Scene & Summary: Mastering When to Use Which
Writers regularly need both scene and summary to tell a great story, but sometimes it can be difficult to discern when to use which, for best effect. Occasionally when editing another’s work, I find the writer made what really should have been summaries into scenes, and what really should have been scenes, into summaries.
This can weaken any story. Just imagine what The Hunger Games would have been like if Suzanne Collins summarized the high points of the Games—the cornucopia battle, the tracker jackers, or the mutts at the end. Then consider how slow and boring the story would be if she wrote a scene for every time Katniss went to bed or woke up and ate breakfast while in the Capitol. A high-stakes, fast-paced story would have turned into a drag—and would have been rejected before Effie could say “Primrose Everdeen.”
Writers run into this problem for several reasons:
They can’t yet tell the difference between scene and summary
They can’t yet discern what the story’s major turning points are
They feel too intimidated to write what needs to happen in a scene
They don’t know how to write a strong scene
They don’t know how to write a strong summary
Hi all, September C. Fawkes ( @septembercfawkes ) here for this week’s article. And I will be addressing each of these.
What’s the Difference Between Scene and Summary?
How can you know when to use which when you don’t really know what each is?
Here are the key features of scenes and summaries to help you develop a better eye for them.
A scene will happen in real time. The audience will “watch” the characters move across the setting, interact, and speak, as if it is all taking place in the real world.
The characters will be acting within a specific location. They may be sitting at a kitchen table, or on an airplane, or venturing into a forest. Often (though not always) when a scene ends and a new scene begins, the location will have changed. (Alternatively, the story may have jumped forward or backward in time.)
Scenes are “shown” more than “told” to the audience. This means what happens is dramatized. We don’t tell the audience “Matt was angry for the whole dinner.” We show he’s angry through his behavior. He may make a passive-aggressive comment, complain his meat is undercooked, or, if he’s really angry, throw his drink at his girlfriend.
Scenes will be mostly concrete. Because a scene is dramatized, it will more likely appeal to our senses and the physical world and experience.
A summary happens over condensed time, not real time. A sentence may span a day, a week, a month, a year. Summaries may talk about recurring events over a period of time, within one paragraph. They may relay past—or even future—events within a brief moment.
The characters or locations may change swiftly, or in some cases, may not even be present. The text may guide the reader through different places, people, or time frames with ease.
Summaries use more “telling” than “showing.” This is because what is happening isn’t in real time. This gives summary a stronger, guiding, narrative hand. Rather than experiencing the passage like the character, it’s more like the audience is being guided by a storyteller.
Because summaries use more telling and can move swiftly from one thing to another, they will be more abstract. They will convey ideas and concepts, rather than recreate specific experiences.
To illustrate the differences, check out these two examples from Ender’s Game.
(Note: Because scenes often take place over pages, this is just part of a scene.)
Anderson palmed the locks that kept students out of the officers’ quarters; finally they came to where Graff had taken root on a swivel chair bolted to the steel floor. His belly spilled over both armrests now, even when he sat upright… . Time and tension were not being kind to the administrator of the Battle School.
“Seven days since your first battle, Ender,” said Graff.
“And you’ve won seven battles, once a day.”
“Your scores are unusually high, too.”
“To what, commander, do you attribute your remarkable success?”
“You gave me an army that does whatever I can think for it to do.”
Ender put them through the obstacle course twice, then split them into rotations on the tramp, the mat, and the bench… . He didn’t need to worry about exhaustion. They were in good shape, light and agile, and above all excited about the battle to come. A few of them spontaneously began to wrestle—the gym, instead of being tedious, was suddenly fun… . At 0640 he had them dress out. He talked to the toon leaders and their seconds while they dressed. At 0650 he made them all lie down on the mats and relax. Then, at 0656, he ordered them up and they jogged along the corridor to the battleroom.
Worth noting is that it is possible to mix scene and summary. For example, you may have a bit of summary within a scene that briefly provides background information. Or, you may write a long passage of summary that has short moments of dramatization. No need to get too strict on keeping summary out of scene or vice versa—but it is important to know the difference between them.
What Should be Scene and What Should be Summary?
A good rule of thumb is, the more important the moment, the more likely it needs to be rendered as a scene.
Scenes take place in real time, concretely, which means they are almost always more impactful than summary. Scenes immerse the audience powerfully into the story. We want to dramatize the most important parts for best effect.
If you are familiar with story structure, you can use it as a guide. Major turning points should almost unequivocally be scenes:
The inciting incident should be a scene.
The climax should be a scene.
The midpoint should be a scene.
And the high points in each act should be a scene.
And the pinch points should be scenes.
Anything the story has been building and building and building up to, should probably be a scene.
If you are working with multiple plotlines, all of the major events of the primary plotline should probably be a scene. The less important the plotline, the more you can get away with summarizing important events or even having those events happen “off page.”
Another rule of thumb is that if the moment significantly progresses the character arc, plot, or theme, it needs to be a scene.
Finally, most genres will have what professional editor Shawn Coyne (creator of The Story Grid) calls “obligatory scenes.” These are scenes that the audience expects to see in the story when they pick up the book. For example, in a murder mystery, we expect to have a scene where the body is discovered. In a romance, we expect to have a first kiss scene.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have summary. Not everything that happens in a story needs to be dramatized in a full-blown scene. The narrative would become long, flat, and boring.
Use summary when the audience needs to know the fact that something happened, but it’s not important for them to experience it.
For example, we may need to know the fact that Henry slept terribly last night because it will affect his test-taking skills in the next scene, but we don’t really need to share his experience of that. It may not be interesting enough to make into a scene, and if we try, it’d likely be dull. How much conflict can you really get out of that scenario?
Summary is also useful when you need to cover a broad length of time in a short amount of space, or when you need to talk about recurring events. If your characters have to go by sea to a new land, and the plot isn’t really about the boat ride, then you’ll be better off summarizing the voyage. And similarly—rather than rendering the fact that Macy is late to work every day, scene after scene, it will probably be more efficient to summarize that, since it’s a recurring issue.
Additionally, summary can work well to transition from one scene to another—particularly when something noteworthy happened between those scenes, but isn’t worth dramatizing.
Finally, summary can be important in providing the reader with context. It may be used to set up a situation or provide background information so the audience can follow what is happening in a plot accurately. For example, summary may be used to briefly explain an ongoing feud between two families, so that the reader will understand why Yolanda and her siblings are sabotaging the Greens’ block party.
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