On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [65]
It's generally better to start a scene with action rather than summarize what's happened in the white space between scenes. So if you're going to show Jason at work, it's better to start with him doing something:
Jason set his coffee on the desk and pulled his chair around so he could reach the top envelope in his overflowing in-basket.
It's much less effective to simply tell the readers all about what's happened to Jason since they left him in the last scene:
After taking some time off during Christmas break, Jason had spent the last two weeks trying to catch up on his work. He'd spent day after day digging through the piles of paperwork, skipping lunches every day except one, when he'd seen Angela for the only time since Christmas. But despite all his efforts, his in-basket was still overflowing when he came to work on that Tuesday.
Starting the Scene
The first paragraph or two of each scene must accomplish several things:
• Establish the time and place where the scene occurs.
• Clearly identify the viewpoint character.
• Hint at the mood of the scene.
• Capture the readers' attention and not allow them to put the book down.
Start your scenes and chapters with action. Don't summarize what's happened since the last scene, and don't begin the scene with the heroine parking her car in the company lot if the action doesn't get going until she walks into the conference room at mid-morning.
In the start of this short scene from Jackie Braun's sweet traditional category romance In the Shelter of His Arms, we see the homeless heroine after she's broken into her boss's bar through a restroom window in order to spend the night where it's warm:
Morning came before Roz was ready for it, but then she was used to running on only a few hours of sleep. She'd bunked on the floor of a small storeroom off the kitchen, using her duffel bag as a pillow. Now, with sunlight slinking through the window, she realized the room also doubled as Mason's office. ... Her stomach growled, reminding her that it hadn't forgotten it was empty.
In just a few words, Braun has told us the place and time of the new scene, as well as how much time has passed since the previous scene. She's also made clear the main problem of this short scene—Roz is hungry—and she's set up the next difficulty for her character, as we'll see when we read the end of this scene below.
Ending the Scene
The last paragraph or two of each scene should intrigue the readers into turning the page and going on to the next one. To do that, you can use one or more of the following techniques:
• End a scene with an intriguing twist. Reaching the end of a scene is like pushing the pause button on a DVD player—if you pause at a boring moment, the viewer may be sidetracked by another activity and not come back to watch the rest of the show. The best example of how not to end a scene or a chapter is with the heroine drifting cozily off to sleep without a care in the world.
• End your scenes and chapters when the action ends. If the hero walks out of the heroine's store, that's probably the end of the action—so don't have her turning to greet the next customer unless that customer has something important to add.
• End with a surprise event or announcement. Perhaps the character has made a decision about future action, leaving the readers wondering what the outcome will be.
• End with a question that the readers want answered.
• Stop in the middle of the action, or at a moment of tension, or with the character at risk.
You must play fair, however. If you end a scene with a hint of the action yet to come, you can't conveniently forget to carry through. If you ask a question, it has to be answered sometime during the story. If you opt for a surprise, it has to be genuine and meaningful, not manufactured or coincidental.
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