Saturday, January 14, 2012

Questions To Keep In Mind When Reviewing Scenes

(Keep in mind, this more of a conceptual list, so if anybody wants to offer additional suggestions, go for it!)

1. What is this scene doing? (i.e. are we establishing character, setting up an interaction, filling in backstory, advancing the action, following up on something that just happened, or what?)

2. Is the scene doing what it’s supposed to be doing?

3. Does it fit with the rest of the story? (This kind of a two-part question, because I want to watch for issues of pacing – am I racing ahead? Is this interrupting the action? – but it also concerns issues of tone: did reading that Stephen King book last night switch me out of the mythic tone I was using and into something more colloquial?)

4. Is she just sitting in the middle of nowhere naked? (Basically, does the scene include enough detail that the reader can picture it clearly and tell what’s happening?)(New, taken from Carrie Spencer’s comment here.)

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