#Story grid scene types how to

Here are the key features of scenes and summaries to help you develop a better eye for them.

How can you know when to use which when you don’t really know what each is? What’s the Difference Between Scene and Summary?

#Story grid scene types how to

They don’t know how to write a strong summary.

They don’t know how to write a strong scene.

They feel too intimidated to write what needs to happen in a scene.

They can’t yet discern what the story’s major turning points are.

They can’t yet tell the difference between scene and summary.

Writers run into this problem for several reasons: A high-stakes, fast-paced story would have turned into a drag-and would have been rejected before Effie could say “Primrose Everdeen.” Then consider how slow and boring the story would be if she wrote a scene for every time Katniss went to bed or woke up and ate breakfast while in the Capitol. Just imagine what The Hunger Games would have been like if Suzanne Collins summarized the high points of the Games-the cornucopia battle, the tracker jackers, or the mutts at the end.

Occasionally when editing another’s work, I find the writer made what really should have been summaries into scenes, and what really should have been scenes, into summaries. Writers regularly need both scene and summary to tell a great story, but sometimes it can be difficult to discern when to use which, for best effect.