gilbo: Alright, Darryl says, what do you mean about characters agency? So agency is just the ability to be able to make decisions and to you know, do things so it's like,

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Savannah Gilbo: we all have agency right, even if like. Let's say I spend my whole day on the couch. I still have agency, because I'm I've decided to do that with my time. I have control over my life. Even if I might feel things are out of control. I have control.

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Savannah Gilbo: if I'm I like to bring up agency because a lot of writers will trap their characters. Let's say they get imprisoned, or they get taken and they're held captive.

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Savannah Gilbo: And then the character sits there for like 6 scenes. And it's just like, you know, this is not interesting so we always want them to have agency, so that they're a interesting to read about B making choices that force them to deal with the consequences of their decisions.

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Savannah Gilbo: because that's gonna help them learn the lesson of their story.

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Savannah Gilbo: So you can Google that term if you want like Google character agency. And I'm sure you'll find a bunch of stuff on it. But hopefully, that helped.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. Anonymous. Can your tips be applied to short stories and novellas? So yes, definitely even comic books. I've worked with a few comic book writers who

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Savannah Gilbo: eat these eat these 5 scene elements up because it just makes their life easier. So yeah, go nuts and apply it to whatever you want.  okay, RAM says, is the characters internal arc separate from the narrative arc of change, or do they intermix? So it's this, it's the

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Savannah Gilbo: so. The narrative arc of change usually describes the plot change. So the plot arc the character's internal arc describes how the characters changing because of the conflict they face in the plot.

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Savannah Gilbo: So it is 2 different things, but they're very much woven together, and if you

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Savannah Gilbo: usually I'm not going to say a blanket statement. But usually, if you don't have an internal arc, it's not going to be as satisfying. But there are stories like that where there's not too big of an internal arc.

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Savannah Gilbo: So just me to keep in mind, you can Google that also and find a bunch of information.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, anonymous. Can you tell me more about adding subplots in each scene? Sure. So

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Savannah Gilbo: some a lot of people tend to overthink what it means to add a subplot into a scene. It could be as simple as a character, thinking about what they need to do to a sub or in a subplot. For example, if I'm like, you know, on a ship out at sea, and I'm traveling to a new land. I might think about how I can't wait to get there to call my mom, because I need to say, Xyz. That's me touching on a subplot in a scene.

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Savannah Gilbo: You can also create conflict that's going to negatively impact a subplot. You can

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Savannah Gilbo: set up something in the background. So like back to the Harry Potter example, just because it's fresh of mind.

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Savannah Gilbo: When when they learn wizards chess. that's kind of within the Ron and Harry Friendship subplot.

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Savannah Gilbo: But it comes into play later in the climax, because they have to play wizards chest to get to the climactic moment. So hope hopefully, that helps

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Savannah Gilbo: all right. Let's see.

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Savannah Gilbo: I'm looking through the questions.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. Sometimes I find myself writing a lot of dialogue. This is neo easy.

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Savannah Gilbo: Hopefully, I'm saying that right? Again, I tried, I'm writing a lot of dialogue to push the narrative and show how the characters interact to each other. Is there any percentage of dialogues. Narration is, is there a way to put in too much dialogue? So I wish there was a a percentage, because when that make your lives easier. There is not there is a way to put too much in for sure. I see this happen all the time.

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Savannah Gilbo: I think when you're writing your first draft. Do what you need to do to get the draft out. And when you come back to edit.

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Savannah Gilbo: you're gonna see? You're gonna feel it.

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Savannah Gilbo: We're like, gosh! These people are small talking forever. I don't care about this. You know. Just cut it out. I also will encourage you to go. Listen to the recent episode. I did. It's a blog post as well. If you don't want to listen to the episode about dialogue because I talk about

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Savannah Gilbo: condensing dialogue and how it should

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Savannah Gilbo: kind of mimic real life speech. But it's not going to exactly match real life speech. So in that episode. I have a lot of tips that will help answer your question again. It's also a blog post if you don't want to listen to it.

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Savannah Gilbo: Let's see. So

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Savannah Gilbo: the other thing that's just coming to mind, too, is sometimes I see writers who they start from the very beginning of a conversation.

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Savannah Gilbo: Sometimes it's fun to challenge ourselves. How can we kind of dip into a conversation.

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Savannah Gilbo: or, like, you know, between friends, we're not always going to start with like, Hello, Maggie! How are you? Right? We're going to be like, hey? Did you see that thing? Blah blah blah? So again, probably more of an editing problem. So if you're on your first draft, just just go nuts and do what you need to do and fix it when you come back.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. Jim says, what's your podcast. It's called fiction writing made easy. Let's see if I can.

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Savannah Gilbo: Sarah, did I give you the link to that? And if I did. Do you mind popping it in the chat?

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Savannah Gilbo: If not, you gave me the link to it. But if I can probably Google it quite quick.

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Savannah Gilbo: I was just gonna try to try to do like a billion things at once, which is not good. There's a link in the chat for you, Jim?

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Savannah Gilbo: All right, we have 4 more questions. So, Sarah, I think I'll just do these 4 and then we can wrap it up.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: That's okay with, yeah, okay.

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Savannah Gilbo: all right. So I have. Manson says, do you think it's possible to make a story where the plot isn't obviously shown in the paragraphs, but the readers have to find it out after reading along, so he wants his novel to be a puzzle.

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Savannah Gilbo: So it depends. I think this is going to be really hard to execute doesn't mean it's Po. Impossible. But if they don't know what's going on, then I would ask, what are they supposed to grasp onto.

