Today’s post is by author, book coach, and developmental editor Lidija Hilje.
It’s often said that scenes are the fundamental building blocks of a story—the smallest units that propel the narrative forward. But what precisely constitutes a scene, and what types of scenes are there?
Typically, when we refer to a scene, we’re talking about it in a classic, strict sense: as a story-relevant event that unfolds in real time. A classic scene contains the smallest piece of the plot and a movement in character arc in response to that plot. The reader follows the protagonist as they move through the scene in real time, and this moment-to-moment development is shown through action, dialogue, description, and internal monologue. Ultimately, the events of the scene challenge the protagonist, leading to a revelation, reaction, or decision that affects the story.
However, especially in literary and upmarket fiction, authors often use other types of scenes. These scenes might not adhere to a strict timeframe and can span months or even years; they might encapsulate the development of a relationship or a character’s personality. This is a summary scene.
Some scenes, on the other hand, don’t necessarily revolve around the protagonist learning something new or making a pivotal decision. Instead, they advance the story by providing deeper insights into the characters and moving the story deeper. This is a postcard scene.
Each type serves a unique purpose. Skilled storytellers use and balance different types of scenes within a single narrative.
Let’s break down each scene type and the best storytelling practices related to them.
Classic scene
A classic scene delves into a story-relevant event, capturing it in real-time and in a specific location. A story-relevant event is a plot point that has the power to push the character’s journey in a positive or negative direction, bringing them closer to or further from their story goal.
As the smallest unit of the story, a scene contains all the essential elements that the overall story should possess: an inciting incident that disrupts the protagonist’s status quo; complications that further challenge the protagonist; a crisis that forces the protagonist to deal with the challenges they’re facing; the climax, when the protagonist finally makes a decision, or reaches a conclusion, or takes a specific course of action; and a resolution which shows us the aftermath of the protagonist’s choice.
The scene moves the story forward by affecting the protagonist: they are faced with new information that has them discovering, unearthing, concluding, deciding.
Let’s say we have a protagonist, June, walking through the park and finding a puppy. The reader follows June closely, and the action unfolds the way it does in real life.
The following is not a full scene, but indicates briefly how a classic scene behaves.
June heard a whimper. It was so quiet she almost missed it. But then, there it was again, clearer, sadder. June neared the bush and knelt. The whimpering stopped. June pushed the branches aside, and two of the most beautiful eyes June had ever seen stared back at her.
“Why, hello there,” June said to the puppy, reaching to scratch its black-and-white head.
The puppy recoiled, and June’s heart twitched. Poor baby, who knew what it’d been through.“It’s okay, little one, I won’t hurt you.”
The puppy couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. It stared at June with its big, black, starry eyes (…)
Notice how contained in terms of time and space this scene is. Let’s say we continued writing this scene, with a clear and externalized resolution: June decides to keep the dog, despite her landlord not allowing pets. A reader can see how this is going to complicate June’s life—and the story’s plot—going forward.
Summary scene
A summary scene doesn’t unfold in a contained time and space. Instead, it condenses events spanning over a longer period of time. It might convey a specific concept, such as character development, the evolution of a relationship, or the passage of time. The story can meander across various settings and times, spanning years or even decades.
The challenge here is obvious. Even when describing events in a linear fashion, it’s easy to slip into the monotonous pattern of “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.” In essence, the information can come across as dry and disjointed, resembling a list of events rather than a cohesive narrative.
To preserve the storytelling feel even while we are conveying events scattered across a longer period of time, it is important to maintain a through-line: the summary needs to focus on a certain idea. Like a classic scene has an arc, a summary has a progression and a clear takeaway, with the ability to move the story forward.
Here’s an example of a summary with June and her dog.
Over the next few months, June did all she could to hide the puppy from her neighbors, and especially the landlord. Every morning she got up and hid the dog—she named her Dolores because the puppy had the big sad eyes of a flamenco dancer—under her coat or in her gym bag, and took her to the nearby park. She made sure Dolores ran as much as she could, and would throw sticks for her to fetch, and chase her down the park to exhaust some of her tireless puppy energy.
Before she went to work, June would put out enough food and water to get Dolores through the day. She hoped, while she worked, that Dolores was behaving herself, but when she would come home, she would see proof of Dolores’s mischief—the curtains pulled, with teeth holes in them, June’s shoes bitten and chewed, the potted plants displaced from the windowsill. Dolores would squeal with joy for seeing her, and June would have to cough loudly to hide the sound until she closed the door behind her.
