The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes NOT BORING While Revealing the Story to Your Reader
Master writers and editors know what it takes to make scenes not boring while revealing the story.
Let’s talk about what makes a scene boring.
There is one major thing you don’t want to do to your readers when writing a scene and revealing the story.
Don’t make it work for them to read it.
Period.
If you make it a ton of work for them to get through chapter one scene one, they are going to put down the book and probably never want to pick it up again.
Here is how you make it a ton of work for your reader to make it through your scene.
Chapter 1: I tell them about the world, the shops in the world, the streets in the world, the mountains, the trees, what the birds look like, the cool and exotic plants. I tell them about the characters and every tiny detail about them. I tell them about her hair and her eyelashes. What she thinks about the flowers…
Do you get where we are going with this?
We are being a bit exaggerated here, but let’s be honest, it happens. And stuff like that used to work, but not today.
To make a scene “too much work didn’t read” (TMWDR) aka (TLDR) we give them a million descriptive details to read through without once moving the story along!
And our reader is left feeling like, “let’s get the ball rolling people!”
We can give them the details about the beautiful world in our imagination, but give it in small doses and allow them to use some imagination.
Move the story forward
We can give them some descriptions and we should, but great authors know that in order to be allowed to explain what a character looks like we have to earn the right to talk about them and why they are important.
The way that we earn the right to tell the reader anything while revealing the story, is when they are thinking this one secret thought.
We have to put this one thought in their minds and keep it there, the moment we’ve lost this thought that we’ve put in their heads, they’ll put down the book.
That secret thought is the same one all great writers use across all mediums, whether it’s story, freelance, copywriting, blogging, or marketing.
The secret thought is: “If I just read a little bit further, I’ll find out what I want to know.”
When we are so into reading anything, a story, an article, a blog, we have this same thought too. It’s really more of a feeling. But we read on intently looking for the answer to our questions.
Questions like, “What will happen next?” “What is going to happen to this character now?” are what we want our readers to think as writers in any medium.
The way we plant the secret question in their head using story
The way we create the secret question is simple.
Keeping it in their minds is the hard part about writing a story and writing one that readers can’t put down until they’ve read every last page.
The way is simple but executing takes time, practice, and insight.
How do we create the secret question in their head?
We create a problem that must be resolved.
The way we make scenes not boring
The way to make scenes not boring is to move the story along. (I know we said this above but go with me here as we explain further.)
We need to give the reader something to be curious about and look forward to.
Along the way we slowly but surely reveal characters and scenery and explain little bits and pieces of the world and bring them into our world and share it with them.
But to make a scene not boring and to move the story along we must create curiosity about what happens next!
How to get your reader thinking what happens next?
It is the coveted moment. The reader can’t stop reading page after page, chapter after chapter all because they keep thinking, “what happens next?”
But how do we get them thinking this through every chapter?
I already told them about the hero and the bad guy and he wants to destroy the world, what else keeps them curious?!
The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes Not Boring While Revealing the Story
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The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes Not Boring While Revealing the Story
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The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes Not Boring While Revealing the Story
The journey.
Moving the story along is the journey it takes to get from the introduction of our characters to the main problem that faces them to seeing it out to the end and all the misadventures in between.
But how do we make the journey interesting?
Let’s ask a more detailed question.
The one we’ve been asking all along.
How do I make each scene interesting?
Give each scene a purpose.
If every single scene we bring the writer into doesn’t have a purpose in moving the story forward then why on Earth are we telling them about the scene?!
So when you plot your outline be thinking of each scene and the “why” behind it’s necessary existence, because if your reader reads one or two scenes that seem to be not purposeful, that is, there is no “pay off” for them taking the time to read it they will likely put down the book.
An easy way to give our scenes a why
Yes, in our scenes we may want to show a certain detail about character development or reveal a hidden artifact, but the easiest way to get the reader through it and on to the next page is to create mini difficulties for the characters.
Our main problem may be that the antagonist(s) wants to blow up the world but while our hero is on the way to stop the no good antagonist(s) they need to run into many challenging obstacles on the way.
Think of your story as more of an obstacle course
To get to the finish line our protagonist needs to run through the maze, climb the slippery slime wall, survive the dread log tumble, jump through the fiery hoop, and before they can even see the finish line they have to carry the weighted sack of fortitude up mount killmyback.
That’s a story.
And each obstacle is a scene. We see the obstacles and how the character handles them and each obstacle reveals more and more to us their true character. (“Show, don’t tell.”)
That’s how we move the story along, keep the reader interested, and reveal the true nature of our characters as we go 🙂
If we told the reader all about how each obstacle was made, how long it took, and about the nuts and bolts of it, that might be a little interesting (if you are trying to write a documentary about the story) but not if they haven’t seen it in action and seen how the course wrecks a character and is extremely interesting to watch.
Give each scene a purpose while you are revealing the story.
Make an obstacle around that purpose.
And your reader will be thinking that coveted question, “What’s going to happen next?!”
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes Not Boring While Revealing the Story
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The #1 Way to Make Your Scenes Not Boring While Revealing the Story
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