How to Edit a Scene of a Novel, Part 1

How do you edit a scene of a novel?

In order to edit a scene effectively, you need to know a few things:

• What’s working in the scene,
• What’s not working in the scene, and
• What specific changes you’ll make to the words on the page that will fix the things that aren’t working.

That last one is the most important, and often the hardest to figure out.

How do you identify the specific changes that will improve your scene?

Ask the right questions.

In this episode, you’ll learn 12 questions that will show you exactly what to change in your scenes. These questions will show you:

• How to turn your scene analysis into practical edits you can apply right away
• Whether your scene is working—and if it’s not, the precise moments where it needs to change
• How to make sure your scene has earned its place in your novel
• How to raise the stakes by giving your protagonist a difficult choice
• What makes amazing climaxes work
• How to troubleshoot a boring climax
• And more!

This episode is packed with practical strategies to edit every scene in your novel. You might want to take notes, or even save this to listen again.

Want a quick reference guide to all 12 questions? Download the Scene Edit Questionnaire at alicesudlow.com/sceneedit.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Download the Scene Edit Questionnaire: alicesudlow.com/sceneedit
• Ep. 8: What Is a Scene? The Ultimate Guide to Write and Edit Amazing Scenes
• Ep. 9: 5 Essential Questions to Find the Most Important Event in a Scene
• Ep. 10: How This Scene Works: Looking for Alaska by John Green
• The first scene of UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR by T. J. Klune
• The first scene of LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green
• The first scene of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen

Transcript

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Alice Sudlow 0:00

One of the things that I love about analysis, like this specific moments in the scene that you're looking for and specific questions that you're using to evaluate those moments is that it takes this big, amorphous, subjective concept of making a story better, and it gives you specific. Clear, objective indicators of what's working and what's not. But the goal of editing isn't to make your analysis so objective that you lose your own heart and personality and emotional engagement with the story. So occasionally I'll include some questions that are clearly subjective, like this one is your climax. Interesting. Welcome to your next draft. Today I'm going to share something with you that I hope will be really, really useful to you. The exact process that I use to edit scenes, or more specifically the process I use as a developmental editor to analyze scenes, see what's working and what's not, and give my clients specific actionable feedback so that they can edit their scenes because I've said this before and I'll say it. Scenes are the building blocks of story. Every scene is a self-contained unit of story all on its own, and when you work your way through a developmental edit of your novel, what you're going to do is edit your book seen by scene. You're going to make specific changes to each scene to make each little microcosm of story better. And as you do, you'll be making the novel as a whole better. And that means you need a practical strategy to figure out what specific changes to make. You need to have a system to identify what's working in a scene, what's not working, and most importantly, how to fix what's not working.