But as Dolores grew, it became more difficult to hide her under a coat. She became more restless during the day (…)
The through-line here is that June is hiding the dog and she won’t be able to hide Dolores forever.
The other key to writing a good summary is to give as much precise imagery as possible. The more we can see the events unfolding, the easier it becomes to maintain that sense that we are inside the story. In my example, I compared Dolores’s eyes to those of a flamenco dancer; described Dolores playing catch with June; and detailed what she broke around the apartment.
Postcard scene
A postcard scene is typically used in literary and upmarket fiction and moves the story deeper. A postcard scene feels very internal. Nothing happens plot-wise or even character-arc-wise.
If a classic scene moves us from one point in the story to the next, a postcard sinks us deeper inside the same point in the story. The postcard changes the reader by deepening their understanding of the protagonist or their world.
Literary agent and writing instructor Donald Maass, who first coined the term, explained that the postcard is supposed to feel like its postal namesake. When we send postcards to our loved ones from a faraway place, we have limited space, and we will usually write something like: I’m having a wonderful time. The sunsets are incredible. Wish you were here. In other words, we want the recipient to briefly experience the place we’re visiting the way we are experiencing it. Similarly, the point of a postcard scene is to allow the reader to see what it’s like to be the protagonist, to briefly inhabit their shoes.
Let’s get back to June and her dog and see how a postcard might look.
June knew she couldn’t keep the dog. It was infeasible, unimaginable. Her landlord was a horrible, hard man, and June knew that he would enjoy evicting her over Dolores. And it wasn’t like she’d ever made a decision to keep Dolores, it had been a reaction. Upon reaction, upon reaction. She had taken Dolores in, because what else could she have done that day when Dolores almost got run over by a car? And since then, it was more of the same. June could see in Dolores’s sad eyes what she had seen in the mirror so many times, the kind of pain she still carried within herself. When she became someone no one wanted. But now when Dolores curled up to her in what had become their bed, and looked at her with her wide puppy stare, June could feel the same kind of loss she’d experienced all those years ago. In saving Dolores, it felt like who she was really saving was herself.
In this postcard, nothing changes for June. She doesn’t decide on a new course of action, to either get rid of the dog or fight to keep it. The status quo is maintained. She also doesn’t grow as a character—she doesn’t change into someone who is more or less likely to stand up for what she wants. She doesn’t learn anything new, or reach any new conclusion. But the reader’s understanding of June and her motivations deepens. We see why she is so adamant about keeping Dolores.
Using all types of scene
Here are some considerations for scene usage.
1. Know what type of scenes you are writing, and be consistent with the execution. In my editing practice, I often see a scene bleed into a summary and then back into a scene. While you can use a short summary at the very beginning or end of a classic scene, if you choose to display a certain plot event in real time, follow through on it. Time in a classic scene should flow naturally, the way it does in real life. Be strategic about when you start the scene and when you end it; you don’t want the scene to go on for too long.
Using phrases such as ten minutes later or after awhile in the middle of the scene signals that you are summarizing the passage of time mid-scene, which can have a jarring effect on the reader.
2. Consider your genre when choosing the type(s) of scenes you’ll be using in your novel. Readers of commercial fiction usually appreciate the straightforward way one classic scene leads into the next, and the clarity of the time and place, while literary fiction readers will work harder to make connections themselves. Think of scenes as on a spectrum: all genres use classic scenes, but in literary fiction, classic scenes are often interspersed with summaries and postcards.
3. Be mindful of your scene mix. No matter what you write, be consistent with the balance of scenes you’re using. For example, if you’ve been writing exclusively in classic scenes, the reader is going to expect you to continue in that way. If you switch things up mid-narrative and intersperse a variety of summary or postcard scenes, the reader will feel like they’ve stepped into another type of story. If in the opening chapters you offer a mix of all scene types, the reader will expect you to continue doing so.
A very useful post. By drawing attention to this distinction I can name, examine, and reason about how and why I use each type of scene. This is something I tend to do by “feel”, but I like being able to cross-check my gut instincts with (what I guess I’ll call) an analytical framework.
I particularly like your point about introducing the non-classic scene types early if you intend to use them. Like failing to introduce a murder suspect early, failing to set the rules of your literary style early is apt to disappoint or confuse the reader.
