In the lead-up to this month’s “Scene Showdown,” the question must be asked: ‘What, exactly, is a scene?’
Before we break down what a scene is, here are the submission details for Scene Showdown. Literally EVERYBODY who reads this site should enter. Here’s what I need from you…
Title
Genre
Logline
Up to 50 words to prep the scene (up from 30)
A PDF of your scene (no minimum length, maximum is 5 pages long)
Send submission to: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Deadline: 10pm Pacific Time, Thursday September 26th!
It’s funny because when I came up with the idea for Scene Showdown, I assumed it was self-explanatory. I thought that everybody knew what a scene was. But after all the questions that popped up in the comment section, I realized that a scene is not clear at all. So, let’s talk about what a scene is.
I started off by asking Chat GPT and I can’t say I’m a fan of his answer:
A scene is a distinct narrative unit where characters interact within a specific time and place to advance the story.
I then asked Miriam’s Dictionary for help and this is what they told me:
A division of an act presenting continuous action in one place.
I didn’t love that definition either so I googled a few other options:
A complete unit of storytelling, usually consisting of a sequence of events and dialogue taking place in a specific location and time.
A scene is a section where a character or characters engage in action or dialogue. You can think of a scene as a story with a beginning, middle, and an end.
Change (the writer of this article defines a scene as anything where a character expects one thing but something else happens)
Color me surprised that defining a scene is so difficult because, on a macro level, it seems obvious. Similar to how we inherently know what a paragraph is because we’ve read so many books, I figured we inherently knew what a scene was because we’ve watched so many movies.
But the more we get into the micro – nailing down the specifics of what makes a scene – the harder it becomes to define.
There are common threads in these definitions, however. Continuous time is one. A single location is another. There is action, dialogue, or both. Maybe the one thing that these definitions are missing is that there’s an actual point to the scenario. I like to think of it as a little story (which may align with the writer above who defines a scene as “change”).
With that in mind, our definition of a scene might look like this…
A storytelling unit where characters engage in action or dialogue within a single location during a continuous time frame.
Now, for those of you already getting wound up about the restrictions of that definition, calm down. This is a BASELINE definition to work with. It’s not the law.
If, for example, you write a scene where a married couple is fighting and they take the fight from their kitchen to their backyard, then to their car as they drive to work, that has three location changes but it’s still considered to be one scene because it’s continuous.
I think where writers get the most confused is with the time continuation thing. Because sometimes you’ll write three “scenes” that have time breaks between them, but they’re all so intricately woven together, you could make the argument that they’re one scene.
For example, let’s look at Kinds of Kindness, which I reviewed yesterday.
One of the scenes, from the middle story in Kinds of Kindness, has Robert, who’s mentally deteriorating rapidly in his marriage, coming to his wife, Rita, and asking her to chop off her finger, cook it, and include it in his dinner. This is, I guess, technically, one scene.
Right after that, we show Rita wrestling with whether to oblige her husband. She eventually decides to do what he says so she chops off and cooks her own finger. Again, this could be considered its own scene.
Finally, we have Rita serving Robert his dinner, with her finger, and him being confused as to why she would do this (remember, he’s going insane). That’s its own scene as well, you could say. But, really, all three of these moments, when combined together, make up about 5 minutes of screen time, and could, conceivably be pitched as one scene, even though there are time breaks between them.
Now some of you may say, “No, Carson. That’s a sequence (a “sequence” being a series of scenes).” And I wouldn’t say you’re wrong. But I think this speaks to why the question of “What is a scene” has perplexed so many of us. There is a greyness to the definition.
But what I hope this does for you, in regards to the showdown, is help you relax a little. As you can see, there’s some flexibility regarding what makes a scene.
I don’t want to stifle anybody’s creativity because some of the best writing I receive is from writers who have their own creative ideas and don’t try and retroactively engineer stories to my liking. BUT if I were you entering the showdown, I would be thinking in terms of a short story that fits within the constraints of our scene definition. Something that could, if not completely live on its own, is entertaining enough that we’d enjoy it without context. Get that clear beginning (setup), middle (conflict), and end (resolution), in there.
If you want to get more specific, use GSU. Have a character who wants something (goal), will gain much if he succeeds or lose much if he fails (stakes), and has a limited amount of time (urgency).
Some recent examples of mini-story scenes that have clear beginnings, middles, and ends, would be the scene in Furiosa when Dementus enters the Citadel and tries to convince the ruler, Immortan Joe, to hand the city over to him.
In The Killer, the Killer gets a taxi/uber ride with a specific cab driver and demands information on the person the driver gave a ride to three days ago who went to kill his wife. Simple beg, mid, end. Simple GSU.
In Parasite, the family who invades the home is surprised when the real family, who is supposed to be gone, comes back unexpectedly. They all must hide within the house and not be seen until the family goes to sleep and they can sneak away.
In Emily the Criminal, a good scene is when Emily is tasked with stealing her first car. She has to go into a dealership and buy the car with a fake credit card from the salesman. But she’s told that 8 minutes from the moment he swipes the card, she has to be out of there, or else the card company will call the salesman and tell him it’s a fake.
As you can see, all of these scenes feel important. They’re not just casual things going on between people. There are stakes involved. The moments are larger than life. That’s where you want your head when submitting for the Scene Showdown.
I hope that clears a lot of things up. But I noticed there were other questions in Tuesday’s post so let me answer the relevant ones here…
Does it have to be the first scene of your script? – No.
Can it come from a screenplay that hasn’t been written yet? – Yes
50 words to prep the scene – What I mean by this is, if the scene comes deep in your script, you can provide some context as to who the characters are and what was going on before the scene. This is not mandatory.
Logline and Title – As best you can, create a logline and title for the scene (not the script). I know it’s hard and you don’t have to be too specific (you can be mysterious if you want, i.e., “A young woman wakes up to find her dead child alive and well in her arms”).
Winner – Winner gets a deep dive review of the scene on the site and a collective kick in the behind to write the full script!