2:29

And

Alice Sudlow 2:30

that's what I'm going to give you in this episode. I'm going to give you the exact approach that I use with my clients to identify how to fix what's not working in their scenes so they can edit their scenes effectively. I've spent the last few episodes walking you through scene theory, how and why scenes work. And personally, I love that stuff, which I'm sure comes as no surprise. You know that I absolutely love editing. But for you as a writer, the person tasked with making the literal changes on the page to your novel, I suspect you're not ultimately the most interested in story theory. You want to know what exactly you need to do right now to make your book better. So in this episode, I'm going to take all of that theory and show you how I use it to give writers practical feedback. I'm going to give you a list of 18 questions that I ask to turn that theory into actionable edits. This is going to be the most practical, actionable episode of your next draft that I have created, yet the one that will give you the most specific strategies to edit your novel right away. You might wanna be taking notes for this or save it to listen to more than once, and it's so meaty, so much to cover that I've actually split it into two parts. In this episode, I'll cover the first 12 questions that I use to prepare feedback for writers. And in the next episode I'll give you the remaining six questions. This is also the fourth installment of our series on scenes, and if you're just jumping in now, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to the last three episodes of the podcast once you finish this one. The concepts that I'll talk about here are going to build on everything I've covered in those episodes, so you'll get a lot more out of the following questions if you're already familiar with the concepts that I've shared before. And I'll include links to all three episodes in the show notes. So they're really easy to find. And one more heads up. The example stories that I'll use here are the same ones that I've used in the last couple episodes. We'll be looking at Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune, Looking for Alaska by John Green, and I'm adding in here Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I'm not going to summarize the scenes in this episode, so be sure to read them links to them are in the show notes or listen to the last few episodes where I introduce their analysis so you have context for what I'm sharing here. Alright, that's enough preamble. We have a lot to cover here, so let's dive in the editing process. So the first thing that I do when I approach a scene is analyze it according to a series of specific questions. If you've been listening to the past few episodes, these questions will be familiar. They're all the questions on the scene analysis worksheet, the five story event questions, and the six elements of story. And no, these are not the 18 questions that I then use to turn this analysis into feedback that's coming next. This is just my baseline analysis. The place where I start. if you'd like a quick refresher. Those questions are what's literally happening on the page? What tactic are the characters using to get what they want? What values change for one or more characters? What is the most important change in the scene? And finally, to put it all together, what's the story event, and then the elements of story. What's the inciting incident? What are some progressive complications? What's the turning point? What's the crisis? What's the climax and what's the resolution? If you'd like to dig into what each of those questions really means and how to find the answers, definitely go check out episodes eight and nine of the podcast. So that's the first thing I do. I work my way through all of those questions. I analyze the scene, and then I study that analysis by asking more questions of each. This is how I turn that analysis into practical edits that I recommend to the author ready for those 18 questions. Here we go. First up, I start at the top of the worksheet and I examine the value shift or the thing that changes in the scene. I ask, does something change in the scene? If nothing changes or if I find it really, really difficult to identify a change in the. Then that's a major problem right away. I know something is missing in the scene. It's incomplete. It's not yet working, and it's not yet contributing to the story as a whole. In this case, I go back to the author and I explore what this scene needs to contribute to the story, what needs to happen in the story at this point. Why does the scene matter? And from there we can work out what kind of change needs to happen in this scene, or maybe we discover that this scene isn't really serving the story as a whole at all, and we can cut it entirely. So that's the first question. If something does change in the scene, I go on to the next one. Is the change, the value shift significant. By this, I mean, how big is the change from the beginning to the end? Is there a large difference between the beginning and the end? Or is it really small, so small that you could almost miss it? For example, if at the beginning of the scene someone is alive and at the end of the scene they've been murdered, that's a really big significant change. But if at the beginning of the scene someone is feeling a little bit. At the end, they're feeling a little bit more sore. That change is pretty small. Now, I will say just because a change is small doesn't mean that it's wrong or bad. Not every scene is going to have really dramatic life or death stakes. There are going to be big moments in your story, but if every single scene operated at peak intensity, you