by Chuck Wendig
A SCENE SHOULD END IN A WAY THAT ENTICES US TO KEEP GOING. That means it ends on an unresolved conflict, or it brings up a new problem, or it introduces a new question. Maybe it puts a character in danger. Maybe it suggests a coming change, foreshadowing a new threat. One way or another, it’s your job to end the scene with a doorway that invites the audience to continue on. You are baiting the readers to keep on through the tale. (All this assumes, of course, that we’re not talking about the final scene of the story, though even there we want to leave the audience wanting a little more—satisfied, yes, but eager to return.)
A SCENE ONLY WORKS IF THE AUDIENCE HAS THE NECESSARY INFORMATION TO CONTINUE. Every scene is a new opportunity to lose the audience, and one of the best (worst) ways to lose the audience is to confuse them. Which means the audience either needs the information that will allow them to contextualize and parse what’s happening in a scene, or you need to provide it throughout the scene as it unfolds. (Obviously the latter is necessary for the earliest scenes in a story because the audience doesn’t come to the narrative fully informed—it’s your job to introduce characters and situations as they come.) The longer the scene goes without the audience knowing what the hell is going on, the likelier it is that they’ll fugue out and go raid the fridge or start dicking around on their iPhone.
Now, the key here is necessary information—not extraneous, redundant information. Every scene is metaphorically a dark room through which you’re guiding your readers: You don’t need to turn all the lights on, but you do need to hand them a flashlight. Although maybe it’s a flashlight with a wobbly, flickering beam. Remember: A little information can go a long way.
Let’s look at that opening scene of A New Hope. I probably don’t even have to describe it to you, but just in case: A little Corellian ship launches through the void, followed by the massive, bladelike Imperial star destroyer in close pursuit. The Corellian ship is in trouble—laser fire,8 alarms going off. We quickly zip onboard that ship to watch a couple of droids bumbling about, the golden one going on about how there will be “no escape for the princess this time,” while soldiers gather, readying for combat.
This scene dumps us right in the thick of it. We don’t get a lot of lead-up, and we are launched immediately into a nest of questions. Who is pursuing them? Who is being pursued and why? Who the hell is the princess, and wait, are those robots? We get a little bit of room to breathe with Threepio and Artoo conversing, and then a hard burst of taut-wire tension as the soldiers prepare for the ship to be boarded—
And when it is, it’s laser fire and men down and the bleak, black imposing figure of the Imperial enforcer, Darth Vader.
When we look at it in terms of the scene elements above, we see:
It has its characters.
Those characters have purpose in and out of the story: In story, the droids are there to serve the needs of the princess, and out of story they are there as the audience’s eyes and ears; Vader’s role in story is to hunt the Death Star plans, and beyond it, to give us a face for this frightening, autocratic Empire; Leia’s role in the story is to resist the Empire and to hide the Death Star plans, and out of the story she is both heroine and victim, the face of the Rebel Alliance.
The scene has purpose, too, in that it establishes mystery through incomplete information (that single phrase, “no escape for the princess this time,” establishes for us a mysterious figure of royalty who must be onboard, and who clearly has a history of these sort of scrapes—it’s one line of dialogue with a whole lot packed into it) and gets us excited for what’s to come. Plus, the scene has conflict in that the ship is being boarded by a clearly sinister and oppressive enemy who has to be resisted.
It has a beginning (they’re being boarded!), a middle (droids conversing and bumbling, soldiers preparing for boarding), and an ending (explosion! lasers! Vader! droid escape!). It doesn’t begin before it needs to and, further, when it ends, it does so in a way that leaves us wanting more. We have questions. We want to know what comes next. Vader’s here, we haven’t even met this princess character yet, and whoa hey wait, where are those droids going?
In the next scene, we receive our answer: The mystery deepens as Leia (our erstwhile princess) gives the droids something and boots them off the ship. Then another scene, with Vader encountering Leia, and all of that adds up to the film’s first sequence of scenes, which comprises the boarding and capture of Princess Leia’s ship while the droids escape with what we learn are the plans to something called a “Death Star.”9
Of course, different scenes are differently executed—but still tick our boxes. Go to the scene in The Princess Bride where Inigo and the Man in Black square off with swordplay.
Obviously, it has its characters: Inigo and the Man in Black.
The characters each have their purpose, and that purpose is clearly spelled out for us: The Man in Black is in pursuit of the kidnappers, and Inigo is there to prevent his pursuit. And so, they do what they must, which is cross blades. But also, they talk, and that’s very important because … the conversation gives the scene its purpose, too. It introduces both of these characters. Yes, we’ve met them both before, but up until this point Inigo was mostly a quippy background player, and we didn’t yet realize that the Man in Black is the Dread Pirate Roberts who is also Westley the Farm Boy. Further, not only do we have introductions, but we have a lead-in to Inigo’s own problem, where he regales the Man in Black—and us, by proxy—with his tale of his father’s demise at the hand of the six-fingered man.
Oh, the scene also gives us an awesome sword fight.10
Point is, it’s a lot of fun, we see the mastery of each character, we receive intros to their story, etc., etc.
