The Anatomy of a Scene
Course

The Anatomy of a Scene

Creative Live
Updated Mar 15, 2019

Your novel, memoir, or screenplay is made up of individual scenes, but the truth is, all those scenes are part of an escalating cause-and-effect trajectory. Each scene performs multiple tasks, including moving subplots forward, developing your characters, ratcheting up what’s at stake, and triggering events that ripple throughout the story.

So how do you keep track of it all? And how do you get those many layers to merge into a seamless whole? Author, speaker, and instructor Lisa Cron is here to give you a clear, concise, and concrete method of making sure that every scene you write not only serves the story you’re telling, but rivets the reader.

Lisa will help you get over that frustrating struggle of making your scenes relevant and weaving them into your overarching story. You’ll learn how to construct each layer in every scene, bringing your story to life and creating the irresistible sense of reality that hijacks the reader’s brain.

In this class, you’ll learn how to:

  • Make a scene work so that it’s both relevant and riveting.
  • Avoid common mistakes writers make when writing scenes.
  • Keep track of every layer in your story—scene by scene—from beginning to end.
  • Stop writing scenes out of order and understand cause and effect.
  • Plant seeds in your scenes to foreshadow the future.