really wear out your readers. So you need some scenes in between that are less intense, where the change is less dramatic than alive to murdered. So when you're asking this question about whether the change is significant, be sure to take into account the context of the larger story. How big or intense does it need to be? You don't want to stay at a level 10 intensity all the way through, but also you want to make sure something happens to keep your readers interested. A little sore to a little more sore is not very significant. Make sure that there's a clear difference between the beginning value and the ending value. And on this note, there's one more thing that I ask about the change. Is the change that value shift, is it relevant to the larger story? So now I zoom out and I think about the story as a whole. What's the value at stake in this whole story? For example, maybe it's a love. That means the overall value at stake is love or hate, and so the majority of the scenes are going to, in some way relate back to love or hate. When you're looking at the value shift of a specific scene, when you're looking at the thing that changes, you can ask, how is this change in this scene relevant to that overall value of love or hate? And it doesn't have to be precisely on the nose. It doesn't have to be that in every scene, the lovers love each other a little more or hate each other a little more. Again, just like keeping a story at intensity level 10, the whole time will exhaust your readers. If every scene has the same value shift that's going to bore your readers. So you wanna shake it up. But even so, that variety of value shifts should contribute to the overall story. For example, consider the first scene of pride and prejudice in it. Mrs. Bennett announces that an eligible bachelor has come to let Netherfield Park, and Mr. Bennett refuses to visit him. This is not obviously love hate. Darcy and Elizabeth have not met, they have formed no opinion of each other. But the value shift here is that Mrs. Bennett goes from hoping that this new bachelor could marry one of her girls to despairing that they shall have no chance because Mr. Bennett will not meet with him. That's still connected. Back to our overall love story. Hope that they have an eligible prospect to despair that they. If the value shift were, for example, hoping that Mr. Bennett would take out the trash to despairing that he refuses, that wouldn't have anything to do with the overall love story, and I would question whether this scene is really contributing to the novel as a whole. So those are my three value shift questions. The three things that I consider to determine whether the change in a scene is. First, is there a value shift? In other words, does something change in the scene? Second, is that value shift significant? And third, is that value shift relevant to the overall story. Once I've considered those questions, I move on to the six elements of story, inciting incidents, progressive complications, turning point, crisis, climax, and resolution. And the first question that I ask, Are all of them present? Are any of them missing? A common problem that I see here is that scenes will end too soon. They'll end during the climax, before the resolution, or they'll end at the crisis, or they'll even end at the turning point, the moment that's prompting a character to make a choice. Writers do this because they want to create a twist or a cliff hanger, something engaging to leave the reader wanting more to turn the page to the next scene. But here's the problem with that. If you give us just the inciting incidents and progressive complications, and you leave off at the turning point hoping that you will keep your reader reading well, you haven't yet proven to the reader that you have interesting things happening in the story that should compel them to continue. This is especially true in the early scenes of a book before your reader has read enough to be deeply engaged. The really interesting part of a scene is the point where your character is challenged to make a decision, and we get to see what they choose and what the consequences are, and readers will keep reading when they know that you can deliver something interesting. So you don't actually want to cut off that decision point and save it for later. You want to make sure that you include one in every scene. So there's something interesting moving the story forward in every one. Which leads me right into my next question. Once I've established whether all six elements are present, I look at each element specifically and see what's working and where there's room to improve. So I'm going to go through the questions that I ask about each element, and what you'll notice as I do this is that I'm not going to go through these elements in the order that they appear in the scene. Instead, I'm going to go through them in order of the greatest impact that they have on the scene. This is not to say that any one of these is unimportant. It's just to say that some of these elements are worth extra focus because when they work, they'll have an outsized impact on how well your scene works. And the one that I personally think has the greatest impact on a scene is the crisis. So I start there first, I ask when your character is faced with a crisis choice, what are the two? In every scene, your character should make a choice between two options. So the first thing to do is to see what that choice is. What are the two options before them? Sometimes what I'll find here is that one of the options is really compelling and the other option is so obviously undesirable that there's barely even a choice here. Of course, they're going to choose option A, not