Form with questions for writing a scene

Literature & Writing Writer's Block
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Help request: I’m hunting around online for a basic form with the questions you can answer before writing a scene (or when editing it), and the versions I’m finding are too advanced. I’m thinking of a very basic form, with, for instance

  • Who is in this scene?
  • What age are they?
  • What year is this?
  • What season is it?
    and so on, so that the writer can abandon “telling” and use these data to “show” - eg, it’s spring, so are there cowslips, if we’re in a country lane, or is the milkman’s horse trotting rather than trudging if we’re in town…
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This is the kind of situation when I like creating a new, blank Scrivener project and then building my own template documents in it. That way, I can save it as a customized template and re-use it for future projects.

I can also revise my sheets as I go if needed.

For creating a new document template, §7.5 of the Scrivener manual has tips. For creating a project template, §5.4.3 would be helpful to review.

If you’re really looking for something ready-made but the ones you’ve seen are too advanced, can you copy out only the information that’s useful to you and use it?

I think the folks at ScribeForge.ink have some different world- and character-building tools, and they might even have a version that’s a Scrivener project template you can purchase.

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The other thing to do is search internet or Pinterest for scene questions. Ton for free. Copy and paste into blank template and customize and modify going forward. I have a ton and constantly change them as I go.

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I’ve done that, but the questions are far more technical - too advanced for the person I want them for. I’m looking for simple stuff:

Who’s in this scene?
What ages are they?
How are they dressed?
What season is it?
What month?
What time of day?
Where does it happen?

and so on - with the idea that knowing this means knowing, for instance what kind of weather it is - are they walking in a light mizzle of rain, are they ankle deep in grass and cowslips - or is it autumn and there are chantarelles growing under the pine trees… are these rich people with new clothes, or are their clothes very respectable but carefully, invisibly mended…

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Make a new file inside the template folder call it scene questions. Type in those you listed now and have a simple template. If want more duplicate file ( a right click option) and call advanced scene options and your done.

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I think the most important and fundamental questions for considering a scene are questions like:

Which character drives the scene with their desire?
What does that main character want?
Why do they want it?
What is the cost to them if they don’t get what they want?
How does the situation or the environment make it harder for them to achieve their goal?
What other characters in the scene oppose the character’s desire?
Why do they oppose the main character?
What is the cost to them of allowing the main character to succeed?
How does the main character oppose themselves? What doubts or inner conflicts make it harder for them to pursue what they want or to take the steps to get it?
By the end of the scene, does the main character get what they want?
How does the end of this scene propel the reader into the next scene?

Scenes are much easier to write when they are propelled by the intense desires of a character. When a character meets an obstacle to their desires, how they react and how/if they take steps to overcome it tells everything about who they are.

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These are good; not necessarily apposite in the case I’m seeking questions for, as it’s non-fiction and the main character is often an observer, as a child, of adult lives.
The questions I seek, really, are show-don’t-tell questions - making it possible to write in a way that shows what’s happening rather than narrating it.

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Doesn’t matter who’s the observer / narrator (might by unreliable or opinionated) – unless you intend to write a travel guide (a rather boring one) it’s essential to understand, primarily for you as the writer, who the people in a scene are and what drives them and why they react to the environment in a certain way. There’s at least one person in that scene (the observer).

Everything else is padding and nice to have for continuity and stuff. The audience doesn’t really care (or even notice) if the person who’s struck by the car wears a blue shirt and then suddenly wears a yellow shirt in hospital. Maybe if you write crime. Observing through the the eyes of a child is even more liberating. Nobody expects a child to get it right.

Take any non-fiction that reads like a thriller and compare it to any fiction that reads like a manual.

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These are all good ways to look at things.

But I also would recommend looking at Story Grid. The original book by Big 5 Editor Shawn Coyne was written in 2015, and he’s actually got even smarter since then, so their website elaborates further on this (and clears up a couple original discrepancies).

