Before I start with the story, there's something I want to talk about. Something that is not usually taken into account and that when we start writing is easy to underestimate. Especially people who write without structure, since they begin to tell where it seems good and end when they can, but even knowing that you have to structure your story in scenes, you rarely have the conception of what a scene is concretely, what it is for, and what is its natural course.
Think. We think little about the scenes, but they are the building blocks of a story. If your bricks are flimsy and irregular, history will be made a tigernut.
What is a scene?
The scenes are the minimum expression of the narrative. Scenes are small stories in themselves that contain an event or a series of events that have a relationship between them, either temporary (they occur close in time), thematic, or causal (they are consequences of the same action). In the end how you group the events depends a lot on what you want to tell in that scene and how you want to tell it.
A scene is the lowest denominator of a story. It is the smallest piece that you can cut without losing meaning. As such, the ideal is for a scene to work on its own, as if it were a story.
A scene is a story, and as such, it has to have a narrative function. You're telling something, narrating an event. That event may be trivial, but like any story, there has to be at least one change, a difference from the beginning of the scene to the end (unless the scene goes from the absence of that change). The stories are about change and the scene is not going to be less.
A scene is a story and a story needs at least two things: character and conflict. That conflict doesn't have to be a traditional conflict as we know it, but it has to involve change. If a scene does not produce change or there is no change in it, that scene does not contribute anything to the plot of the story, because the plots advance according to the change. You could delete it and it wouldn't matter, because the plot wouldn't be affected.
If a scene has no change, is it really a scene? This is why many supposed scenes are just pieces of explanatory narration (explaining things to the reader is not generating a change in the plot!), and many other scenes that seem like straw (because the change is not so obvious) are actually vital.
In the end a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: What happened in this scene? What has changed for the characters?
And if something has happened and something has changed, you are facing a real scene.
What is a scene for?
The scenes, being the lowest denominator of the narrative, must have a main function: To develop the plot. Push it forward based on changes. If a scene doesn't do this, it doesn't really work as a scene. All scenes should introduce a change from the previous scene, because if not, we are not adding anything at the plot level.
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