The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer

by Sandra Scofield

A treasure-trove of scene-writing wisdom from award-winning author and teacher Sandra Scofield To write a good scene, you have to know the following:
• Every scene has an EVENT
• Every scene has a FUNCTION in the narrative
• Every scene has a STRUCTURE: a beginning, middle, and end
• Every scene has a PULSE

The Scene Book is a fundamental guide to crafting more effective scenes in fiction. In clear, simple language, Sandra Scofield shows both the beginner and the seasoned writer how to build better scenes, the underpinning of any good narrative.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Crafts, School, Textbooks, How To

247 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my craft book pick for my second term at the Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction master's program.

One of the things I often struggle with in my fiction, especially in long fiction, is the meandering scene. Sometimes things just draaaag in my writing. I've come to realize that part of that is sometimes a lack of focus in my scenes. They're just *there*.

I'm somewhat of an organic writer. I don't tend to plot much and while I do have an idea of where things are going, and several scenes in my head that I would like to hit, it can change without notice. So the idea of sitting down and planning scenes kind of scares me.

But I chose this book to get an idea of what a scene should have in it. And thank goodness, it's not about sitting down and plotting out your scenes a head of time. Sure, there are things you should think about when sitting down to write a scene, but it gives more tips about how to fix scenes (or just get rid of them) once you've written them. It'll come in handy when I sit down to revise my thesis.

And it did improve my writing already. I ended up going back over a scene that felt flat in the pages I'm working on this month and make it serve the story.

So, what's a scene? Ms. Scofield defines a scene as follows:

Scenes are those passages in narrative when we slow down and focus on an event in the story so that we are "in the moment" with the characters in action.


Scenes are blocks of action that serve the telling of the story. This is one thing that I have to remember--every part of the story should be there to serve the story. Sometimes I end up with scenes that flesh out a character--for me as the author--but does the story no good. Those are the scenes that need to be ripped out or summarized.

There are four basic elements to a scene:
1) event and emotion
2) function
3) structure
4) pulse

Yes, the first element there is two things. It's because they're intertwined. In a scene your characters act on and react to events. Characters do and feel. And there should be a reason behind what the characters are doing/feeling that furthers the story (that's element two).

Scenes have structure: beginnings, middles, and ends. In a way, they are little stories themselves, though connected to a much larger piece.

Now, the fourth element, I had heard bantered about, but never understood. Scenes have pulses. What's a pulse? It's a bit more fuzzy than the other elements. It's what makes the story stand out on the page, the heartbeat that keeps it moving forward. It's the tension.

The book goes into describing each of these elements in detail, provides examples and exercises, as well as questions to ask when it comes to your own work.

The most useful section I found was the section on beats. That's another writing term I heard a lot, but didn't understand. What the heck is a beat? It turns out that a beat is a little piece of action and reaction in a scene. All the beats add up to the event of the scene. It's the physical actions of the character that drives the event forward.

Ms. Scofield also talks about conflict and tension, which I'll admit to skimming over a bit. We got the Big Tension Primer from Donald Maass my first term at Seton Hill, so much was repetition of what he focused on. What was useful was a section called Negotiation: An alternate view of conflict. This part of the book talked about tension arising not from characters being in angry conflict all the time, but in character negotiation:

[...] an exchange of character desires and denials and relenting, until some sort of peace is carved out, or else the whole interaction falls apart


It's a slightly different way at looking at conflict--that of a process of change and resolution.

Ms Scofield also has a section of the book devoted to reading for technique, that is, studying other writer's scenes, as well as studying your own scenes with an eye to improve them. She condenses the tips in the book down to a few pages of questions to ask as you look at your own writing. This is a goldmine of revision-fodder. I'll certainly be using her tips and questions on one of my revision passes. It's all good stuff, but if I try to implement it while writing, my writing will grind to a halt.

The trick to using much of the knowledge in craft books is to know when to use it. I'm more aware of needing to have a purpose for my scenes, and more aware of the need for tension, as well as weaving in beats of action, but I'm also trying to balance that awareness with just getting the story out. Bones first, then I can flesh the rest out.

Certainly, the Scene Book is one craft book I'll be picking up again, and applying to my work once I'm at the stage where it would make the most sense to do so. In the mean time, I'll take what I've learned by osmosis, and it'll come out in the writing I do now.

