Writing Scenes That Flow (Fiction Writing Advice)

Make your story scenes flow with this invaluable tip.

Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain

Advanced Fiction Writing article “Writing the Perfect Scene”:

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Credit to SkyDilen for my video intro.

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[Kitandroo]

Seriously, the person who has helped my writing the most would be you & Brandon Sanderson via the BYU lectures. Some people contributed a bit, but never much outside of a few specific subjects.. your channel teaches so much and it's so specific, I don't have to navigate a bunch of bloat to get to the one thing I want.

[omnikrator]

Brandon you formulate yourself so succintly, straight to the punch, with useful information and no riff raff. Keep it up mate!

[nocturne]

This is wild . I always felt there were patterns to writing but I never found any videos about it. This is it.

[lozane]

This is so insanely helpful! I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year and was a tad frustrated with my writing because my scenes felt flat. Turns out I'm focusing too much on the external events and as a result, I leave out some important reactions that would give the scene more emotion. Thank you so much for your help!

[WriterBrandonMcNulty]

How well do your most recent scenes follow the Event Reaction Pattern? Let us know!

[KutWrite]

In my current short story, I realize I've unconsciously followed much of what you have described. Your two videos help me focus and hone this technique.

[N_Campesino]

I'm two years late but THANK YOU! You're the first person to really make me understand this whole scene/sequence MRU thing. I'd always been able to use it for plotting but never practically in writing until I found your two videos on this topic, so thank you very much!

[BidwellRunner]

I really appreciate how focused and to the point these videos are.

[TheBluenyt]

Yeah for every action there is a reaction. It keeps the story flowing 😎👏👏👏🤘🤘🤘

[johnrossman]

Techniques of the Selling Writer is one of my favorite books.

[eatmorenachos]

Your videos are REALLY insightful and you pack a lot of info into each of them.. Thank you.

[robinstrength_]

Hello Brandon, sorry for being late to recognize your channel. I want to say thank you. You have no idea how much your videos helped me designed my draft. Seriously.

[Sheree]

I am binge listening your videos at the moment. I have learnt so much already and just purchased the Entry Wounds audiobook. I haven't read a supernatural thriller before as I usually read detective series but this sounds intriguing.

[ega]

Love your videos. Keep making them. Looking forward to reading Bad Parts.

[ridleyformk]

8:03: Pretty well I say. Two charathers are talking about comic books and Harry Potter, and I hint little snippets of what the main POV is thinking. There isn't action, just characters talking to each other, but it's back and forth.

I love the scene anyways, just two little kids talking about what makes them happy.

[choxomoxxo]

I just woke up and already on my way to do this instead of eating breakfast

[gamewriteeye]

😅 5:18 being the exception in paragraph construction, huh? With my current writing style combining paragraph information in such a complex way, I realized how difficult I made this on myself to analyze line level edits for “completed scenes”. Boy...this doesn't account for exposition, forms of embedded telling (If I can call it that), persuasion/narration, and general description that might be static like say, a physical or setting description. I'll have to really comb paragraphs if I really have to separate this one out, line by line, the “event” not mixing in the same paragraph as the “reaction”.

That comment understanding this'll have to wait. I had some great suggestions. The problem I immediately noticed with Swain's method of line level edits (MRU's—even saw the article in the link) is it ignores the whole side of telling entirely (besides examples giving filter words—and I've learnt to write with little to no filtering at all). When I get my notes in order, I'mma bout to get so esoteric on Swain. And I was actually looking for a line level trick/hack to figure out what details are missing from a scene—this seems simple, yet misses so much.

[johnynoway]

Anime be like:

1. Get punched

2. Explaining the geometry of the punch followed by strength and the damage and then finally the actual person gets shown.

3. Whole life of all the possibilities in all the multiverses within a nano second.

[Call_Me_The_Storyteller]

The part where he says "splinters magically flew out of the leg of the table in front of me", I love this kind of scene in books, because you (or at least I) can't understand how this is supposed to look or what means, and only in the next paragraph is this somewhat explained, which makes you go back to the previous words, re-read them now with a little more context and actually understand what just happened...

[yapdog]

I totally agree with the overall concept. However, that passage from Altered Carbon is not the best example of flow, especially not for new writers. It's an action scene told first person past tense. What that means is, in this case, there's a danger of too much "poetry" getting in the way of flow. For example, _"For some reason the rage puddled abruptly out of me"_ gets in the way of flow. Why? It requires analysis (i.e. rereading) to be fully understood and appreciated. That, too, goes for almost the entire passage. *That is not good flow.* Or rather, it only _becomes_ good flow when one comes to understand everything in its intended context.

Anyway, SUBSCRIBED for the great lessons 👍