A Checklist for Scene Planning

While a lot of writers don't work with an in depth outline, there are some features that can be helpful to plan out for your scenes before starting. I'll go through the items that I find useful to plan out before getting started on a scene in order to increase my words per minute in my writing sprints. These items include setting importance, set design, lighting design, weather, costume design, character objectives, choreography, and the five senses.

First, let's discuss setting importance. When tackling setting importance, the first building block you need is the very one you expect: where is this scene located? Once you have an idea of where it's located, make sure you know why it's located there. If your scene is going to be located in the character's chemistry class, it's not enough to say it's because it's during school hours. Think a little deeper into your reasoning. Why couldn't this scene take place in a hallway during passing period? Why couldn't it take place in their world history class? Once you've done this, you can also zoom out if you are feeling adventurous. Is this chemistry class in a high school in Santa Monica, California, or one in Provo, Utah? Is there any way to show the importance of that larger setting within this scene?

Once you have defined your setting and reasoning for it, it's time to decorate. Remember, while the real world has plenty of people who don't decorate their homes in much depth, these are valuable details that can be used to show aspects of your character and world. The less set design you do, the more opportunities you are missing out on to add detail to your story that may not fit in elsewhere. And that's not even mentioning the risk of not giving your readers anything to visualize.

If you are indoors, consider the furniture, the wall decor, anything noticeable about the ceiling, if there are windows, how many exits there are to a room, and if the floor is carpet or hardwood. Let these answers flow into more and more detail. You can't have too much right now, as long as it fits in the room. You don't have to fit everything you come up with into your scene, you just need to know it's there.

Next up is what I believe to be the easiest of the steps: lighting design. In most circumstances, this will be a simple question of if the lighting of the set is noticeable enough to affect vision. If it's the middle of the night in the woods, it'll be harder to make out details of your set design, just like if the sun is blaring in the point of view character's eyes. There are also scenarios where it may be worth thinking about the coloring of the lighting, such as if there are red emergency lights on making the colors of items indistinguishable.

Next up is the one I always forget about: weather. Weather is a great way to make your scene come to life, whether it's sunny, windy, snowy... The temperature is also worth considering. Is it cold? Hot? Do these factors affect your scene in any way? Are your characters going to acknowledge it at all?

Next, I look at costume design, or how our characters are dressed. This is likely not something you are going to describe in every scene, but it can have an effect on any scene. Clothing can change how other characters interact with them. A conservative mother may have a different opinion on her son's new girlfriend depending on how much skin her clothes reveal. Character's behaviors can also change depending on their clothing, both physically and emotionally. A man who wears suits rarely may find them uncomfortable and pull at the fabric. A young adult can feel more or less confident in fishnets. Clothing will interact closely with weather too: Are your characters warm in their clothes? Are they cold. These answers can also effect their mood and behavior.

You may disagree with my placement of this next one. Many people believe character objectives should be the first thing you figure out before writing a scene, and I don't disagree with that. But I put character objectives here because of how easily they can be influenced by the things we've already covered. For example, if the scene takes place in a restaurant, a character could have an objecctive of getting the waiters attention for the bill. This goal couldn't exist if the scene took place on the street in a rainstorm.

For those of you who are hearing the suggestion of planning out character goals for the first time, this should be done for every character in a scene. This should be an immediate goal rather than a long term one. Think "to get Elizabeth to do her homework" rather than "be a good mother to Elizabeth". When every character has a unique, immediate goal, the scene has a stronger purpose and can make it easier to write the characters. All you'll need to do is answer how they are trying to achieve their objective.

Next up is choreography. This is where we finally start to use everything we've been putting our brain power towards. At this step, we're going to figure out our character's movements. Is Charlotte looking for something? Where is she looking? Thanks to our previous steps, we now know exactly how the set is designed to answer that. Is the weather hot, making her take off her sweater at some point in the search? You now have the pieces to easily describe your character's motions. Try to avoid all characters staying still. You want the scene to be stimulating to visualize. Imagine how bored you'd be watching a movie where all the characters stay still!

Last but not least, we want to tackle the five senses. Not everything you come up with will be worth mentioning or come up naturally in your story. Think about what your characters are doing and what they'd specifically notice. The crash of thunder will be more noticeable to a character lying down to sleep than one currently yelling over the music of a nightclub.

I hope this helps you have a stronger plan for your scenes before you start writing. Good luck!