option. It's almost like option B doesn't even exist, and they really have just the one option, so they don't have to make a choice at all. When you win the jackpot, are you going to accept the prize or not? Of course you're going to accept the prize, unless we're already aware that there are potentially terrible consequences of accepting that prize. We feel no tension here. You win a million dollars, you get the million dollars. Sure, technically there are two choices, but in reality we already know which one you're going to. On the flip side, the other possible mistake here is that a character is choosing between too many options. I rarely see this come up though. What this means is you don't want your character to be weighing five or six choices during the crisis. The crisis should really be a binary choice. Do. Or do that. So if you see that you've set your character up with a dozen options, that's something that you'll want to reexamine and make sure that you get it down to two. For example, maybe you have a story where the character's goal is to steal a necklace, and there's a scene where someone is proposing several plans to do that. It might seem like the crisis choice should be, which of the six plans to steal the necklace will I choose making your character choose between six things. But instead, a better crisis choice could be, will I choose one of these six plans or will I reject all of the plans and say this is an impossible task. So the first step with the crisis is to identify the two options that your character is choosing between. Once I know that I ask the next question, does the choice have consequences? No matter which thing they choose, what makes that choice hard? The choice that your character makes should not be easy or without consequence. What are the consequences? If your character chooses the first option, what do they gain? What do they lose, and what are the consequences? If your character chooses the second option, what do they gain then and what do they lose? I'm going to draw from the example scenes that I've used in the last couple episodes. Let's think about Wallace and Patricia from the opening scene of Under The Whispering Door by tj. Patricia is sitting in Wallace's office at a meeting that he has called in order to fire her. The crisis in that scene is to put it very simply, will Wallace fire Patricia or not? That's our binary choice. Wallace's. Two options are fire her or don't fire her, and each choice has consequences. Let's break them down. If Wallace fires Patricia, then. on the positive side, he'll bring order back to his office. He'll no longer have this employee who made a small mistake in a recent work assignment and he can replace her with someone who won't make that mistake, and he'll also no longer have to provide all these perks for her that he didn't even know that someone in his office had set up someone sent her flowers in his name. Someone set up a scholarship for her daughter through the law firm. Essentially he'll cut a lot of expenses that he considers excess waste, and in his mind, that's all great. It's exactly his goal. On the negative side, he'll ruin her good opinion of him. She's currently glowing with praise and he'll shatter that. He'll make her life much more difficult. And now he even knows how much because she laid out in a lot of detail how much this job means to her and how much she needs it right now. And he already doesn't like the fact that she's crying. And she'll probably cry more if he fires her. What if Wallace doesn't fire Patricia? What? On the positive side. He will continue allowing her to have a job that is really saving her sanity and the livelihood of her family. Right now, he'll have a very loyal employee who thinks the absolute world of him, and he will throw a major wrench into the widespread belief around the office that he's a terrible heartless person. on the negative side, he'll still be stuck with this employee who made a mistake once. Now he knows how much she's costing him too, in terms of benefits and scholarships, and he'll have to keep providing those. And this woman who's already so deeply grateful to him that she's crying in his office will probably continue to perceive their relationship to be way more close and friendly than he would like it to be. Essentially, she already likes him too much, and if he doesn't fire her, she'll like him even more. No matter what he chooses, whether Wallace fires Patricia or not, there are consequences both positive and negative. That makes this choice hard, a real choice. Now, one of the great things about this scene is that we actually don't get the impression that it's a very difficult choice at all. Wallace doesn't even hesitate. As soon as Patricia gives him an opening, he fires her, and it's as quick and succinct as. You are fired. Not a bit of waffling or worry. His resolve has not been tainted by compassion, and that's fantastic in this instance because it shows us so much about his character. It's not that these consequences aren't real or even that he doesn't know about them. He absolutely knows what he's doing. We spends the whole first half of the scene, all of the progressive complications, laying out all these consequences really clearly. He's fully aware. The thing is he absolutely does not care. He fires Patricia without an ounce of concern or remorse, and that shows us so much about his character. He's a rational, logical man who sees the world in terms of business expenses rather than relationships, and he doesn't care a bit about firing an employee who's been loyal to his company for the last decade. This choice isn't easy because there are no consequences. It's easy despite the fact that there are