How to make a scene

One of the resources I’ve been putting together for the upcoming Zero Draft Challenge is a brand new Short Guide to Writing Scenes. To be honest, it started out as a short guide but it grew, so I'm not sure what I'll call it now. 😂

But it's still a straightforward primer on what goes into a scene and how to approach writing the scenes in your screenplay, and I think you’ll find it helpful – that’s always my goal, anyway.

Wait, what's this about a Zero Draft Challenge, you ask?

And what even is a Zero Draft?

Some might think of it as a “vomit draft” or “messy first draft,” and – similar to those methods – it's a way to take the pressure off so you can get the first pass of your screenplay onto the page with less stress.

However, in a “vomit draft,” there's often an emphasis on turning out pages – quantity over quality. Because of that, the resulting draft can feel directionless, scenes can end up being overly long and rambling, and what's on the page may not have a real place in the screenplay at all.

Too often I've seen writers disappointed by finishing a "messy first draft" that isn't actually usable in terms of providing a foundation to begin rewrites.

By contrast, I'd compare a Zero Draft to something more like a "scriptment," or what you might simply know as a very thorough outline (the kind you'd turn in if you were hired for a writing job).

These are all ways of telling your entire story, beginning to end. What's different is the intentional approach and the focus on writing shorter, summarized descriptions of the scenes that your screenplay actually needs.

What you end up with is a solid representation of your finished screenplay, just in a condensed form – that's the Zero Draft.

(If you want to see what a Zero Draft scene looks like to really wrap your brain around the concept, scroll down to the excerpt section below.)

So a Zero Draft bridges the gap between a blank page and a full screenplay draft.

Coming up: the Zero Draft Challenge

The Zero Draft Challenge is a month-long event I’m hosting, designed to break through the procrastination and overwhelm you might feel when writing a screenplay.

It's four weeks of guidance and support to help you get the ideas out of your head and into screenplay form. To help you finish that first pass, and get you well on your way to a full draft of your screenplay.

Starting with a Zero Draft takes the pressure off now, and makes the next steps of writing and rewriting easier and more fun (because a lot of the heavy lifting is done).

🚀 My secret plan is to host a challenge like this twice this year, so you have a schedule and framework to get two new screenplays out. Write a Zero Draft during the challenge, take the next month to expand the full draft, rewrite, repeat. 📅 ✍️ 🔄

Here’s what’s included with the challenge:

• A weekly "lesson" email that includes a plot and character arc roadmap for the section of the story we're aiming to write that week, examples from existing movies and Zero Draft pages to guide you, and additional resources to help you complete the week’s writing.
• A quick guide to writing scenes (title TBD 😂), so you know how to turn those ideas for scenes into actual scenes.
• Group accountability, support, and inspiration via the Slack group we’ll use just for the challenge.
• Weekly lunchtime Q&A and/or evening co-working sessions. (Totally optional, but I'm scheduling a live meet-up each week to help keep you on track if you need it.)
• And as soon as you sign up, you'll get a “prep work” lesson to help you lay the foundation of your story, so you can be fully prepared to start writing your Zero Draft in Week 1.

If you’d like to join the challenge – and I hope you will – I’ll open signups next Friday. (Look for the link in the regular weekly email.)

The four weeks of the challenge will kick off on April 6th. Follow along with the challenge and you’ll have a completed Zero Draft by May!

In the meantime, here’s a section from the quick guide to scene writing that I think you'll find useful whether you’re writing a Zero Draft or not. 😊

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Zero Drafting the scene (an excerpt)

So with all of that exploration / research / pre-writing to draw on, let’s sketch out the scene itself.

A quick reminder that we are Zero Drafting here. That means we’re not writing the scenes in full just yet, but we are doing a lot of the deep thinking about what will go into the scene, what we’ll see play out on screen, and what we’ll eventually write into the script. In fact, you'll likely use parts of the scene description from your Zero Draft in the full draft of the screenplay.

So, as you’re Zero Drafting, get specific. The more you figure out now, the less time you’ll need to spend on those details when you’re writing the first draft.

Even though the Zero Draft is meant to help you get a draft of the whole story out quickly, don’t rush through the thinking process.

This is where you want to really think through the story, make choices, and plan what you’re going to put on the page – and that will make writing the first draft so much easier (and more enjoyable).

So, back to the scene:

You know who wants what in the scene, and why they want it. You’ve thought about where the conflict, obstacles, and tension are coming coming from. (That's much of what we've covered up to this point.)

The scene itself is a mini-story. In a conflict-driven scene, a character pursues a goal, a second character blocks that goal (likely with a goal of his own), and new tactics and strategies create escalating conflict and tension until the first character either gets or fails to achieve his goal.

At the end of every scene, something has changed.

Let’s break down what to put on the page

Establish the first image:

We’ll start the scene by establishing an image, something to visually orient us and hopefully grab our attention right away.