So what is most important in every scene are 5 elements: 1) an inciting incident (something throws the protag’s immediate world out of balance), 2) a turning point (they realize they must do something to deal with that), 3) a crisis question (what will they do?), 4) a climax (the action they take), and 5) resolution (a brief assessment of how their immediate world has changed based on their action, and how to go forward from there).

Every scene needs 2, 3, and 4 directly inside it, and must be driven by 1 (although the inciting incident might be in a previous scene). Resolution should also be in the scene, but might come a slight bit later.

There also must be a decision leading to the climax of the scene. What is interesting is that the turning point, crisis question, and decision don’t always have to be directly on the page, but they must still exist in the mind of the protagonist (and therefore, the reader). But they are often only implied. Once you see the climax, you can often easily guess what the turning point, crisis question, and decision likely were.

There can also be ‘progressive complications’, that intensify the drama and push the protag to their turning point, but those are not absolutely required like the other 5 are.

The protag also needs an object of desire in every scene. As Aaron Sorkin puts it, ‘Somebody wants something, something stands in their way—intention and obstacle’.

And it’s good to know what the global genre you are writing in is, and to understand what the conventions of that genre are, and serve those with obligatory moments (in any particular genre, the reader expects certain things, and this serves those expectations, without which, the story will seem incomplete to them).

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Mm. This is for a lady who’s writing a memoir of growing up in the 1940s.

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The story fundamentals for me — whether you’re looking at a multi-book series, a book, a chapter, a scene or even just a paragraph — are the same: POOEE
P = Protagonist (may not be the same thing as the narrator)
O = their Objective
O = the Obstacle that makes it hard to achieve
E = an Escalation that means things don’t go quite to plan
E = how it Ends

If I have all those, I know there is a story in there somewhere. Everything else is just details.

Having these in this simple form allows you to see at a glance if what you have is actually interesting or just pedestrian.

For example, if…
P = World class surgeon
O = Routine surgery on stranger
… then you know that the interest has to come from somewhere else. But make the P a vet instead of a doctor and it gets interesting. Make them a carpenter who’s only medical education comes from having watched every episode of the TV show “House, MD” four times, and it’s more interesting still.

The other two things it’s sometimes useful to understand for a scene are the journey anchors. Where in the overall story journey does this scene take place? As such, what are the key plot points the scene has to land in order to progress the plot?
(E.g., the carpenter accidentally leaves the surgical patient paralysed, ironically not because of his lack of medical knowledge but because he used the wrong type of chisel — something he should have known)
Plus, where in the overall emotional journey does this scene take place? I’m talking about the emotional journey for the reader here, not the characters. How do you want them to feel while reading the chapter and at its conclusion? (Noting that this should ideally, like the plot, be a journey that you take readers on across the course of the story and not just a bunch of random data points).

Finally, while I don’t normally do this, it is sometimes a useful exercise (especially if blocked) to just list out key senses. Ie, What do we see? What do we hear? How do things feel to touch? Using all of those in a single scene would be very bad writing, but sometimes it prompts an idea of an unusual/ unexpected observation.
Freshly planed bone smells nothing like the comforting, almost sweet smell of cedar shavings he was used to…

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I love POOEE, or as I use it, HOOEE, the H being Hero. But this book isn’t fiction but memoir; I’m trying to help someone writing a memoir by getting her to write it more visually - less narrative, more living scenes.

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My suggestion would be to have her take each story or incident and try to remember what she felt, smelled, heard, and saw in that moment.

Was it hot or cold? What did the furniture look like? Where were the people or things positioned in the space? Colors? Patterns? Was someone wearing perfume or cologne? Cooking? Were flowers blooming?

The more she can lose herself in remembering and describing those details, the better. And, it will take practice. If she starts with just scribbling all the details she can recall, she’ll then be able to figure out which might be important or evocative enough to add to the narrative and bring it to life.