It's a very useful book and I recommend the it if you have issues with meandering scenes or scenes that just seem... flat. There's a lot of good advice on how to deal with those issues.

[Chance Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is okay, but I only got a few good tips out of it. As with any writing guide, YMMV depending on what you want to focus on and your level of experience. This book is about scenes, as you can tell from the title, and while the author uses a lot of examples from novels (waaay too many from her own novels, which, judging the examples, seem insufferably dull), I think this book is of the best use to a short story writer.

The back of the book is really all you need to read: Every scene has an EVENT. every scene has a FUNCTION in the narrative. Every scene has a STRUCTURE: a beginning, middle, and end. Every scene has a PULSE. If you want to learn more about these ALL CAPS terms in depth, check out this book.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although there is some very helpful information here in a structural, editorial way, the fact that she doesn't ever stop mentioning her own work, or quoting from it, or using it as a good example, made me never want to read her again.

[Lo · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely has some good advice! but wayyyy too many excerpts of scenes that i skipped over for the sake of my sanity

[Mark O'Bannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Scene Book
by Sandra Scofield
If you want to be a writer, you need to master the art of writing the scene. Scenes form the basic building blocks of any story and this book explores them in great detail.

Writers need to think in scenes. There is a difference between narrative summary and a scene.

Narrative summary is a way to quickly cover a lot of ground in a story, without getting bogged down in the details. Narrative summary is a great technique to use between scenes, but some writers don't seem to understand the difference between them.

What is a scene?
A scene is ACTION. Every scenes contain a clear goal, actions, emotions, a pulse, tension (conflict), a focal point and a revelation, which will lead into the next scene.

The Scene Book breaks down every scene into its essential elements. Then it shows how to get to the heart of the scene and this will allow you to put meaning into everything you write.

The book also shows you how to handle scene openings and the first lines of your book. The book shows how to handle multiple characters within a scene without fragmenting the story, and how to create big scenes.

The Scene Book
This book is essential reading for every writer. Another great book on scenes is, "Make a Scene" by Jordan Rosenfeld."



Mark O'Bannon
www.BetterStorytelling.Net/Blog

[Stoney deGeyter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it difficult to read. I need clear, concise points and examples and this really didn't provide that. The examples were overly long, making it difficult to tie them back to the points being made. There is definitely some helpful advice buried in here, but it was just too much work for me to find.

[Carrie Daws · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed more than read this book. It's not that it wasn't full of good information or an abundance of examples, it's not that it was written poorly or needed editing, it's not even that I didn't get anything out of it as I do have the occasional highlight. This particular book just wasn't my favorite on this topic.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3.5~

I learned a decent amount from this book but I had to read it for my class, so I was bored.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sandra Scofield’s “The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer” is one of those quiet craft manuals that sneaks up on you. It looks modest, almost slight, the kind of paperback you might expect to skim in an afternoon and shelve beside “On Writing” or “Bird by Bird” as another worthy voice in the crowded chorus of advice. What it actually offers, when taken seriously and worked through, is a systematic reorientation: away from vague abstractions about “show, don’t tell” and toward the concrete, repeatable business of staging scenes on the page.

At its heart, “The Scene Book” argues that fiction lives in scenes, and that scenes are not mysterious. They are made, Scofield insists, out of a handful of identifiable elements that can be named, studied, and practiced: event, emotion, function and structure, all carried on a kind of electrical current she calls the pulse. It is a reassuringly practical claim. Where some craft books lean into metaphor or mystique, Scofield leans into the work – and then returns to it again and again, until the reader begins to think in scenes almost by reflex.

The structure is simple. Early chapters define what a scene is and what it is for: a shaped unit of story in which something happens that matters and that leaves people, and therefore the reader, in a different place than where they started. From there, Scofield narrows her focus. She moves, chapter by chapter, from the basic equation of actions adding up to event, to finer distinctions: how beats accumulate into a focal point, how pulse carries emotional pressure, how tension is raised and released, and how conflict often takes the form not of shouting but of negotiation. Later chapters fan outward again to consider images, activity, openings and endings, big multi-character scenes, and the habits of reading and evaluation that a working writer needs if they are going to keep teaching themselves.