This image also kicks off the story of this scene. So, if it's a conflict-driven scene, the first image should start the conflict or establish something necessary for the conflict to begin.

Beginning:

The “setup” section of a scene’s story can lean heavily on existing context, but the bottom line is that the audience needs to understand who wants what and why – that’s what the scene is about.

Whether that’s established before we get to this scene, or at the beginning of this scene, that’s information we need to know to understand and appreciate what’s about to unfold.

The middle of the story – characters try to get what they want, conflict escalates:

The middle of the scene is where the characters pursue their goals, engage in the conflict, and attempt to overcome obstacles in the process.

Think about what approach your character might use to achieve their goal, and why they’d do it that way. When that doesn’t work, what other approach would they try, and why? What gets in their way and causes the shift in behavior?

If you’re feeling stuck or unsure how to proceed, try thinking through:

• How does each character pursue their goal?
• What are different tactics and strategies they might use?
• How might these actions escalate? (Order them from low to high effort and/or stakes.)

Remember, you probably have characters pursuing their own, mutually exclusive goals. So think about what’s happening on both sides of the conflict.

And even if the scene isn’t built around opposing goals in conflict, you can still think of the scene as a mini-story. In that case, think about what the setup, build, and payoff of the mini-story will be.

An example of a non-conflict scene I’ve used before is this one from Hell or High Water.

In this scene, no one is trying to stop the other from doing what they’re doing. But there is tension – there’s a ticking clock – and there’s friction between the personalities.

The scene still has a point: the brothers are now heavily armed, where they weren’t before. Toby’s plan was to not have to hurt anyone. Now they have the means to cause a lot of death and destruction. What’s going to happen? This sets up future story events.

This is also where Toby realizes something new about his brother, which changes the dynamic between them and informs how Toby reacts in the next scene – he comes to Tanner’s defense.

The scene has a beginning, middle, and end:

• Toby learns they’re making a stop at Tanner’s place.
• Toby sees Tanner’s place and how he lives (it escalates from the sad outside, to the filthy inside, to the personal detail).
• New plot info: they have guns. This creates an open loop and a bit of unresolved tension, since we know something violent and dangerous will likely happen soon.
• The scene resolves with Toby’s moment of reflection, a new understanding about his brother and a change in attitude, which sends us into the next scene, where something violent does happen, but it’s not what we expect.

For another non-conflict example, take the Olive Intro scene from Little Miss Sunshine.

• Beginning: It’s a Miss America pageant.
• Middle: No wait, it’s a little girl watching the pageant, and mimicking the winner.
• End: Olive rewinds the tape and watches again; she’s obsessed, but is far from a traditional beauty queen herself. In V.O. we hear, “There are two kinds of people in this world – winners… and losers.” What will happen?

End: How does this scene resolve and push us forward to the next scene?

The final part of the scene both wraps up the mini-story and invites us to keep reading what comes next.

We simultaneously want to give the sense that the scene has ended but also create curiosity and anticipation, momentum to push the reader forward to the next scene.

So, think about:

• How does the conflict or mini-story resolve?
• In what new direction does this resolution send us?

If the scene is built around characters pursuing conflicting goals, then you basically have two possible resolutions for the scene: the scene’s main character either gets what they want or they don’t.

But, even if they “win” the scene, consider what success might cost them. And if they fail, they may just learn some valuable lesson or information that will ultimately help them – either in the next scene or later in the story.

All this to say that success and failure aren’t always black-or-white, and you’ll create a more layered experience by thinking about how a win may also require loss, or loss might provide something beneficial.

The “scene out”:

Finally, we need some direction to continue the journey. Some guide or enticement to lead us forward in the story.

This can be particularly true if the scene goal is achieved successfully. Because, then what? If the character got what they wanted or solved their problem, where are they (and we) supposed to go next? Letting us know where we’re headed or what they’re going to pursue now helps keep the momentum alive.

(The V.O. "winners and losers" line in the Olive intro scene, and Toby's changed attitude in the Hell or High Water scene are both good examples. For another one, take a look at the Zero Draft sample scene below.)

If the character didn’t achieve their scene goal the next steps may be more obvious, but we still need to put something on the page (and in the scene) to lead the audience onward. Some indication of what the character may do now, or even a cliffhanger or question to lure us in the right direction, helps to propel the reader into the next scene.

A Zero Draft sample scene

In the next section we'll take a closer look at what it would look like if you put all of this together in a Zero Draft version of a scene, so you have an idea of what to aim for. (I'll show you the full scene, as well, so you get a sense of each part of the process.)

First, check out the Zero Draft version of the scene here.

I hope you find this scene-writing reference useful, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

And if you're interested in joining the challenge, start thinking about which script you'll Zero Draft! Put those foundation pieces in place so you're ready to start thinking through the scene-by-scene in a few weeks. You can always refer to last week's email for some first-things-first prep work ideas.

Until next time,

Naomi

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