How to Edit a Scene of a Novel, Part 2

In order to edit a scene effectively, you need to know what to change. The best edits are strategic, intentional, and target the most important problems with effective solutions.

How do you figure out what those edits are?

Ask the right questions.

In this episode, you’ll discover six questions that will help you identify what’s working and what’s not in the beginnings and endings of your scenes. Then, they’ll show you exactly how to fix the weak spots.

You’ll learn:

• How to start your scenes at exactly the right moment
• How to raise the stakes in the first half of the scene
• The biggest problem writers make in the resolution—and how to fix it
• What readers want to know in the resolution of a scene
• How to make it clear that something changes in every scene
• And more!

This is the second part of a two-part series. Don’t miss How to Edit a Scene of a Novel, Part 1 for twelve more scene editing questions.

Want a quick reference guide to all eighteen questions from this episode and the last one? 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
• Ep. 11: How to Edit a Scene of a Novel, Part 1
• 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

Alice Sudlow: 0:00

after all, say it with me. Stories are about change and everything we've done in this whole analysis from the first of the 18 questions to the last was identify what changes in the scene and make the way that that change happens really, really clear. That's it. That's storytelling right there. Welcome to your next draft. This is the second part of our two-part series on how to edit a scene of a novel. As a developmental editor, I edit a lot of scenes. This is the bread and butter of my work, reading a scene from a writer and giving them precise, actionable feedback so they can edit their scene and make it even better. And in these two episodes, I'm sharing with you the exact process that I use to do that. The series of 18 questions that I use to figure out what's really going on in the scene and what will make it work even better. What will make it even more exciting for the reader and more effective for the overall story. Because here's the thing, books are made of scenes. Scenes are the building blocks of story, and so one of the most important skills that you can develop as a writer is the skill of writing and editing excellent scenes. So that's what we're covering here, how I edit scenes for my author clients, and how you can edit your own scenes. Now if you haven't listened to the last few episodes, you might wanna do that first. You'll especially want to listen to episode 11, how to edit a Scene of a Novel, part One. In that episode, I shared the first 12 questions that I used to edit scenes, and in this one I'll share the final six. And it's also worthwhile to listen to the episodes before that as well. Episodes eight, nine, and 10 explain the theory that I'll be referencing here. So if there's something that I mention here that you find a little confusing and I don't fully explain it, head back to those episodes where I covered the theory in more detail. I'll also be referencing three example scenes throughout this episode. The opening scenes of Under The Whispering Door by TJ Clone, looking for Alaska by John Green. And Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. You can read all three of those scenes for free online, and I've included links in the show notes to each of them for Under the Whispering Door and looking for Alaska. You can check out the look Inside feature on their Amazon pages, and the full text of Pride and Prejudice is available online for free. Since I've referenced all of these scenes in previous episodes, I'm not going to summarize them here, but you can head to the show notes for links to go read them, which is a great thing to do. So you can see how they illustrate everything I'm about to talk about. Alright, that's enough introduction. Let's get back to scene analysis and figure out what to do next to edit your scenes. So in the last episode, I started with examining the value shift. What changes in the scene? That's the critical starting place because it's your guide through the rest of the editing process. Then I looked at the six elements of story, inciting incidents, progressive complications, turning point, crisis, climax, and resolution. Do they all. And then I took a closer look at three of those elements, the crisis, the turning point, and the climax. In other words, first I determined what change happens in the scene, and then I took a really, really close look at the moments where that change happens. And that's where we left off. We examined the middle of the scene, but we still have the beginning and the end. We have three elements left, the inciting incident, progressive complications and resolution, and for each one, I'm going to ask two questions, starting with the inciting incident. The first question for the inciting incident is why does the scene start now? In other words, what disruption kicks it? Remember when we were talking about turning points, and I said that it's really important to make it clear why your character has to make this choice now, why it's urgent that they make the choice, why they can't wait any longer? What's catalyzing them to take action right this second, and not at some later more convenient time? This is the same thing. Why does the scene start now? Ruth Ann Reed is an author and friend of mine, and she says that the story starts where normal ends. That's true on the scale of the whole novel, and it's true on the scale of an individual scene. It's just typically a slightly smaller scale when you're looking at a single scene rather than the entire novel. Think of the opening scene from Pride and Prejudice. I think this is a great example of this because it shows us the moment where normal ends, And it shows us that in the context of a pretty peaceful, quiet, low stakes scene. The inciting incident of this scene is that Mrs. Bennett has news to tell Mr. Bennett, Netherfield Park is let it last. That's what kicks off this conversation and the tension that builds between them. Mrs. Bennett asks