2. Four Must Haves at the Top of Every Scene in Your Book

Episode 2: Four Must-Haves at the Top of Every Scene in Your Book

In this episode of "Show Don't Tell Writing," Suzy Vadori delves into the critical elements that need to be at the top of every scene to keep your readers hooked. Learn why some books fail to engage and discover the simple checklist that ensures your scenes are compelling and grounded. Suzy breaks down the psychological phenomenon known as the doorway effect and its impact on your writing, offering practical advice to make your story irresistible from the first paragraph.

Main Topics of This Episode Include:

• Introduction to the four must-haves at the top of every scene to engage readers.
• Explanation of the doorway effect and its relevance to writing.
• The importance of grounding readers in each scene to prevent them from feeling lost and disengaged.

Key Points and Checklist:

1. Whose Head Are They In?
   • Establish the point of view (POV) quickly 
   • Use inner thoughts, reactions, actions, or dialogue to clarify POV.
2. Who Is in the Scene?
   • Clarify who is present in the scene right from the beginning. 
   • Avoid surprises later in the scene that confuse the reader.
3. Where Are Your Characters in Time?
   • Ground the reader in the specific time relative to the previous scene.
   • Ensure smooth transitions in the timeline to keep the reader oriented.
4. What’s Around Your Characters?
   • Provide specific details about the setting within the first two paragraphs. 
   • Use interaction with the setting to avoid info dumping and keep the narrative moving.

Practical Advice:

• Avoid assuming readers remember details from previous scenes.
• Consistently apply the grounding technique to maintain reader engagement.
• Balance providing essential information quickly without making it feel mechanical.