Today I’m reviewing my novel’s outline to look at each of my scenes, identify its type, and decide if I feel like I clearly understand how it fits into this paradigm. If it doesn’t, I can ask myself whether that’s deliberate and necessary or just sloppiness on my part.
Thanks!
So glad this article was helpful–and timely for your outline revision! Thanks for reading!
Just the issue I’ve been grappling with, in a scene that tries to segue from a summary (over months) to an incident. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful (and timely)!
Sometimes, it is possible to have a short summary (emphasis on “short”) at the very beginning or an end of a classic scene, but it’s also important to make sure the transition isn’t jarring for the reader and that it doesn’t disrupt the general balance of scene-summary you already have throughout the novel.
Loved this clear and reasonable post. Thanks for sharing your insights!
Thank you for reading!
It seems the summary and postcard are from the pov of a narrator. I prefer not to have narrators – they are outsiders to the story.
I write mainstream fiction, instead from the deep third pov of each of three main characters, only what each experiences, properly motivated in the moment, from right behind the eyeballs. The discipline of that keeps the story very immediate.
My way of providing the time delay of the summary scene is more limited; the entire trilogy takes place over 2005/2006. In some sections, where what is happening – the filming of a movie, waiting for a child to be born – takes some amount of real time, but is not necessary to the plot directly, the method is to space the scenes out, to look for the few action points in the time period and make sure those are used.
For a ‘postcard’ type scene, I find the ways and motivations a character would need to think/talk about what is basically an info dump for the Reader – at that very time and place. It takes a bit of work to create, but feels quite natural once it is finalized, and may be broken up in smaller logical pieces, triggered by things happening in real time.
For my two-year total timespan, it works comfortably.
It is true that classic scenes are more conducive to using deep POV (writing with immediacy, showing everything instead of telling) than postcards or summaries, which inevitably require a dose of telling. It sounds like you are committed to using deep POV throughout your novel, which is very difficult to execute for the very reasons you mention (everything needs to be shown, and not told, including passage of time and the character’s innermost thoughts and feelings), but it sounds like you’ve found ways to address those issues while staying in classic scenes.
I honestly think there is no better way to understanding the show-don’t-tell rule than mastering deep POV, just the way you described in your comment. Thank you for sharing your insights!
Thanks for your reply, but you said something which puzzled me, that ‘deep POV throughout [a] novel… is very difficult to execute…’
Maybe that’s part of why it takes me a while to write each scene, but I’ve always blamed my slowness on the ME/CFS that gives me so little usable writing time.
Now, the deep POV, even when I have to take half a day to switch characters (I have a prompt that says, ‘Channel the character,’ which includes reading several previous scenes from that POV), just feels natural.
The other trick I use is that each scene is written in its complete form, including all editing and polishing, in linear chronological order, AS IT HAPPENED in real life, before I move to the next scene. I work from a very detailed Dramatica structure, so I already know where everything will end up – and can focus on doing the very best version of the words, especially dialogue.
So far I haven’t found others who write this way, but it compensates for me NOT being able to do a draft of the whole, because I simply can’t hold that much story in mind at a time.
Thank you for your wonderful and insightful article! If I may humbly add a small additional comment, I think that when you, the author, are telling your story to your reader, you control the flow of information. You decide what your reader needs to know and what to omit. Any scene of 1,000 words could be expanded to 5,000 words. You can always tell the reader more about what’s transpiring. But in practicality, you edit yourself because you’ve got to get on with the story and don’t want to bore your reader with information they don’t need.
For example, the commercial author may decide that his or her bad guy doesn’t need a reason to be a criminal; they just are, and that’s it. The literary author may decide the reader needs to know more about the bad guy and why he does what he does, and will take the time to reveal the person’s psychology and perhaps build empathy. A classic case in point is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which she turns over the middle third of the book to the daemon, giving him free rein to narrate, in his own words, the story of his sad life.
If you believe your reader should know the inner thoughts and feelings of your protagonist or anyone else, then provide that information. If you don’t, then don’t. Either way can work, but only if you adhere to the one cardinal rule of writing (and of all art): “Don’t be boring.”