This architecture is both the book’s strength and, at times, its limitation. On the one hand, the repetition is pedagogically sound. Scofield returns to her key terms – event, pulse, tension, function – in chapter after chapter, revisiting them from new angles and under different light. It becomes difficult to leave the book without an internal checklist beginning to form. What is the occasion for this scene? What is the real event? Whose experience sits at the center? What is the pulse that runs through it and keeps it alive? By the end, these are no longer Scofield’s questions. They are yours.

On the other hand, that same method can occasionally feel like overdosing on the same medicine. The prose circles back. The definitions are rephrased, then described again in slightly different language. For some readers, particularly those who have logged time in workshops and on their own pages, there will be moments when the analysis feels elementary, or when the pace slows more than it needs to. The book is at its best when it accepts its nature as a primer and leans into it; when it reaches for a more advanced audience, it is less persuasive.

The chapters on pulse and tension are the core of the book and the ones that linger. Pulse, for Scofield, is the emotional throb that underlies a scene: the desire, dread, need, or pressure that drives a character’s behavior before they themselves can fully articulate it. It is not simply “stakes,” and it is not restricted to high drama. An embarrassed teenager circulating through a party, a woman buying a dress she cannot afford, a retired man taking a phone call he does not want – all of these lives are moved along by pulse. Scofield’s great merit here is that she refuses to treat emotional current as something separate from story. A pulse that is not expressed in action is simply mood. When it is pressed, when it collides with obstacles and conflicting desires, it becomes tension, and tension is what keeps a reader leaning forward.

Her treatment of tension is brisk and useful. Scofield is not interested in mechanical tricks so much as in clarity about questions. A scene, she reminds the reader, is most alive when it raises something that cannot yet be answered. Will he tell the truth. Will she stay. Will they reach the hospital in time. The writer’s task is to intensify the reader’s concern about how that question will be resolved, and then to release or transform that concern in a way that feels both surprising and inevitable. She is particularly good at describing the many small ways tension can be released: in reconciliation, deflection, retreat, sudden insight, explosion, or – perhaps most interestingly – in simple dissipation, when a character gives up and the air goes out of the rope everyone has been tugging.

The book earns much of its authority from the range and solidity of its examples. Scofield is a working novelist and critic who has been reading with a pencil for decades, and it shows. When she writes about pulse, she turns naturally to stories like Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” or Andre Dubus’s “The Fat Girl,” tracing the ways desire and dread are woven through particular scenes rather than merely gestured at in theory. When she writes about tension and dread, she recalls Robert Stone and Paul Bowles, and the dread in those stories feels specific – anchored in snow and shotguns and snarling dogs, not in literary jargon.

There is also generous use of her own fiction. Chapters from “More Than Allies” and “Opal on Dry Ground” appear as extended sample scenes, along with the complete text of other writers’ stories in the final section of the book. This is a risk: there is always the chance that a reader will not respond to an author’s own work and will therefore lose confidence in the advice that frames it. In this case, the risk largely pays off. The scenes she chooses are dense with interaction, movement and interior response. They make visible, in slow motion, what her earlier chapters describe in theory. The christening scene in which a man named Riley crosses a room to meet a woman he will later marry, the birthing chapter that holds a mother, daughter, baby and the old family dynamics all at once – these are lived, complicated episodes that show how beats can be organized and how a scene can carry multiple currents at once.

The book is also attentive to what happens before and after those vivid peaks. Scofield refuses to let the reader treat scenes as isolated skits. She cares deeply about function. Each scene, she argues, must be doing some specific work for the story: carrying information, provoking a confrontation, staging a decision, offering a revelation, marking a turning point. She presses writers to caption their scenes in blunt, declarative phrases: “Dulcie confronts her mother in the kitchen,” or “Jimmy decides to sell the house.” Once you have such a line, it becomes easier to see when two scenes are performing the same job and can be combined, or when a beloved passage is in fact mere ornament.