whether Mr. Bennett has heard the news, normal has ended. We were going about our day without conflict or exciting information, and now we have been disrupted by the excitement of news. Now, Jane Austin didn't have to start the scene here. She could have started earlier in the day when Mrs. Bennett was wandering about the house or talking with Mrs. Long when she visited her to tell her about the new bachelor in town. After all, Mrs. Bennett had to get the news from somewhere so we could have started the scene when Mrs. Bennett receives the news. Or Austen could have started the scene at breakfast, or she could have started it when the characters woke up. After all one kind of inciting incidence is the sun rises, you are asleep, and now you're. But no, she starts it when Mrs. Bennett begins this conversation, when she disrupts our regular day with both news and a request that Mr. Bennett visit the newcomer. So when you're evaluating your scene, ask yourself why now? Does your scene need to start earlier for more context? Or more likely? Would it be better to start it later at the moment when normal end. And once you've considered that, here's the second question that I ask, is the starting value clear in the beginning of the scene? Remember, stories are about change. I'm going to say that so much in this podcast that you're going to start repeating it to yourself in your sleep. Stories are about. And in order to communicate that change to your reader, you want to make it really clear what things look like before the change and what they look like after the change. And your first opportunity to do that is in your inciting incident. So consider is the starting value, the way that the world works before the change. Really clear in the inciting I. In our scene from Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennett goes from hopeful to despairing, and you can hear that hope in her very first line. My dear Mr. Bennett said his lady to him one day, have you heard that Netherfield Park is let it last in under the whispering door? Wallace goes from presumed heartless to proven heartless, and you can hear that in the opening lines of his scene too. Patricia was crying. Wallace Price hated it when people cried. Now, the inciting incidents of this scene actually happens a little before the scene begins. Wallace calls Patricia to his office to fire her, but even though that's off screen, it's still establishing that opening value. His intent from the very start is to fire her like the heartless person that most of his coworkers assume that he. And in looking for Alaska Miles goes from misunderstood to understood. You can hear that in his opening line too. The week before I left my family in Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going away party. The inciting incident there is that his mother is throwing him a going away party, and the word insisted makes it super clear that Miles is not really on board with this idea, but his mother is pushing it anyway. So think back on your value shift on the way that you're seen will change from beginning to end, and make sure that in your inciting incident you are establishing your starting value right away. All right. Those are all the questions that I ask about inciting incidents, and next I have two questions about progressive complications. First up, do the progressive complications escalate? What this means is, do the progressive complications get increasingly complicated as the scene goes on? What you don't want to do here is repeat the same progressive complication over and over and over. That'll bore your reader, and it also won't raise the stakes. But when you make sure that every progressive complication escalates, you will raise the stakes and you'll also make that crisis choice harder and harder, which will make the climax even more exciting. In all three scenes that we've used as examples, the progressive complications escalate, but I think you can see the escalation most clearly in under the whispering door. Here are some of those progressive complic. So Patricia is in Wallace's office. She's crying. She says, how did you know? And Wallace thinks that she's crying because she knows that. He knows that she messed up and she knows that he's brought her here to face the consequences, and he doesn't like the fact that she's crying, but he can handle it. And then she says, I didn't think you cared. Now Wallace is upset. She was aware of her mistake and she didn't think he cared. That's worse than her just being upset at a punishment. And then she starts a monologue and he keeps trying to interject and get the conversation back on track, but she talks right over him every time. Now things are worse because he's losing control of this meeting that he called in order to fire her. Then she says, and you do care. I know you do. I knew the moment you gave me that floral arrangement for my birthday last month, and this is even worse because he never sent her flowers and he believes flowers are a waste of money, which means someone else in his office is wasting his money on sending people flowers, which is a problem that he'll have to solve later. Also, it's becoming clear that Patricia doesn't know why she's here and has the completely wrong impression about this. And this is just the first two pages. This scene is 10 pages long, and the progressive complications last all the way through most of page six. I'll skip the next few because there are a lot, but by the time we get to page six, we've learned that Patricia's husband got laid off and her family is fully dependent on her income from this job. Her son is getting married and she'll have to pay for half of the wedding. Also, her son has terrible taste and wants catering from Applebee's. Her daughter is in college on a scholarship from the law firm that Wallace didn't know about or approve, and Patricia is dissatisfied in her marriage is working 70 hour weeks and feels like her husband isn't paying attention to her, which she gladly overshare. All of these things are escalating. The situation at the beginning of the scene, Wallace's choice was to make a sad woman more sad by firing her. Now, his