consequences, and that's an incredibly powerful way that TJ Klune shows us who Wallace is. So when I'm analyzing a scene, looking for feedback to give a writer, I'm asking what are the consequences of the crisis choice? What makes that choice hard? Once I've considered the crisis, then I move one step backwards to the turning point. Now I ask, why does your character have to make that choice? Why now? Characters don't make hard choices for the fun of it. People don't make hard choices for the fun of it. If we could avoid making any hard choices ever, we absolutely would. Which means in order for your character to have a crisis choice, there has to be a reason why they have to make it. There has to be some catalyst that's pushing them to the point of needing to make a decision. So once I know what the crisis choice is, then I ask why and why now? Does the turning point really actually require them to make that choice? Or does the choice seem like it's coming out of nowhere or like it's not prompted clearly enough? In under the whispering door. The turning point is that Patricia finally asks him why he's called her to this meeting. He's been trying to find an opening through the whole conversation, and she kept talking over him with a more and more dramatic SOB story. Now that she's finally paused and asked him why she's here, will he take that opportunity to fire her or consider the opening scene of looking for Alaska by John Green Miles' flop of a going away party before he leaves for boarding school. His crisis in this scene is will he be vulnerable with his parents and try to explain why he's really choosing to go to boarding school, or will he shut them out and not share and remain. And the turning point that pushes him to that crisis is that his parents both ask him directly whether he's leaving for this reason or that reason. They're both completely wrong. They both clearly don't understand. They both look sad and hurt and they're asking him directly why he's going up until this point, he could just kind of go along with the uncomfortable going away party plans, but now they're looking in his eyes and asking him to explain. So that's his turning point. If you can't figure out why your character needs to make this decision now, if you can't figure out what's catalyzing their crisis choice, that's a sign that it's worth revisiting your turning point. And often you can find a way to improve your turning points with the question that I ask next. Can you make the turning point more intense? In other words, what would make this turning point even worse? What would make the stakes higher? What would make this decision harder to make or more urgent or more consequential? What would make this problem that your protagonist needs to solve even bigger? If it's clear why your protagonist needs to make this decision now, why they have to respond, then your turning point might be great as it is, no changes needed. But this is a good opportunity to see whether you can raise the stakes or make the scene more intense. And once I determine that the turning point is working, then I move forward and examine the climax. Here I have four questions. First, what is the result of the character's choice? We established in the crisis that the character can choose choice A or choice B, and no matter which choice they choose, there will be consequences. The climax of the story is the moment that they make that choice. So the first thing that I'm looking for is what is the result of that choice? What happens when they make it? Climaxes can be all kinds of. It can be that a character leaves a room or enters a room, or starts a fight, or ends a fight, or slays a dragon or befriends dragon, anything at all. Just like I'm not here to tell you what your crisis choice should be or what your turning point should be. I'm not here to tell you what your climax of any scene should be either. What I do want to know is that something happens, there is some kind of result of the choice. It doesn't just disappear into the void. Your character makes a choice and something happens as a result. What if nothing happens? In a moment, I'll give you a few ways to troubleshoot your climax, but before I do, I want to ask the next few questions because my solutions will address any problems that these questions bring up as well. So the second question. is the climax interesting. Okay, I'll admit this one's a little more subjective. One of the things that I love about analysis, like this specific moments in the scene that you're looking for and specific questions that you're using to evaluate those moments is that it takes this big, amorphous, subjective concept of making a story better, and it gives you specific. Clear, objective indicators of what's working and what's not. But the goal of editing isn't to make your analysis so objective that you lose your own heart and personality and emotional engagement with the story. So occasionally I'll include some questions that are clearly subjective, like this one is your climax. Interesting. When you're answering this question, think of your own interest in the climax. Do you enjoy it? Do you find it interesting? And also think of your reader. What does your reader want? What does your reader find interesting? What will they enjoy based on their age, their experiences, their reading interests, the genre of your book, et cetera. What kinds of climaxes and events are interesting to them? If you decide your climax is interesting? If not, don't worry. Like I said, I have some climax troubleshooting tips coming up in a moment. First though, let's talk about the third climax question. Is it relevant? Essentially what I'm asking here is, is the climax of your scene