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Savannah Gilbo: And I always say to my clients like, when in doubt, put as much of the plot on the page as you can, because it's more about.

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Savannah Gilbo: It's more about being artful. With what kinds of things you hide, or how you're misdirecting readers and things like that. Then, totally being vague, and then they have no idea what they're reading. And then it's like, Well, what am I supposed to care about? So there's a fine line. I know there are books that

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Savannah Gilbo: I can't remember the title. If anyone knows. There was like a book a couple of years ago that came out, and it was like It was kind of like Manson saying where it was like more of a puzzle, and you had to read through to even figure out why you were reading

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Savannah Gilbo:  But again, it's going to be harder. It's not impossible. It's just going to take a lot more conscious effort. You're definitely going to want to get beta readers to make sure that enough of the story isn't on the page. And things like that.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay, so let's see anonymous

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Savannah Gilbo: with the proviso that chapters have their own structure and purpose. Is there a benefit to writing a longer chapter with more than one scene? I tend to write plot driven stories where my chapters are between 2,000 503,000 words? Is it better to have one long scene as a chapter or 2 shorter scenes as a chapter

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Savannah Gilbo: so honestly, it doesn't matter. The reader is not gonna know

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Savannah Gilbo: what they're reading. They're not gonna know if it's one scene or 2 scenes, or whatever they just want to feel that ability to move forward. So  you know, if you were to give me.

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Savannah Gilbo: If you were to give any reader a book and say how many scenes are in this, they'd be like, I just want to read the book. I don't care right? So

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Savannah Gilbo: it to me. Everything just depends on like, what is the characters goal? Did they accomplish that goal or not? And then what's the consequence? And so, if let's say, you have always go to like the the climax. So there is usually a plan to get to the climactic moment.

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Savannah Gilbo: and like. Usually something goes wrong, right? So each of those could be their own scene like A, let's get on board the ship. B. Let's get into the now that we're on the ship, we have a problem. So now we have to re.

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Savannah Gilbo: you know, Finagle, our plan, and then it's like we meet the big bad boss. Those could all be scenes depending on how you write it, or it could be one scene. And then, you know if if there are multiple scenes, the chapter is still about them getting onto the ship and defeating the boss. If it's one scene, it's one chapter. It's still about them beating the boss. So

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Savannah Gilbo: I think it's a it's just more about worrying about the structure versus saying and kind of how the readers experience it versus like, what should it be if that makes sense?

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. So King says, I'm new to writing, making a characters, idea, or thoughts come across like, would it be written in a talks for their thoughts? I'm going to encourage you to go, listen to an episode, of my podcast or read a blog post, I have on interiority.

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Savannah Gilbo: So interiorities like, how do we express our characters in our inner processing?

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Savannah Gilbo: because, that's the majority of kind of how you're going to accomplish what you're asking. And then within that there are some times where, like, let's say, I'm thinking about how Johnny wronged me yesterday, and I'm so upset, and I can't wait to see him again, to give him a piece of my mind. Right, that's me thinking. And then I might say,

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Savannah Gilbo: you know, don't forget. You need to go to the grocery store tomorrow. So I'm talking to myself in my thoughts. That's usually when it's in italics. But that's kind of more of like a stylistic thing. I highly encourage everyone actually to go listen to the episode on interiority. Because it's

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Savannah Gilbo: 80, I'd say 89% of the drafts I see are missing interiority. And it's one of the biggest things that'll make your manuscript. Good.

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Savannah Gilbo: Okay. Last question. If you don't want to have your inciting incident happen before you develop your main character and the existing world, how do you engage the reader in the opening scene or scenes.

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Savannah Gilbo: make sure there's enough conflict for sure. So what conflict are they already facing? What problems are they already trying to solve. you know, show us what they care about, because if they care about something and they have goals and they're trying to reach them. We're gonna latch onto that and say, Okay, we want we want to.

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Savannah Gilbo: We want to be on board with this journey as well. And we want to see what happens. Also I would go read a handful of opening chapters, and just kind of think, what are these all have in common? Why do I care? How can I apply that to what I'm writing on my own?

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Savannah Gilbo: I hope that helps. And then let's see, Sarah, are you gonna come back on? Or how do we? Wanna

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yeah, I'm back. Yeah, did you? Wanna yeah. I was gonna say, so that people can see.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: See? Cause. II didn't notice. I think it was, Mj. Said at 1 point, but like, we couldn't see your face during the thing, so they wanted to see you at some point. Just can you see me now? I think I'm on.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, I can see hopefully. I always forget to push the button to put me in the little circle. So I apologize. I'm here. That's cool, awesome. Okay? Well, that was such a great session. And thank everybody for joining. I think most people stuck around with us until the end. So we they got all the bonus content, which I think is great.

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Thank you, Savannah, for joining us and giving us this amazing presentation. I've learned so much about scenariing, which is great. I'm gonna go and apply that to everything I've been working on recently.

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Savannah Gilbo: And it's being it's been great. Honestly, I'm and I'm I'm gonna be listening to more of your things. So yeah, as always, you can find the replay to the session in the hub. It'll probably be posted tomorrow. Given that. It's gonna take probably quite a while for us to process this recording.

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We hope you join us for our next session. I think the next one this evening is a networking session. So it's going to be very interactive with my colleague Stacey, who is amazing. You guys are going to love her. If you don't join for that. Then we hope you join for the other sessions in the week. There's still so much to learn and so many more speakers. So

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it's definitely gonna be an amazing rest of the week. I'm just going to paste the links back in the chat for a second.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: But yeah, I hope everybody have fun with us, and we'll see you in the next one and thank you again.

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guys.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: bye.