choice is to make a woman who adores him and is so grateful for his generosity, hate him because he's going to ruin her whole family's lives when he fires. Now, not every scene is going to escalate like this. This scene escalates so much that it borders on comedy, and that's deliberate. That's the tone that TJ Clone is aiming for here. That's not the tone that Jane Austin goes for in Pride and Prejudice or that John Green uses in looking for Alaska. So both of those scenes escalate more subtly with fewer progressive complications, and they don't get quite a slaps. But in all of those scenes, the progressive complications escalate. Patricia doesn't say, you sent me roses and you sent me gardenias, and you sent me violence, and you sent me crisantos, and you sent me daisies. That wouldn't be escalating. That would be the same progressive complication over and over and over. Instead, she says, you sent me flowers. Also, you gave my daughter a scholarship. Also, my husband got laid off. So my family and I are completely dependent on my single income from this job. That's an escalation. So take a look at your progressive complications. Do they escalate and if they don't, how can you shake them up so that each one adds something more to the scene? Or if some of your progressive complications are repetitive and they don't escalate, maybe you can cut them entirely and save on that word count to put somewhere else. And once I've covered that question, I ask one more, and at this point it might sound a little familiar. Is the starting value clear throughout the progressive complications We've talked about how your first chance to establish the value that's going to change is in the inciting I. And how the change will happen during the turning point, crisis and climax and in the climax, you're showing us what it looks like when that change happens. Well, the progressive complications are after the inciting incident and before the turning point. That means there's smack in the middle of the before side. What does this scene, what does this world look like before the. In your progressive complications, you want to make that starting value very. Think back on all those progressive complications that I listed out for Patricia and Wallace in all those progressive complications we're establishing the before. She's definitely employed and she lists out a dozen ways in which having this job is changing her life for the better. And Wallace is suspected by her coworkers to be heartless and suspected by the reader too, because we can see all his little frustrations as she speaks. But Patricia clearly thinks the world of him. She's not yet seen the definitive proof that he's heartless, and so she's praising him like he hung the moon. All throughout the progressive complications in the opening scene of Pride and Prejudice, we see Mrs. Bennett full of hope. A young man has come. He's of good fortune. He's single. This is a fine thing for her girls, and she's thinking of him marrying one of them. All throughout the progressive complications of the opening scene of looking for Alaska miles is just gritting his teeth and putting up with the fact that his mother has insisted on throwing this going away party, and she's insisted on believing that he has friends who will come and she's worried that this is why he's leaving, that he has no friends here all the way through. She's completely misunderstanding him at every turn. So look through your progressive complications and. Are you making the starting value of your scene clear throughout the progressive complications? And once you've finished that, you're nearly done. There's just one more element of story to examine, and I have just two questions to ask of it. And again, these are going to be familiar questions. Let's look at the resolution. This is what comes after the climax. And yes, something does come after the climax, even if it's super short, just one or two lines. You need something after the climax in order to resolve the scene. Which leads me to my first question. Does something come after the climax? Is there a re. Now, I know I talked about this way earlier. The very first question I asked when we started looking at the elements of story was, are all the elements of story present? So hopefully you caught any issues here right up front, but I'm repeating this question here because this is the elements that I see most often left out of stories. So many scenes, so many stories, even published books, even movies and TV shows that you can stream right now. Skip the re. In fact, there's a show that I absolutely love that has a really beautifully crafted story, and I enjoyed every single episode and have watched it multiple times. But every time when I get to the very end, it makes me angry because the resolution is less than five minutes. They could have written an entire episode. Just of resolution, and it would've been a really satisfying way to end that series. But instead, we have a two-part climax episode, and then the last five minutes of that last climax episode are the resolution of the whole entire show, which is five seasons Long writers often think that they need to skip the resolution because they don't want to bore their. But that's a big mistake. Your readers need a resolution after the climax in order to take a breather before the next bit of action and integrate all the changes that have happened throughout the scene. So the first question here is simple. Did you include some resolution? And now in the next question, we'll make sure the resolution works, that it doesn't bore your audience, but gives them exactly what they need in order to feel satisfied that they've read a complete scene and they're ready to move on to the next one. Here it is, and there are no prizes for guessing, but by this point you probably know where I'm going. Is the ending value clear? In other words, how is the end of the scene different from the beginning of the. In your inciting incident, you established your starting value you established what the world looked like before something changed in your progressive complications, you made that value. More and more clear, Mrs. Bennett