The Anatomy of a Scene
Lisa Cron
Lessons
Class Description
Although your novel is made up of individual scenes, in truth those scenes are not individual at all, but part of an escalating internal and external cause-and-effect trajectory. Each scene is made up of myriad layers, and performs multiple tasks: they move subplots forward, give the reader insight into the protagonist, develop secondary characters, ratchet up what’s at stake, foreshadow what’s to come, and trigger changes that will ripple throughout the novel.
Wow, that’s a lot! How do you keep track of it? And how do you get it onto the page so that all those layers merge to create what reads as a seamless whole? That’s exactly what we’ll unravel, giving 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.
Never again will you face that frustrating struggle, wondering if the scene you’re contemplating is relevant or not. You’ll learn how to identify and create 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 session you’ll learn:
- What makes a scene work, and what every scene must do in order to be relevant and riveting.
- Maddeningly common mistakes writers make when writing scenes and how to deftly avoid them.
- How to keep track of every layer in your story – scene-by-scene -- from beginning to end.
- Why you should never write scenes out of order.
Ratings and Reviews
Kate Taylor
Lisa Cron's class and the book she wrote about writing -- "Story Genius" -- is the best fiction teaching I've ever experienced. This is a great, great class and Lisa is an inspired teacher. Thank you!
Emily Brady
I love Lisa's book, Story Genius, and this course helped me to get a more solid handle on how the individual scenes are part of a greater whole that give them meaning. Great class!
Trish Gwynn
Fantastic class. I learned more in under three hours than I have in untold books and workshops. Highly recommended. I would have really liked a downloadable scene card that I could print out to use though, but I can knock one out on excel to carry around and ask the questions and make notes on it while I think. Ms. Cron's class Wired For Story was also excellent. I highly recommend both. I wish I'd learned these things ages about, I might have been published already. All this time I thought it was me, that I just couldn't figure out how story worked and what I was doing wrong, why I always wrote myself into a corner - it was because everyone else teaching it doesn't seem to understand how story actually works either and pass on the misinformation. I find that terrifying for some reason.