Thank you for your insightful response, Thomas. It’s true that so many things (and not just the way of writing scenes) are handled very differently in literary vs. commercial fiction. Literary fiction requires deeper exploration of characters and their motivations and also delivering information and plot in a more fragmented way, while both characterization and plot is often more streamlined and straightforward in commercial fiction. You touch on the most important thing, though, for any type of fiction: continuously surprising your reader (be it with interesting plot twists or interesting and deep character insights) is the cardinal rule of writing. Thank you for reading!
Thank you for your insightful post! I often think of stage plays, where we, the audience, know nothing about the story or the characters beyond three things: 1) What they look like and what they do, 2) What they say about themselves and others, and 3) What other characters say about them. There is (usually) no narrator to provide any other information. In theater, we often see the three types of scenes. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, our hero’s famous soliloquy “To be or not to be…” must be considered a quintessential postcard scene because it reveals his innermost thoughts. Earlier in the play, Horatio telling Hamlet how his dead father appeared to him on the ramparts is a summary scene. And of course, there are plenty of classic scenes of conflict!
This is great, thanks! So often writers are told not to use summaries or postcard scenes. Good to know that’s just not always the case.
Obviously a very good and experienced developmental editor, but makes me feel that this kind of editing doesn’t work with comic novels. A classic comic scene has a set up and a payoff, which can be a a gag, a wisecrack or a pratfall. In other words, a laugh. And the postcard, well, deepen a clown’s characterization too much and he stops being funny. Your thoughts?
Thank you for your question, but I’m really not that well acquainted with comic novels, or the storytelling techniques used to write them so I wouldn’t want to presume to have the answer. Comic novels are just a completely different “beast.” It does sound, though, that deepening the clown’s characterization wouldn’t be a particularly good idea 🙂
Thanks for this excellent summary of a topic that a full book could be (may have been!) written about. It’s good to see recognition and attention given to literary fiction and how it works as well. You’re right that literary writing delves deep into character and into other aspects of the fiction, but two other hallmarks are the concentration on the choice of words and the use of nuance and subtlely. I know you are constrained in only using a simple single example here, but it struck me that the explicit wording in the example—”June could see in Dolores’s sad eyes what she had seen in the mirror so many times, the kind of pain she still carried within herself … June could feel the same kind of loss she’d experienced all those years ago”—is not what one might see in literary fiction. It’s not that literary fiction has to be coy or that it has to be so obscure that you have to “figure out” what is being said, but the literary writer would IMO convey what you say there with more nuance. The comparison between June’s pain and the the dog’s pain would be evident but not stated outright.
Again, though, thanks for this! There’s a lot of knowledge packed into a small package.
Love this helpful article! It’s a great way to think about the different ways we can communicate story to our readers. However, I’ve learned that a scene does always have to move the story forward in some way by including a mini-transformation for the character. So I wonder if it might be even more helpful to think of these three options as “scene components” or “ingredients” that you can use to mix and match to create that unit of story that includes a change or shift for the main character (of the scene). Or, kind of approaching my thought another way, do you think that summary or postcard scenes CAN move the story forward even if it’s not in the way of plot? I think a postcard scene certainly could (internal transformation). I’m not sure about a summary scene. I’d love to know your thoughts!
Hi Mara, great question. In order to make the differences between these different types of scenes obvious, in this article I talked about them in their clearest form. That doesn’t mean that in literature you can’t find a mix of these types of scenes, and/or these types of scenes moving the story forward in multiple ways: i.e., a classic scene can simultaneously move the story forward and deeper; a postcard can move the story deeper and forward–a character’s interiority can inform us about them, and the character themselves can come to a decision/conclusion that moves the story forward.
I would like to emphasize, though, that a postcard doesn’t necessarily contain a transformation for the character (though it can contain it). Its primary purpose is to deepen the understanding the reader has of that character, to bring the reader inside this character’s experience.
Example: The opening scene of Notes on An Execution by Danya Kukafka. In it, we meet the protagonist, a serial killer, Ansel Packer, on the day of his scheduled execution. Here’s how he conveys his experience (note that it’s written in second person POV).
You are a fingerprint.
When you open your eyes on the last day of your life, you see your own thumb.
In the jaundiced prison light, the lines on the pad of your thumb look like a dried-out riverbed, like sand washed into twirling patterns by water, once there and now gone.
The nail is too long. You remember that old childhood myth–how after you die, your nails keep growing until they curl around your bones.
This is the whole scene. The protagonist doesn’t learn anything new, isn’t transformed internally in any way. What it does is, it brings the reader into this moment, how it would feel to wake up on the day of your own execution.