relevant to your story as a whole? Hopefully by this point in the analysis, it is after all, we started off the scene analysis by looking at the value shift, the thing that changes in the scene, and making sure that that contributed to the larger story and the way that change happens is in the turning point, the crisis and the climax. That's where you go from value A to value B when Patricia goes from employed to fired, when Wallace goes from presumed heartless to proven heartless when miles goes from misunderstood to understood. So if the value that changes in your scene is relevant to your story as a whole and that value changes during the turning point crisis and climax, then your climax is probably also relevant to your story as a whole. But even. This is worth asking and it's worth considering. Is there a way to make it more relevant? Is there a way to tie it closer to your larger story arc? Bear with me as I get a little hypothetical about the first scene of Pride and Prejudice. So in that first scene, Mrs. Bennett announces to Mr. Bennett that Netherfield Park is let it last. And by a young man of large fortune, and best of all, he's single, which is such a fine thing for the Bennett girls. And she asks Mr. Bennett to visit him, which is the custom and polite society. Mr. Bennett must go introduce himself to the newcomer, and then later he can introduce the newcomer to his family and his daughters can have a chance at this potential suitor. So his crisis. will he go or not? And he refuses to go much to Mrs. Bennett's despair. That's our climax. Now, he could say, Mrs. Bennett, I'm feeling tired and sick today, and I'm not up to visiting. I'm sorry that I cannot visit today. Hopefully I'll feel well enough again soon, and then I could visit. That would still be a refusal that could still take Mrs. Bennett from hopeful about this new prospect to despairing. Maybe by the time that he's, well, again, Mrs. Long will have visited and the newcomer will already be interested in Mrs. Long's daughters instead of hers. But what he actually says when Mrs. Bennett asks him to visit is, I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better for as you are as handsome as any of them. Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party. This is much worse. This is Mr. Bennett outright refusing to do his duty in society as a father to young women, simply because he does not want to, and he likes teasing his wife. And this climax is much more relevant to the novel as a whole for a few reasons. First, it's relevant because it's introducing something that's going to be a problem the whole way through. One of the biggest hurdles that Elizabeth and Darcy will face in their relationship is Elizabeth's family, except for Jane and Elizabeth herself. Every single person in Elizabeth's family does something socially inexcusable at some point in the novel, and Mr. Bennett's major. Is being very hands off when it comes to his daughters and avoiding as much as possible doing his duty as a father to support them. So here we're establishing a hurdle that's going to continue to be a really big problem down the line. And second, this is relevant because Mr. And Mrs. Bennett are a sort of cautionary love story of their own. This is what happens when a poorly made match slowly wears down over time. We're watching Mr. And Mrs. Bennett play out a not very happy love story. Mrs. Bennett being constantly obnoxious, and Mr. Bennett being constantly teasing and minimally supportive. It's a short climax and a short scene, but there's a lot going on here, and it's very relevant to the story as a whole. Much more relevant than it would be if Mr. Bennett had said, eh, he doesn't feel well enough to go today, but he'll consider it later when he does feel well. So that's the third question about the climax. Is the climax relevant to the story as a whole and the fourth and last climax question. Does the climax make it clear that the value has changed? Remember the turning point, crisis and climax are the moment where the value shifts in the scene. The point when Patricia goes from employed to fired when miles goes from misunderstood to understood, and the point where Mrs. Bennett goes from hopeful to. Which means your climax should make it clear that we are on the second side of that value. We are in the fired part of the scene. The understood part of the scene, the despair part of the scene. Does your climax make that second half of the value clear? In the climax of our scene from under the Whispering Door, Patricia pitches an absolute fit. She's in shock. She denies it. She pleads, she begs, she yells. She kicks and screams. It is very, very clear that she has been fired, and it is very, very clear that Wallace does not care at all about the scene that she's creating. Remember, we're proving here that he's heartless. So think of your value shift for the scene and consider how your climax includes that value. Alright, those are all the questions to ask about your climax. That was a lot. So I'll list those four questions again here. What's the result of the character's choice? Is the climax interesting? Is the climax relevant? And does the climax make it clear that the value has. Now what if you struggled with some of those questions? What if you started realizing as you answered them that your climax has more work? That maybe nothing happens in the climax, or what does happen isn't interesting, or it's interesting, but it's not relevant, or it doesn't make it clear that the value has changed? If that's the case, then it's time to troubleshoot your climax. To do this, you can revisit a few. First, look back at your crisis choice. Did you really establish consequences for the