got more and more hopeful. Patricia laid out all the reasons that she loves being employed by Wallace Miles. Stuck it out at an awkward party while his parents did one thing after another that made it obvious that they don't understand him. In your turning point, you forced your character to deal with those complications by making a choice. In your crisis. Your character was faced with the choice, and in that mix of turning points and crisis, the value changed. The value you established in the inciting incident flipped to its opposite. Hopeful to despairing, presumed heartless, to proven, heartless, misunderstood to understood. In your climax, your character took action on that choice, and we saw for the first time what the opposite of the value looked like. We saw the changed world in motion, and now you are at the resolution. We want to see the results of all of this. We want to see what the new world order looks like. Now, your task in your resolution is to make it really clear what the new value is. What does the changed world look? Let's take a look at our example scenes to see how they make their ending value clear. Here are the closing lines of dialogue in our scene. From Pride and Prejudice, it will be of no use to us if 20 such should come. Since you will not visit them. Depend upon it, my dear, that when they are 20, I will visit them all. This is the end of a good bit of back and forth arguing between the Bennett's debating whether Mr. Bennett will go visit the newcomer. In it, you can hear Mrs. Bennett despairing that her husband will not help her get her daughters while married. Not just now, but possibly ever, or here's a bit from the closing paragraphs of our scene from under the whispering. He thought of Patricia only once more that afternoon when he received an email from the head of Human Resources telling them that she would take care of the scholarship, the twins in his chest returned, but it was all right. He would stop for a bottle of Tums on his way home. He didn't give it. Or Patricia Ryan. Another thought ever forward. He told himself as he moved the email to a folder marked employee grievances. Look at how little Wallace cares about anything that's just gone down. We can see he's continuing to be heartless. He's completely unbothered by the one last reminder that he's just ruined Patricia's life and he's going back to work quite contentedly. And finally, here's the last line from our looking for Alaska scene. I sat back down on the couch between my mom and my dad, and my dad put his arm around me and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together for a long time until it seemed okay to turn on the tv. And then we ate the artichoke dip for dinner and we watched the History Channel and is going away. Parties go. It certainly could have been worse. There's this quiet understanding between miles and his parents now. They're no longer arguing with him or asking him why he's leaving or forcing him to engage in going away Rituals that are meant to make them all feel better, but really don't help him at all. They're just sitting together, enjoying the moment, spending time together in quiet understanding. That's the purpose of your resolution, to put the ending value clear on the page so your reader knows what has changed and what the new world looks like now that it has your resolution should showcase how the world is different now from the way that it was during the inciting incident. Because after all stories are about change, so don't skip the resolution of your scenes. Use the resolution to show us what has changed. And that's it. We made it all the way to the end of the final six questions. Here's a quick review of everything we just covered. Once you've determined your value shift and you've taken a really close look at the middle of your scene, turn your attention to the beginning and to the end, examine the inciting incident. Ask why does the scene start now? In other words, what disruption kicks it? And is the starting value clear in the beginning of the scene? Then examine the progressive complications. Do the progressive complications escalate? Is the starting value clear throughout the progressive complications and finally examine the resolution. does something come after the climax? Is there a resolution? And is the ending value clear? in other words, how is the end of the scene different from the beginning of the scene? And that's it. Based on what you find in all those questions, you can determine what specific changes you want to make within the scene to make it even better. And that's when you're thinking like an editor. Now, you don't have to just remember everything I just said right off the top of your head. I've got you covered with a free download, a guide to all 18 questions from this episode. And the last one, if you got it in the last episode, this is the same thing. But if you didn't, it's definitely worth grabbing. Now 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 sulo.com/scene. And finally, to wrap up this whole shebang, I want to give you an assignment to do right now. Again, I'm not going to ask you to answer all 18 questions right now. That could be super overwhelming if you're just getting started editing scenes or thinking like this about scenes at all. What I'm going to have you do is this, pull out a scene of your novel. If you did this for the last episode, use the same scene. Read the full scene and then look at the beginning and the end, the inciting incident and the resolution. What changes between them? Does the inciting incident establish the before? Does the resolution make it clear what after looks like? Because after all, say it with me. Stories are about change and everything we've done in this whole analysis from the first of the 18 questions to the last was identify what changes in the scene and make the way that that change happens really, really clear. That's it. That's storytelling right there. Alright, go grab the scene, edit questionnaire, alice sudler.com/scene. And then go pull out a scene of your own and start editing. I hope you discover so many brilliant new ideas as you go. Happy editing.