It has a beginning (Inigo helps Westley to the top of the cliff they’ve both climbed in their pursuit), a middle (they talk, then begin to fight, and Inigo confesses he has been using his left hand but is not left-handed), and an end (a reversal of fortune as the Man in Black also confirms he has been using his left hand but is not left-handed, thus besting the Spaniard and knocking him unconscious).
Now, the scene takes a little while to build—it allows some oxygen right at the front, loading it with exposition. In a less-masterful hand, that might feel clunky, but writer William Goldman and the performers keep it peppy, witty, engaging. Even during that time of oxygen, we are granted the tension to know what’s coming: The conversation is simply stalling the inevitable fight. That’s important. The oxygen works because we know the stakes—we know what each wants, and we know what must occur for each to get it. We see the metaphorical sword dangling above the whole scene, we just don’t know when it’ll fall—or on whom. So the scene begins just where it needs to, and its slower build is purposeful and elegant.
When it ends, it ends with the Man in Black still in pursuit—onward he goes, and we do not know the future of the unconscious Spaniard or how the Man in Black will fare against the giant he is soon to face. Those are two big question marks that keep us running through the tale.
TRANSITIONS
One piece of storytelling that doesn’t get its due (at least from where I’m sitting) is the subject of transitions.
By transitions, I mean the bridges between story elements that take us from one place to the next. Maybe this bridges a gap in time, or is a line drawn from one setting to another, or is simply just about moving the overall story forward, scene by scene.
They’re a source of great frustration even for me because they’re ultimately vital and yet, at the same time, feel so damned unnecessary. It’s like, take a look at the human body. The cool parts are obvious: a head, some arms, some legs, a sassy pair of buttocks.11 But then you have all the connecty bits—like, have you ever taken a close look at your knee? Or worse, your elbow? God, the elbow is just some ugly, anatomical aberration—it’s flappy skin and a gingerroot knob underneath, and then buried inside there you have the funny bone, which is easily the worst named part of the body because hitting it even
lightly feels like you’ve been hit in the arm by a hammer. It’s like brain freeze, except for your entire arm. It’s dumb. The whole elbow is dumb and makes me sad.
And that’s often how I feel about writing transitions.
They’re the elbows of fiction.
And yet—and yet!—the elbow is a fundamental part of the arm. Without it, you’d just have a stiff broomstick with a hand at the end of it. You’d be a cheap action figure who could never bring a cup of coffee or donut to your lips, who could never hug another human, or punch another human, or really do anything except point like you’re starring in a new version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Transitions, also, are often like that: knobby and inelegant, but necessary.
So let’s establish some ground rules for making your transitions as elegant as possible.
First, okay, no, not every transition scene is necessary. Sometimes you can just jump from this part to the next—you don’t need the literal bridge where people are driving or walking or otherwise conveying themselves (and the story) from scene to scene or from sequence to sequence. As with all things, if the transition feels nonessential, cut it. (The best way to determine this, in my experience, is to write it and let it sit—and cut it during revisions. If the story still reads well without the transition, so be it.)
Second, if you do need one, keep it mercifully short. In a novel, this can be literally a paragraph at the end or fore of a chapter. In a script, it can be just a line or two of description. Just as a movie might begin with an establishing shot that shouts HERE LOOK, IT’S NEW YORK CITY, a transitional component can be characters doing something simple to get us from one place to the next. It needn’t be fancy; brutal efficiency is the name of the game.
Third, if the transition needs to be longer, make the damn thing sing for its supper—bump it up from transition to proper scene. What I mean is force it to be useful. Double-duty time! The transitional scene can somehow further the story by deepening a character’s arc, giving us insight into the character, driving home the story’s theme, or revealing a crucial piece of information. Make it into a scene that also happens to take your characters from one place to the next.
Want a good example of a transition in film? Casablanca. It’s an oldie, but, goddamn, is it a goodie! In that movie, the introduction of the Nazis transitions to the introduction of Rick by drawing us inside from the street and winding through the crowded establishment of Rick’s cafe. It gives us a sense of the storyworld and the central setting of the film, and it does so swiftly and with great, elegant care. Further, it’s enticing and welcoming as it draws us in. It makes us feel like a part of the story.
If you want a pretty good example of stories that largely eschew transitional scenes? Star Wars comes to mind. All of the films keep it speedy and pulpy, moving us from THIS PLACE to OH WE’RE HERE NOW to OH, SHIT, LASERS12 without much more than screen wipes as merciless as a hand brushing dirt off a shoulder.13 Point is, Star Wars movies don’t spend a lot of time getting the characters from here to there—they mostly just put them there and expect us, the audience, to keep up. It can be a little jarring, but it also has the advantage of keeping us on our feet and at attention. It also became a hallmark of the series’ style.
CREATING TENSION: THE RHYTHM OF FIRE AND OXYGEN
Let’s dial it back a little bit and consider the single and smallest item of storytelling measurement: the beat. At the basic, most fundamental level, think of each moment in your story as a heartbeat. When you’re calm, your pulse is a slow, steady beat. When excited, it throbs and jitters. When you’re terrified, it goes into tachycardia and everything feels like electricity and you might pee your britches.
