In film and television, a scene can be extremely short and still feel complete. The visual medium helps. The eye can take in the whole setting, while also tracking the action. But I’m having a hard time with short scenes in my novel. I don’t want them to waste many words, but how do I make them feel “complete” — not rushed, or sketched? <\/p>\n
One trick I’ve tried is to think of the scene as a piece of flash fiction. Flash also can’t be longer than 500 or 1000 words, and yet it needs to be even more independent than a scene in a novel.<\/p>\n
Any other ideas? I’m scratching my head.<\/p>\n
UPDATE: I was too tired to give examples earlier, but here’s what I mean.<\/p>\n
In a movie script you could have two short scenes in a row, like this:<\/p>\n
EXT. WOODS – NIGHT. <\/p>\n
A DARK FIGURE runs through the trees.<\/p>\n
DISSOLVE TO:<\/p>\n
INT. THE WAR LEADER’S COMPOUND.<\/p>\n
WARRIOR
He’s taken the bait.<\/p>\nLEADER
Send someone to follow him.<\/p>\nDISSOLVE TO…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But if you do that in a novel, how do you do it? It seems very choppy if you say:<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
A dark figure ran through the forest, keeping to the shadows of the trees. <\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
A warrior rushed into the compound and knelt before the war leader.<\/p>\n
“He’s taken the bait,” the warrior reported.<\/p>\n
A grim smile spread over the war leader’s face. “Send someone to follow him.”<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
…but do I really need to go into the details about how the woods looked and smelled, or the compound, if I’ve described these things before? I kinda just want to cut to the good stuff…. <\/p>\n
If I were writing in omniscient, I could roll both scenes together.<\/p>\n
That night, illuminated only by a sliver of moon, a dark figure raced through the trees. The swift and furtive motion of the lone fugitive suggested he did not want to be observed.<\/p>\n
He was observed, however, and not long after his flight through the woods, a warrior rushed into the compound and knelt before the war leader.<\/p>\n
“He’s taken the bait.”<\/p>\n
A grim smile spread over the war leader’s face. “Send someone to follow him.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
However, I’m writing the rest of the book in Third Person at various degrees of Closeness.<\/p>\n
Can you have a scene in a novel that’s only one or two sentences?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In film and television, a scene can be extremely short and still feel complete. The visual medium helps. The eye can take in the whole setting, while also tracking the action. But I’m having a hard time with short scenes in my novel. I don’t want them to waste many words, but how do I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}