One of the book’s quieter but more valuable chapters is the one on “big scenes,” those crowded occasions – weddings, funerals, parties, holidays – in which many characters gather and many currents cross. Here Scofield is both sympathetic and stern. She quotes Flaubert’s complaint about a tavern scene in “Madame Bovary” that left him despairing and then, in essence, tells the reader to steel themselves and plan. A big scene, in her view, needs the kind of advance thought that a director gives a complicated stage production. Who is present. Who actually matters on the page. Where are they, physically. What are they doing when they are not speaking. Above all, what is the line of action that the scene must travel so that, when it ends, the story’s situation has genuinely changed. It is practical, unglamorous advice. It is also the kind of advice that can save a manuscript.

Scofield is less successful when she ventures into more marginal categories. Her treatment of “static scenes,” in which nothing much happens in terms of plot but the writer explores a ritual, a setting, or a mood, is careful and candid, yet the warning is perhaps too gentle. She is right to say that static passages can earn their keep by deepening atmosphere or world, but the examples she provides are drawn from an older, more patient tradition of reading. A contemporary writer might need a sharper sense of how much purely scenic meditation their audience will tolerate.

The tone throughout is that of a seasoned teacher who trusts the reader to work. Scofield is not particularly interested in inspiration in the romantic sense, though she is quick to honor the mysterious pleasure that drives people to try stories at all. Her voice is calm, sometimes almost dry, more workshop than sermon. She explains, she models, she assigns exercises. After almost every chapter, there are pages of concrete tasks: analyzing a scene you admire, drafting your own, rewriting it with a different focal point, mapping beats, tracking tension, practicing beginnings and endings. A reader who goes through the book with pen in hand and does even a portion of what she suggests will emerge with more than insight. They will have new pages.

For some, that teaching tone will be the primary attraction. For others, it may pall. There are passages in which the language turns workmanlike, and there are places where a more ruthless editor might have trimmed repetition or compressed overlapping points. The book is deeply invested in clarity, which is admirable, but clarity can sometimes flatten into over-explanation. Writers who are already comfortable with scene work may find themselves skimming to reach the later chapters, where questions of reading, evaluation and long-form planning come into play.

Those late chapters are important, and they give “The Scene Book” a welcome breadth. Scofield does not end with “how to write a scene.” She ends with how to read one as a writer, how to interrogate your own scenes for event, emotional shift, pulse and function, and how to use scenarios – brief, dramatic outlines of what happens and why it matters – to plan and revise longer narratives. In doing so, she lifts the book beyond a mere craft manual. It becomes a portable workshop, a set of habits. Read with attention. Name what is happening. Decide what work each scene must do. Draft, then step back. Ask whether the scene you have written matches the scene you meant to write. If it does not, write a new scenario and try again.

If there is a hidden argument running beneath all of this, it is that fiction is a matter of deliberate choices, not just of inspiration and taste. Scofield has little patience for the idea that scenes simply arrive. They can arrive, of course; many writers will recognize the pleasure of stumbling into a passage that seems to unspool itself. But even those gifts, she suggests, can be understood, studied, and reshaped if necessary. There is an ethics in that stance, a quiet respect for the reader’s time and for the writer’s labor.

This, ultimately, is what makes “The Scene Book” feel worth returning to. It does not promise genius. It offers something steadier: a way of seeing. For a writer at the beginning of their apprenticeship, or at a point of retooling, that may be more valuable than any grander doctrine. The book is not perfect. It can be repetitive, its sensibility is grounded largely in realist, character-driven fiction, and its examples lean toward a particular American canon. But taken on its own terms, as a primer that is meant to be worked through rather than merely read, it more than earns its place on the short shelf of genuinely useful craft guides. I would give it 85 out of 100.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always considered good writing an art, something that can't really be taught or learned. This book showed me how wrong that idea was. Talent is important to good writing, but so is form and technique. Scofield teaches how pulse, events, beats, point of view, scenarios, and several other tools add up to create a story that really works. She also gives some really good tips for revising your own writing. I would recommend this book to anyone who is seriously considering writing a novel.

[Lily Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic for anyone interested in improving their writing at the very base level. It breaks down so many concepts that get thrown around in my classes in a way that makes every little piece fit together. Highly recommend especially if you’re someone who doesn’t have access to writing classes or seminars, I think this is a good substitute to get you started and improve your writing from the ground up.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever get that writing book that you wish you would've had before you started the project you're currently working on? This is that book.

[Chris Eirschele · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Scene Book by Sandra Scofield is a nonfiction primer for writers who want to be schooled in the fiction genre.