choice? Think about winning the jackpot again. You win the jackpot. Take the money, or don't take the money. You're going to take the money. Of course. that's an easy choice. And if you haven't already clearly set up some stakes for that choice, we're going to feel like, eh, we knew that that was a no-brainer. We knew from the start they were going to take the money and then they did. It doesn't really feel like anything happened because the events just flowed from one logical cause and effect to the next. No one actually had to make a decision. So if your climax feels like nothing's really happening, go back to the crisis. And make sure that you've created consequences for both options that your character could choose. Second, look back at your value shift for the scene. What changes in this scene? Understanding what changes is a huge clue to edit an effective climax. How can you make that change more clear in the climax? How could you make it more dramatic, even more starkly, different from the beginning? Value. Consider the value at stake in the story overall and the role that this scene plays in the larger story. On a large scale, where is the story going next and what needs to happen in order for it to get there? This can help you troubleshoot all those climax problems that we've been talking about, but especially the relevancy one. Maybe you discovered that the scene as a whole does have a place in the story, but the climax isn't quite the right climax to get your character from the last scene to the next scene. In order to make that transition, you need something else to happen in the climax of this scene. And fourth, I mentioned this before when I was talking about what makes the scene interesting, but it's worth mentioning again. It's always a good idea to keep your ideal reader in mind. Think of the person who is going to read your book and absolutely love it. What do they want to see from a climax? For instance, readers of action stories might really enjoy climactic sword fights, while readers of romances might really enjoy deep emotional conversations. So think about what your reader will enjoy when you're troubleshooting your climax. Woo, that was a lot. That's 12 questions so far, and like I said, I'm going to pause us here and save the other six questions for the next one because I think if I kept going, all of us would get overwhelmed. But before I wrap this episode up, I'm going to give you a quick recap of what we just covered. The first thing to do when you're preparing to edit a scene is to analyze it. Pull out that scene analysis worksheet and fill it in. Then go back through your analysis and ask yourself the following questions about each part. Examine the value shift. Does something change in the. Is the change that value shift? Is it significant? Is that value shift relevant to the larger story? Then examine the six elements of story. Are all of them present? Are any of them missing? Then examine the crisis. When your character is faced with a crisis choice, what are their two options? Does that choice have consequences no matter which thing they choose? And what makes that choice hard? Then examine the turning point. Why does your character have to make that choice? Why now? And can you make the turning point more intense? Then examine the climax. What is the result of the character's choice? Is the climax interesting? Is the climax relevant, and does the climax make it clear that the value has changed? Of course, we still have three more elements of story to cover, the inciting incident, progressive complications and resolution essentially. So far we've looked at the middle of the scene and in the next episode we'll examine the beginning and the end, but that's enough for now. I think you have a lot to work with here and of. I'm not going to leave you hanging. I have a free download for you, a list of all 18 questions that I use to edit scenes, including the six questions that we'll cover in the next episode. I call it the scene edit questionnaire, the 18 question guide to edit page turning scenes. You can get the scene edit questionnaire by going to alice sudlow.com/sceneedit. And before we wrap up, I'm going to give you an assignment to do right now. I want you to take a few minutes and use a few of these questions to study a scene that you've written and plan what you're going to change in your editing process. We've covered a dozen questions here. You don't have to answer all of them for your story right away. That could get overwhelming quickly, especially if the things that I'm talking about here are brand new. So I recommend starting by looking specifically at the value shift questions. Pull out one scene of your novel, read through the whole scene, and then ask yourself, does something change in the scene? Is that change the value shift significant? Is that value shift relevant to the larger story? And take a few notes on what you. There's no right or wrong answer here. You're not being graded. Your scene will not be judged against the platonic ideal of the scene in your imagination. So just take some notes and then reflect on them. Can you identify a change? Can you think of a way to make that change even more significant, make it an even bigger change, and is that change relevant to your story as a whole? And once you've answered those questions and taken some notes, congratulate yourself. Give yourself a big pat on the back, you're thinking like an editor. Don't forget to download the scene edit questionnaire so you have all the questions in one easy to find place. You can get the questionnaire at alicesudlow.com slash sceneedit and happy editing. I hope this helps you discover wonderful new possibilities for your scenes.