What is a scene?
It’s not what you think. No, it’s not that, either.
Often in novel craft discussions, the word “scene” gets thrown around as if everyone knows what it means. Worse, the term is also utilized and overloaded in other disciplines of writing (screenwriting and playwriting especially) wherein “scene” means something very specific and has for a long time. However, those connotations and denotations are (at best) not useful for a novelist and (at worst) actively harmful for a novelist.
While I am developing my own taxonomy around story terms to eliminate confusion that I often encounter with clients, I am not going to lay them down for you today. This is strictly Story Grid dogma as I understand and teach it.
A Scene Is Not…
In a novel, a scene is not a set change or costume change or a new musical number, which is what scene means to a playwright.
In a novel, a scene is not a setting change or a camera angle shift or the entry or exit of “new” characters to the shot, which is what a scene means to a screenwriter.
A Scene Is…
In a novel, a scene is the resolution of a Crisis Question. This does not mean that it has to be resolved in a fun, enjoyable, or satisfying manner. Just that the protagonist of the scene answers the CQ in some meaningful way—even if the dramatic action is to do nothing.
Scene construction can be simple or complex. Further down, I will explain some of the complexities that I’ve observed in masterworks, that I’ve attempted myself, and assisted clients to write in their own novels. But first…
The way that we typically teach novel craft presents the traditional, simplest-to-practice case. You’ll recognize the spirit of Shawn Coyne’s Five Commandments of Storytelling (5Cs) from the original book Story Grid: What Good Editors Know; however, these definitions have evolved in the practice of what we teach in the Writer Mentorship Program.
The antagonist delivers an Inciting Incident which disrupts the status quo for the protagonist in such a way as to lead inevitably to the Crisis Question by way of zero or more Progressive Complications. PCs are all the antagonist’s active attempts to get what they want and include Inciting Incident and Crisis as special cases of PCs.
The Turning Point establishes the protagonist’s refusal to comply with the antagonist’s wishes, wants, desires, or demands in response to a Progressive Complication (which might be only refusing the Inciting Incident itself).
The antagonist forces a binary decision by removing or denying all other options from the possible paths forward for the protagonist except A or B in a final Progressive Complication we conveniently call the Crisis.
The protagonist makes a Climax decision between A or B.
The antagonist dramatizes the meaning to themself of the Climax decision in a Resolution action or exposition of some kind.
Obviously, it’s far more complicated than that much of the time; hence, the sections below to describe how scenes can “happen” in the wild beyond the classroom. But it’s a useful model that always works if you’re struggling to figure out why your scene isn’t working.
Yes, Shawn is working on the sequel to the original book.
No, I don’t have a clue when it will be published.
Some Common Scene Patterns
This is not intended to be a comprehensive or prescriptive list. I think story, like language, is an infinite combinatorial matrix. I do not presume to be able to cage infinity. I wanted to create some visualizations that made sense for these, but several magic genies (Claude, Firefly in Photoshop, and ChatGPT through Apple’s Creator Suite) all exhausted my patience try to prompt images that made sense to describe these patterns. 🙄 I trust that your imagination will do much better.
Classic/Traditional
As above, the foundational scene has Five Commandments. This is the bare minimum for working scene, in my professional opinion. It’s what we practice until we embody the scene construction skill so well that it’s “muscle memory.”
Compressed/Micro/Mini
Yes, you can compress the Inciting Incident and Crisis together in a single beat. Yes, you can compress Turning Point and Climax into a single beat. Yes, as I’ve noted elsewhere, you can compress Resolution for everyone involved into the first and second beats (to front-load the Resolution):
Inciting Incident/Crisis/Resolution for the antagonist (punch).
Turning Point/Climax/Resolution for the protagonist (counterpunch).
In some ways, every beat of the story is a micro scene: input/output, stimulus/response, or my favorite punch/counterpunch.
Micro scenes are very useful conceptually to stack together one after another to give a sense of urgency, like dominoes in a line or part of a Rube Goldberg machine, but they function exactly like Classic/Traditional scenes. A mini scene is just a bigger micro scene which probably separates out the Resolution for one or both conflict participants. This also implies the existence of macro and larger scenes, but at that point, we’re really talking about Sequences which I’ll get to in a minute.
Overlapping
When one scene starts before another scene finishes, you have created overlapping scenes. You can tell this happens when the subsequent individual tactics and the stakes for the 5Cs (from Inciting Incident through Resolution) are not related to the previous Crisis.
