With the New Year looming I guess it's kind of natural to be thinking of comings and goings, of one sequence ending and another beginning, so perhaps it is timely to channel these musings and put them to some good use. I'm talking scene structure here...
Sometimes it's difficult to judge when to start a scene and also when to finish it. You might think this is a peculiar proposition -- that a scene begins at the beginning and goes on until it reaches some kind of conclusion, and in many cases it should do just that. However, if you want to add a little spice and zest to your narrative, it can be a good idea to arrive late and leave early, if you catch my drift.
If you start right at the beginning of a scene the first couple of pages can seem rather prosaic, an accumulation of necessary information leading eventually to a climax.. In the Scottish play (old habits and superstitions die hard) the famous sleepwalking scene starts with Lady M. in mid flow, we don't see her getting out of bed and fishing for her slippers, we can assume this has already happened (maybe not the slippers - ed.). It can be more dramatic to cut to the chase and leave some questions unanswered, one or two practicalities creatively unaddressed. This way, you can wrongfoot your reader and wake them up a bit - Did I miss something? What's happening?
In the same vein, if you plough on relentlessly to the end of the scene, you can lose out on the opportunity for notching up the tension. Why not cut away just before the denouement, so that your reader is gasping to know what happens next and reads another ten pages instead of turning the light out and going to sleep?
As with all things, it's best to use this technique sparingly, if you overdo it it will become irritating and predictable, but turning up fashionably late at a (New Year's Eve?) party can make heads turn - in fiction, as in life.
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