The author sets about guiding writers to craft more effective scenes. It includes the basics of concepts, defining events, breaking down the beats, the meaning of focal points. It goes on from there.

Each chapter includes exercises to work on and examples from she writing, and by other writers.


I have read it once, but very sure I will be writing it several more times to mark up the pages and take notes.

[Lori Puma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a craft book for literary fiction writers written by a literary fiction author.

There’s some useful theory in this book for genre fiction writers, particularly on writing beats. But half(?) the book is scenes from completed stories and a brief analysis of those excerpts. Most of the time the analysis is a list of questions that the reader is then expected to answer on their own.


There are also many exercises that are mostly lists of questions that you are supposed to answer on your own.

This is appropriate for an advanced course but not for beginners or intermediates.

[Alicia Zuto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book by looking it over but I'm sorry to say that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. In Sandra's defense, I think it's a great and compressed book for new writers. I think I just been through all that. She does provide exercises and examples. That is always something I pride on. I started by giving her a three star rating but felt that wasn't fair. Especially because there are many that will benefit from this. I just am in a different stage of my writing. So now I feel like I have properly given my true feelings.

[Nimish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like the book could have been restructured in a way that it becomes a really good diagnostic tool, but most of the book was analysis and excerpts from books the author enjoys or has written.

However, there were some good nuggets in here, and I think a really good template/checklist at the end for trying to figure out why scenes you may have written feel 'muddy' or aren't working right. That's the stuff beginners like me really need

[Matie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really like this, this was a textbook that I used for my short story class. Scofield uses way too much of her own writing to explain her points and explains points that most people already understand in a way that is confusing a best and at worst downright stupid. I really disliked this and think that you could find a much better book on writing craft than this one.

[Justin Emrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had some benefit in scene brake down and defiantly helped to drive home certain views that I hadn't considered. But the examples she used didn't really draw me in too well, mostly because it was not the type of literature I found to be enjoyable. Other than that if you are looking for more scene development this is your book.

[Shari Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best instructional book on writing I have ever read. I highly recommend this to other beginner writers of fiction or memoir. I underlined liberally and will go back to these pages frequently. Sandra Scofield is a great teacher.

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently, I put this book on the back burner in December 2010. (At least, according to my "backburner" tag.) I'm happy to report that I took it off the back burner this year and found it extremely helpful. While 2010 me wasn't ready for this book, 2023 me got a lot out of it.

[Ian Rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is dense with explaining examples. I think that is the way the author learns. I don’t really have time for this learning mode over 200 pages. Skimmed and DNF’d. I got the gist in 30 minutes, and I didn’t need a bookful of it.

[Hazel Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having just read a different writing book, this one bothered me a lot. Most of the vocabulary and concepts she was trying to explain didn’t make much sense to me. And the examples she used didn’t help. They were either too long or didn’t help me grad the concept she was trying to explain.

[Elizabeth Felicetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had feedback that my CNF needs to be more scenic. This book is enormously helpful.

[Elliott Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent writing guide by one of America's preeminent writing coaches and instructors!

[Wombo Combo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for a class, and while there are some nuggets of useful info, I can't help but feel like it couldn't get its points across in a timely fashion. There are better books out there.

[Raine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was good!! It really helped me understand wtf is suppose to happen in scenes and also has some great tips :) thank u the library

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book about writing that I read instead of writing...sigh.

[Jay Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for any writer! If you learn to write powerful scenes, then you can write an engaging novel/novella. Breaks it down into the elements of a scene and takes it from there.

[K L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent insights on scene building, an important tool, one that I hadn't realized was a topic in itself until the book was recommended by a lit agent. I learned a lot and enjoyed the examples and am using her handy Evaluation Summary work sheet.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never understood beats within a scene as well as I do after reading Scofield's chapter on this. She is clear, has interesting exercises at the end of each chapter, and uses examples from literary novels rather than commercial fiction. I love the way she talks about "Big Scenes" -- those with many characters, which I am juggling in my book right now. She recommends focusing on your POV character as your life jacket in jumping into deep water. I find her guidance clear and compelling, and she has changed the way I structured many scenes in my book, helped me tighten their focus and -- yes -- diagram and clarify the beats. A book that should be on the shelf of every fiction writer and dramatist.