Making a Scene: Designing Gripping Incidents in Fiction

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Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

via The Chattery

Learn how to create intense and captivating moments in your stories!

Stories stage the dynamic dance between stasis and change, the ordinary and extraordinary, which is why they typically require both scene and summary. A scene tells a reader when to lean in—it signals a shift, the advent of a singular event. This class will not only give you the tools to craft spellbinding scenes, but also help you decide when a scene is needed and when a summary will suffice. We’ll analyze excerpts from iconic works, identifying the stakes, the seeds of conflict tucked inside a well-crafted exchange, as well as the sensory descriptions that amplify a scene’s mood and atmosphere.

Participants will generate new scenes or revise existing scenes with an eye toward the following:

Scene Structure: Identifying the goal, conflict and stakes of your scene.

Dialogue & Subtext: Crafting dialogue that reveals character, advances the plot, and deepens conflict.

Emotion & Sensory Detail: Using sensory description to make vivid settings that amplify tension, atmosphere, and mood.

Through a combination of writing exercises and readings, participants will develop a deeper understanding of scene construction and how to infuse their writing with detail, tension, and purpose. This class is for beginning and experienced writers alike.

While we’ll draw largely on published fictions for inspiration, this course welcomes writers of all genres who wish to enhance their scene-writing skills.

About the teacher:

Jessica Alexander has taught creative writing workshops at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Franklin and Marshall College, Porchlight Literary Arts Center, The Fairweather Project, and The Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among other places. Her novella, None of This Is an Invitation (co-written with Katie Jean Shinkle) was published by Astrophil Press in summer 2023. Her story collection, Dear Enemy, was the winning manuscript in the 2016 Subito Prose Contest. Her collaborative memoir (co-written with Vi Khi Nao) That Woman Could Be You came out with BlazeVox in April 2022. Her novel, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers is forthcoming from Clash Books in 2026.