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Of course, for a memoir you’re not going to start changing the facts just to make a more interesting story (maybe in the Aaron Sorkin movie version, but not in the book!). However, I don’t think that changes the narrative approach. It’s still really helpful to understand who the protagonist of the story being remembered was, what they tried to achieve, why it was difficult, etc.

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This is more or less what I’ve been saying to her - and “orient the reader in time and place: is it spring, and there are primroses, or autumn and there are apples…”

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I’m thinking of these more as things she’ll want to brainstorm for each scene, just rapidly writing as many details as she can remember. Perhaps in a note for that scene.

Then in later drafts, she can rework the narrative to include more of those details. She’s not going to hit all of them in a first draft. Or probably even in a fifth.

For my writing, adding those details is layering them in throughout the revision process until I have a scene or anecdote that includes both sensory details to ground a reader and a story that they want to read.

Edited to add: Something else to for both you and the writer you’re helping to keep in mind is that writing a memoir can dig up a lot of memories and emotions we perhaps didn’t expect.

Some of those emotions might have been labeled as “wrong” or “bad” in the past, depending on one’s upbringing. That kind of judgement applied to emotional scenes can make digging into the details harder.

I can tell when I’m writing something that has uncomfortable emotions connected to it because I’ll draw back in my writing. I subconsciously switch to a detached telling of the situation that lays out the facts but omits the feelings.

When I do that, I know I need to slow down and dig deeper into why I’m taking a long-angle lens approach to that moment.

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I also write non fiction, both my own and about others. I find a timeline grid is most helpful to see (remember) and feel what was going on in the moment. (I use a tabbed spreadsheet or a multi-columned chart.) In the days before computers, I used paper with column headings. In Scrivener, you can link to a spreadsheet and have it open in its native program as a “crib sheet” while writing.

It is a tool that prompts me to ‘find’ (or remember😉) other details by thinking about the 5 W’s - who, what when where and why - and how it made me (or others) feel. I usually start jotting things down by decades, then add lines as I get into years, months and days as things progress.

Not everything will be interesting enough for the final cut, but it is great fodder for new ‘stories’/scenes/chapters.

I always have a working doc for ‘ideas’ - those “oh yeah, I want to tell the story about ___” moments that always pop up with these prompts.

Some subject columns (or tabs) I use:

  • cars you owned, wanted, drove;
  • spouses or who where you dating;
  • children (can be a sheet of its own there are so many events);
  • friends;
  • foes;
  • jobs, coworkers, wages, employers, bosses/supervisors;
  • toys;
  • games (both boxed and playground);
  • mentors, favorite/non-favorite person;
  • homes (apt, house, farm, rural, urban?);
  • neighbors
  • schools, favorite classes/teachers, clubs;
  • Sports - played or favorite teams
  • music/songs/bands, concerts
  • hobbies/favorite pastimes
  • animals - pets or farm animals
  • clothes (favorite outfits, latest styles)
  • Holidays - can be a sheet of it’s own - which holiday, year, - who was there, where did you celebrate, vivid memories/feelings, gifts.
  • Life events - births, baptisms, confirmations, bas mitzvahs, marriages, anniversaries, deaths, burials

There are many more details you can add to each topic, but this should get you started on ideas that will bring the sensory details to the forefront.

Since this is a memoir, you might want to look into 'interview questions" for genealogists. There are so many great prompts to bring the stories alive.

This is a tool (checklist?) for me that helps to bring various elements in one’s life alive instead of just facts and dates on a page.

I’ll leave the technical details of putting it all together into a cohesive narrative to others because I am definitely a pantster. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Thanks, this is great! Will steal it (except for the cars) and use it.

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I’m glad you find it useful! I will say, the cars can be a huge help - one can almost always remember which car they were in during life events - and how they loved/hated/named that vehicle. :wink:

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You’re right, of course, and I loved my little Beetle, followed by a Micra and a couple of big bruisers of a Ford and a Toyota, but I have now taken a choice between my planet and cars.

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