I mean, ha ha, I’ve never peed my britches when I’m scared, no matter what the pictures on the Internet say.
*clears throat*
Storytelling is often a push between order and chaos—a battle between oxygen and the fire that consumes it. Stories breathe. And storytellers pump oxygen—air, precious air—into the story because the audience needs to be able to breathe with the story. As audience members, we need moments to look around, to understand characters, to take the measure of where we are, who we’re with, and why. And then, as storytellers, we burn up all that precious oxygen with sweet, cleansing flame. Heat and light! Melting fixtures and choking smoke! Excitement and horror! Fire! Wonderful fire.
Sorry, got a little carried away there—the glint of chaotic firelight dancing in my eyes again, is it? Let’s get back to the oxygen—the sense of order in a story. Look at it this way: When you have oxygen, you have room to breathe slowly and completely. You have time. You get comfortable and calm. You can stretch your legs.
Stories need that. We need the moment of John McClane balling up his toes on a carpet. We need the moment where he’s sitting there, talking with Al Powell over the radio during what will surely be a short respite from all the machine-gunning and exploding. We need Buffy to talk about school and boys with Willow. We need Luke to hunker down with Obi-Wan or Yoda and learn about life, his father, and the Force.
Stories need oxygen.
But when all you have is oxygen, the story can grow indolent—it gets sleepy, sluggish, overly thoughtful. It becomes too safe.
It gets boring.
And to hell with boring.
So, to all that buildup of oxygen, you add heat and fuel, and you get the fun part: fire. Fire is exciting. It’s conflict, it’s drama, it’s agitation. And, obviously, I don’t mean literal fire, I mean the metaphorical fire of what happens when you take the safety and the status quo of the characters and you put that in jeopardy. You burn up their safe space. You close off their exits. You force them into a fight-or-flight situation: either stay and contend with the flames or escape to fresh air. John McClane is attacked anew. Darth Vader shows up on Cloud City. Buffy discovers her boyfriend has—oops!—turned evil for the thirty-seventh time. The fire is my favorite part. It’s the part where you burn it all down, where you stoke the fuel and move the story. Characters—and, by proxy, the audience—can’t get too comfortable for too long, so you need to add some heat.
Ah, but it can’t all be fire, can it? When fire becomes the status quo, that’s just a new kind of boring. Characters cannot live amongst the flames. More to the point, a story cannot be constant tension or conflict. When that happens, we grow numb to it. It fails to bring the same kind of heat and light that it once did. Life is about contrasts: Images exist because of the contrast between colors and between dark and light. We know the value of day because we lived through the night. Happiness elevates us because we know its opposite: grief. And conflict and tension only work if we have seen the characters experience safety.
The grim reality of storytelling is this: The audience wants the characters to be safe and happy, and our job as storytellers is to tease them with that safety and happiness … and then ruin it. We are out to hurt them. Not constantly, oh, no, no, no. We always hand over the carrot and let them have a few bites before we finally deliver the stick. So we fill the space with the oxygen. …
And then we start the fire.
This creates a pattern for us, right? Air and flame, air and flame. The oxygen is fuel for the fire, the fire consumes it, and so we need air once more. (Think back again to that “W” shape mentioned in regards to comics writing on page 90.) We stagger how much oxygen we need and how many fires we set, depending on the needs of the story—and it’s this pattern that creates for us the rhythm.
So, back we go to the heartbeat: The narrative pulse is sometimes slow and steady, other times quickening until it feels like the story’s heart is going to high kick its way through the breastbone and out of the chest. You can see this in some stories: A New Hope starts out right in the frying pan with the fire of Vader invading Leia’s ship. Once the droids break out via escape pod to Tatooine …
We are afforded some oxygen—some downtime in which to breathe as Goldenrod14 and Artoo wander the sands and eventually s
eparate, coming together once more to meet Luke and his family.
Ah, but then: conflict once more! Flames and oxygen in bursts: Tusken Raider attack, then breathe. A fight in the cantina, then breathe. Escape Tatooine in the Millennium Falcon … and then, ahhh, breathe.
As the film goes on, these beats come a bit faster, until the third act reveals the attack on the Death Star—there, the fire comes hot and heavy and only leaves enough oxygen for us to gulp in short bursts. Stories are like this: a constant ratchet-and-release of tension, the tightening of a spring, which then fires and relaxes once more.
This is pacing. This is rhythm. It’s the tension and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict once more. Pressure builds, steam releases. Then again, and again, and again, with variation as to how long the pressure builds and holds before release—and variation as to how long a period of release we as the audience are allowed to have. Think of the game Jenga: You remove one piece and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release, and with every block out, the tower gets wobblier and wobblier. Certainty fades as the whole thing teeters. We get less oxygen each time. The fire will burn hotter when next it fuels up. And because we know that, we begin to use our oxygen—our downtime—to anticipate the fire that’s coming. Which means the air you give your story can be as much a tool to build tension as the fire—the fire is the release of tension. The oxygen is when we build the tension because, in our minds, we imagine what is to come. The oxygen also gives us more time to care about what’s there: the characters, the mysteries, the details.
