When I first started writing, I wrote stories filled with exposition or summary without even knowing it. I

was writing by instinct based on my years of experience as a reader and I didn’t know the technical aspects of writing, the craft of developing stories that work.

That’s a great phase to be in, because all things are possible and we’re learning so much about ourselves as writers and – if we seek it out – we’re also learning lots about craft. The quality of our writing can grow exponentially as we learn new techniques.

Scene-building is one of those essential skills for a writer because the scene is a basic building block of narrative. At its most basic level, a novel, or memoir, is fundamentally a stacked set of scenes linked together by exposition.

How to Write a Scene: Definition

What makes a scene anyway?

A scene is a unit or section of a story that contains the following elements:

• Characters
• One location
• A specific time

e.g. Susan and...