Perhaps, Mom and Dad are arguing when Junior wanders into the room, interrupting the marital fireworks, and Dad shouts, “We’ll talk about this later!” and leaves. Then Mom and Junior have a separate Crisis about whatever’s ruining Junior’s (and now Mom’s) day.
The first scene is typically resolved before the second. The two scenes are not necessarily (usually not, in my observation) related in theme or Crisis stakes.
There are plenty of narrative reasons for this construction. The most common that I see is to preserve the tension of the first scene Crisis by leaving it open and not completely resolvable because of the interruption of the second scene. When it’s done well, it can produce dramatic irony and suspense during the second scene. When it’s done poorly, it feels like a contrived delay in the inevitable resolution of the first scene.
Braided
Braided scenes are a special kind overlapping scenes and share a lot of DNA with them. Braided scenes alternate back and forth between 5Cs and PCs of two different overlapping scenes. This often happens when both characters in the scene conflict have separate Crisis Questions to answer. They are best constructed when one character’s react/response cycle to a PC becomes a PC for the other character.
Such as, Alexander wakes Cheryl up in the morning to tell her that he is leaving (Inciting Incident). Cheryl’s reaction/response is to start crying and say, “But… I’m pregnant!” which is an Inciting Incident for Alexander. Then the participants in the conflict are both antagonists to one another and protagonists with their own Crisis Question to answer. They incite and antagonize each other back and forth all throughout the scene.
Braided scenes can be fun to write, even though it’s harder to get the stakes on the page in a nuanced way for the non-point-of-view character. There’s theoretically no limit to how braided you can get, but the most complex braid that I have seen intentionally constructed by a very ambitious student was a three-way braid with 15Cs (5Cs for each of three conflict participants).
I did try to write a four-way braid example once, but I gave up in frustration.
Injected
An injected second scene begins while the first scene is in progress and is resolved before the first scene is resolved. This form of interruption is often similar in vibe to overlapping scenes and function much the same way. Often these injected scenes are micro scenes, too, and serve to remind Sam of something significant elsewhere in the plot. They can also serve to thematically amplify the scene that they are injected into. They can also be used as a distraction, a red herring, or a comic relief. Just do whatever you’re doing with the injected scene on purpose.
For example, the heroine is searching the burning boat for her daughter (scene one’s Crisis might be Will the heroine risk her own fiery death in order to save her daughter?) when she is interrupted by an attacker. The attacker is her love interest from earlier in the novel who disappeared at a painful and inconvenient time: when the villain kidnapped her daughter. Scene two’s Crisis will likely rhyme with Will the heroine kill her former lover in order continue risking her own fiery death in order to save her daughter? I’m stacking ticking clocks and all kinds of other drama into this interjected scene, because that’s what novelists do. Scene two is resolved when the heroine maims-and-leaves-to-burn her former lover in order to continue searching the burning boat for her daughter because scene one is not yet resolved.
Sequence
A novel is basically a long series of scenes that are thematically related along a Global Crisis Question. A Sequence of scenes is a little more specific than that. They are each a part of a larger Sequence Crisis Question. These can be stacked like individual dominoes because answering the scene one Crisis Question will give rise to the next scene two Crisis Question. Then when the scene two Crisis Question is answered, the next scene three Crisis Question emerges from that. This is most typical of a sequence of scenes.
Bear in mind, that scenes in Sequence do not have to literally occur back-to-back. A subplot is a Sequence of scenes. The three scenes of the Bulgarian Wife subplot in Casablanca do not happen one right after the other—they are separated in time by other scenes. The same characters are not necessarily directly involved in each scene. But at least one character is likely to be the protagonist of the subplot which is what causes it to hang together as a Sequence.
Sequences can also be parts or aspects or elements of a larger question which is explored through the sequence that are less related in a specific chronological fashion, but all must be answered in order for the Sequence Crisis Question to be resolved. Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether you choose the playlist for the party before you choose the menu or the guest list, but perhaps choosing the playlist is somewhat related to the guest list and the menu. Just be careful when you’re choosing your larger Sequence Crisis Question and deriving your scene Crisis Questions from it or you’ll wind up in a spiral in which your protagonist (and maybe you) will suffer analysis paralysis because everything depends on everything else! The individual Crisis Questions of this kind of Sequence may imply something of an order, but they’re a little more independent than a literal domino sequence.
Want help with your scenes?
While I’m not yet accepting new weekly mentoring clients (as of Saturday 14 March 2026), I am willing to connect and consult about your scene problems or any other story-related problems—I can’t help you with your mother-in-law. Sorry. Not sorry.
Also, here are some related ramblings if you’re curious to dig deeper into scene work.
Next?
Now, go write some scenes!