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Transcript

0:49

Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Susie Vidori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction and nonfiction that will wow your readers, broken down step by step. This show explores writing techniques and This shows you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writing careers, and coaches writers live on their pages so you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, drafting, editing, or currently rewriting your first book or maybe even your tenth, this show will help you unlock the writing skills you didn't know you needed, but you definitely do. I'm looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto the page in an exciting way. for both you and your readers so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams while having fun doing it. Let's dive in. Have you ever picked up a book and just couldn't get into it? You couldn't wait to read it, but it just didn't grab you. In this episode, I'm going to show you what's going on in your brain when you can't engage with the book, and I'm also going to spell out step by step how to fix this at the top of every scene that you write so that your readers don't get lost. Instead, you want them to get hooked on your amazing story, and I'm going to show you how. There's nothing worse than starting a new chapter or scene after a scene break when you're reading and then you skim down the page and you realize you have no idea what's happening. I'm sure it's happened to all of us. But when a book or chapter takes you a few tries, like you got to reread it again and again to get into, I'd be willing to bet it has nothing to do with your reading prowess. It's likely the writer has missed an important step in the first two paragraphs of the opening. I like to call it grounding the reader in the scene. When this is missing, this grounding, it'll have you skimming ahead to figure out where and when you're supposed to picture your characters in the scene. If you're motivated to read the book like somebody's recommended it to you, you might power through. But otherwise, you're going to put that book down and read something else. Now, in your writing, you don't want to leave this to chance. You want your readers to stay engaged. And learning this easy checklist means that readers won't put your book down. So it's definitely worth your time to learn and apply it consistently. Before I outline the steps that you need to take to ground your readers in your scenes, let's visit your reader's brains for a moment. Now, when I first entered the writing world, I was bombarded with rules and techniques and suggestions on how to write, quote unquote, properly. The thing is, there are so many suggestions out there that it's impossible to follow them all without contradicting yourself and creating a mess. You can't do it. So in deciding which techniques to adopt and which to let go of, I found it super helpful to understand what was going on with my reader and why a technique Was important for their enjoyment of the story. I share many of these findings and deep dives with my writing techniques so that you can understand your reader too and decide. Okay, so I wanna talk about a psychological phenomenon called the doorway effect and how your readers experience it with your writing. We've actually all experienced the doorway effect and it goes something like this. Alright, let's say you're in a hurry to leave your house because you're late for an appointment and you can't find your car keys. You look on the hook beside the door and you check your coat pockets. Then you decide they might be on your nightstand next to your bed. You run up the stairs and you cross the threshold to your room and then you stop. You look around. Your mind's gone blank. You look around the room, and you scan everything in there. Why did you come upstairs again? It takes you a beat to remember. Right. My keys. You grab the keys, which are indeed on your nightstand, and you head out. Now, this is a real phenomenon written about in many psychology journals, so if you've experienced this, it doesn't mean that you're losing your marbles. It happens because as soon as you step over the threshold to a new room in your house, your brain has new information to process and it clears the slate to ground itself in your new environment. I'm in my bedroom now. The walls are grey. My bed is made, right? It might be a moment or two before you remember that you were looking for your keys. Now you're probably wondering why I'm talking about the doorway effect and what does it have to do with writing for goodness sakes, but here's the cool thing about brains. Your reader actually experiences a similar phenomenon when you cut to a new chapter or scene in your book. So as the writer, you are the god of your story. You have the power to take your reader anywhere when you start a new chapter or a scene, which can be at the start of a new chapter, it can be a scene break within a chapter, or simply your character's moving to a new location during a scene. You can actually take your readers anywhere. Backward in time, jumping all the way back, dropping into a flashback. You can skip forward in time by days, months, years, even decades, or hundreds of years in the case of some science fiction. You can change whose point of view you're telling the story from at a scene break. You can even start a new scene on the moon if that's where your story goes. And your readers along for the ride, they actually trust you as the writer to lead their way. So, as they cross the threshold into your brand new chapter or scene that they've never read before, they clear their slate of their brain. Just like that. Like what happens in the doorway effect. And they look for clues in your writing to ground them in that scene that's about to unfold just like you do when you step into a new room. As they ease into your new scene, they'll be looking to orient themselves and they need the answers to these questions really, really fast. Okay, before I give you the list, you're going to want to write these down because it will become your checklist that you need to check at the top of every single scene that you ever write. Forever. Your reader needs you to answer these questions to ground them, and then I'll explain them. Number one, whose head are they in? What POV or point of view are you writing in? That's important. Number two, who is in the scene when it opens? Number three. Where are your readers located? Where's the scene located in time relative to the scene that they just left? And number four, what's around your characters? Like what's the setting? All right. I want to make a quick note because writers tell me all the time. Um, Yeah. Oh, I skipped the grounding because it was the same as the last chapter. Do not do this, writer, please. Do not do this, because here's the thing. Your readers need this information repeated for them, even if you start the next chapter only moments later, because remember, they've cleared their slate and they're looking for clues. They don't necessarily assume that. Give us the clues, we'll know that. Right? So you need to orient them, even if your grounding information is the same as the chapter or the scene before. If your reader doesn't get this grounding information quickly, they're gonna feel lost, like they're floating without their feet firmly planted on the ground. Without this information, especially a detail or two about the setting, the reader will picture your characters in a white room, or against a white wall, going about the activities that you penned for them. This is sometimes called white room syndrome, or white wall syndrome. Again. Our brain's cool because that whiteness or that nothingness around your characters is the default setting for nothing in the brain. To find this information and ground themselves as your reader, your readers will start skimming ahead to figure out where and when and who they are, rather than stay in this uncomfortable no man's land. And if you don't give this information until the top of the second page of your scene, your reader's going to miss all the amazing things that happen on page one. That is, of course, if they bother to persevere. Now, the easiest way to fix this is to make sure that you're providing the four elements of grounding readers in your scene within the first two paragraphs after every chapter or scene break. It's like posting a big road sign when they step over the threshold of your new scene or chapter to help them find their place in your world. So they can relax and let themselves get dragged into whatever your characters get up to next instead of skimming ahead in discomfort not knowing what's going on. So now you have the background and the brain science on why you want to ground readers in your scenes. But how do you make sure it's in your writing? First of all, I want to give you a reminder to get creative. You don't want every scene opening to be the same or feel mechanical. But also, give readers this information as quickly as possible so that you can get on with the story. Include your grounding information within the first two paragraphs. Okay, so, the first one. Right? I'm going to remind you. Who's head are we in? Point of view or POV is especially important when you're writing your book from more than one character's point of view or if you have multiple POVs within your story. Your reader needs to know quickly whose head they are in to relax into the scene. You can establish this easily by sharing an inner thought or a reaction from your character's point of view. This is especially important if you're writing in first person because it might not be obvious immediately who's speaking and you're not using their names. Thoughts and reactions are internal, so they can only happen from your point of view character, and they can only be shared if you're writing from that character's POV. But you can also establish point of view using action, setting, or dialogue. Your readers are hungry for this information, and they'll grab the phone. first clue that they read. Assuming that the first dialogue, the first action beat, or the first character to interact with your setting in a new scene or chapter is your point of view character. Use this assumption that your readers are going to make to your advantage and give your POV character the first move in each scene. When you go through and check your scenes, if another character other than the point of view character gets the first move in your scene, change it. Okay, number two, element number two that you need, who is in your scene? Is your point of view character alone, or are they in a crowd, or are they with three others? There's nothing more jarring to a reader than thinking a character is alone in a scene, and having a second character speak up or yell on page two, while standing right beside your main character, as if they appeared out of thin air. If there's no mention of other characters at the top of your scene, readers will assume that your character is by themselves and will be frustrated to find out that this is wrong as they read on. Okay, element number three. Where are your characters in time relative to the scene that they just left? You as the writer are the god of your own story and your reader trusts you to lead them. As your story unfolds, you can thrust the reader into the past. You can jump them into the future or hop back and forth, but ground them in a specific time and place so that they don't start to skim to get grounded. Immerse your readers in the scene as quickly as possible by letting them in on where you've taken them. Number four, what's around your characters? This is the setting. Now, you don't need to include long paragraphs or pages sharing your setting details to help your readers orient themselves at the top of your scene. That would be info dumping. In fact, dumping tons of information will lead them skimming even faster to fill in the other details of your branding that they're missing. Instead, share two or three specific details of where your characters are to help your reader create a three dimensional scene in their minds. Rather than describing the setting, have your point of view character instead interact with the setting to keep the story moving right from the top of the scene. Give two to three specific showing details about the room or landscape you're dropping readers into. These details are needed at the top of each scene, but also Every single time your characters change location within a scene or let them be sprinkled into scenes with long exchanges or dialogue or passages of inner thoughts to keep your reader grounded as your scene unfolds. Alright, I hear this all the time, but Susie, writers often argue this technique when they point out that this grounding information isn't present at the top of their scenes, telling me, Susie, you didn't read far enough. If your questions are answered on page two. I even have a writing client who likes to tell me I'm an impatient reader when I ask her to move these grounding details in the first two paragraphs of her scene. We're working on book four currently. And though this technique may feel rigid, I urge you to make it happen for your readers so that they don't skim ahead trying to connect with your scene. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Susie Vidori. Help me continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing. planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Also visit SuzyVedori. com period slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list to stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training. If you're feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our Show Don't Tell page review episodes. Remember, that book you're writing is going to open doors you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best it can be. If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going, and I'll be right here cheering you on. See you again next week!