[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: What is the purpose of a scene?
Writer/Script Doctor/Teacher Cody Smart: The purpose of a scene is to advance the story forward. One of the notes that I keep giving writers is why do we need this scene if it’s not moving your story forward? Sometimes you reveal character and that helps to move the story forward because we’re learning something about their character but that should be the purpose of every scene. It should move things across. For example a type of scene I always tell writers to cut is flashbacks that don’t really advance the story. You’re just revealing little tidbits but if it doesn’t advance the present of the story you don’t need the flashback you could just tell me the story. Every scene should serve a purpose. Another way to work around that a little bit is to sort of layer scenes or merge scenes. A lot of writers tend to write different scenes to show different things about characters but I like to layer them to make them richer and advance the story in a better way. For example if you have a character that’s being teased at school and then you have another scene where that character falls in the hallway and I don’t know all of the pain falls on him but nobody sees him then we’re not connecting the two it would be much better if in the same classroom scene when everyone is teasing him he’s getting really nervous really exasperated he wants to get out of there and that he’s moving out of the room he trips all of the pain falls on him and everyone laughs at him even more and like the scene gets all the more dramatic and it’s way worse for the character thus the story moves forward now they are at the lowest point because everyone, saw this everyone is making fun of them. If you can find a way to have each scene move the story forward and also layer them with different things that could be advanced in that story then you have a better scene…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Cody Smart is an independent writer and script doctor from Chile. She holds degrees in English Literature & Linguistics, Screenwriting, Development and Producing. She worked as a script analyst for Sony, she’s a judge for multiple script and film competitions, she’s written some award-winning shorts, she’s head of the coverage department at a script hosting site and she does a bi-monthly vlog with tips for Screenwriters for Story Data. She takes pride in helping writers take their work to the next level.
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