First, I have a gift for you, just for visiting my blog, my Ultimate Guide to Dialogue Punctuation.

Dialogue is, perhaps, the most powerful element you can use in a scene to create reader engagement and connect those readers with your characters. But if it isn't punctuated and formatted correctly, it can cause confusion instead.

This guide gives you all the rules for formatting not only ordinary dialogue, but character thoughts, interruptions, and fragmented speech, in just a few easy-to-follow pages, with examples.

And be sure to stick around to the end of this post, so you won't miss those two bonus scene types I talked about, plus this week's Power-Up, a super practical action step you can use right now in the story you're working on.Gift description & link

Before we can discuss the types of scenes, you may be wondering, "What is a scene?"

Just as in a movie or stage play, a scene in a short story or novel is a segment of the story that depicts an incident or situation through the description of action and significant interactions between characters.

Like a tiny story within a longer one, a scene should have some kind of conflict or dilemma, plus a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The dialogue and descriptions should indicate a clear time and place in which the scene is occurring, and your characters' actions, reactions, and dilemmas should advance the overall plot.

All the scenes in a story should work together to form one cohesive narrative.

Every scene's main jobs are to move the story forward and keep readers engaged.

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I've divided these scene types into several categories to make this post easier to follow. We'll start with, of course, beginnings. This includes prologues and opening scenes.

PROLOGUES

A prologue is a short scene that appears before the real story begins. I say short because that is a really good rule of thumb to follow. You don't want your prologue to be longer than…I would say, maybe four pages, though that's not a hard and fast rule.

A prologue can depict an event from the near future or distant past.

Prologues can be written from the point of view of a character who died before the real story began, a character who isn't the protagonist but whose perspective provides crucial information, or an omniscient narrator.

Keep these cautions in mind when writing prologues: A prologue is not the true opening scene of your story. Some readers skip prologues, and some publishers do not accept manuscripts that include them. So, make sure your story can be understood even without the prologue.

OPENING SCENES

The true opening scene of your story is an introduction to the key players and their problem, which takes place just before the inciting incident shatters their ordinary world. (For more on inciting incidents and what those are, check out this post.)

Opening scenes introduce the protagonist and hint at his or her internal and external conflicts. Note that some stories may begin with either in antagonist or a different character besides the protagonist, usually another primary character or co-protagonist, but even those scenes will at least hint at something about your protagonist.

Opening scenes also establish the setting of the story; must make promises to the reader regarding conflicts, obstacles, and the resolutions yet to come; and should either include the inciting incident or an event that leads to it.

Now, let's look at the scene types that will be faster-paced in your story. Those include action scenes, suspense scenes, and dramatic scenes. Note that I'm not including the climax here. I'm saving that for a section on ending scenes, but the climax should be the fastest-paced, and definitely the point of highest tension and highest stakes, in your story.

For tips on pacing your story, check out this post.

ACTION SCENES

When we think of action scenes, images of car chases, explosions, and battles often come to mind. Action scenes are not limited to these, however. They include any scene in which physical activity and increased stakes are the main components.

Action scenes should show the protagonist acting first, thinking later. In moments of high intensity, the protagonist is forced to react or make quick decisions without thinking.

Action scenes must depict events happening in real-time, not summarized, allowing the reader to participate. They must be fast-paced and include physical movement, and they should lead to unexpected consequences for the protagonist.

SUSPENSE SCENES

How do we write suspense scenes? Well, suspense is a state of uncertainty that produces anxiety in your character and your reader. That can be positive: like, will the protagonist win the contest? Or negative: Will the villain find her?

Either way, suspense makes readers turn pages.

For the ten best ways to create suspense in your story, check out this post.

DRAMATIC SCENES

Dramatic scenes can cause readers to cry, laugh, hold their breaths, bite their nails, or even throw a book across the room.

These scenes carry the emotional elements of the story.

Dramatic scenes should drive the protagonist to a point of change by forcing him or her to face unpleasant situations or make difficult decisions that will cause radical shifts in the way he or she thinks and acts.

These scenes focus on the protagonist's feelings. Be sure to make your protagonist's reactions to these things intense.

They also stir up the reader's emotions, so focus on emotional intensity (blowout fights, devastating betrayals, obsessive love letters, etc.)

Dramatic scenes increase your protagonist's self-awareness and hint to the reader that a protagonist is facing a turning point.

Let's look at four types of scenes that focus on reflection or revelation. These include contemplative scenes (which focus on reflection), dialogue scenes (which can be revelatory), epiphany scenes (which can be both reflective and revelatory, or one or the other), and flashbacks.

These scenes slow the pace of the story, but they should still convey tension…just on a lower scale than more fast-paced scenes would.

CONTEMPLATIVE SCENES

When you hear the term contemplative scene, you might think this sounds a little boring, but they serve a very important function in stories.

To depict a protagonist's gradual transformation, we sometimes need to show this person sorting through past events, small details of information he's gained, or his thoughts and feelings as he tries to determine the next steps. Scenes that focus on contemplation, like this, should be brief and not used very often.

These scenes should include dramatic tension to avoid becoming dull. They can include suspense, intense internal conflicts, foreshadowing of potential danger, foreboding (like hints at unspecified danger the viewpoint character is sensing), or use the setting to create an eerie or unsettling atmosphere.

A contemplative scene should end in a way that leads to a more active scene, with foreshadowing, a surprise, a moment of decision, or a sudden action that creates a cliffhanger.

DIALOGUE SCENES

The term dialogue scene may seem a little confusing, because most scenes include at least some dialogue. However, some use conversations as their main focus and primary method of introducing new information.

If you are writing a dialogue scene, don't forget to establish the setting early on in the scene, include some character actions, and use dialogue attributions to identify not only who is speaking, but what's going on between the lines of conversation.

EPIPHANY SCENES

Perhaps the most obvious type of revelatory scene is the epiphany scene.

An epiphany is a sudden awareness or insight that dawns on the viewpoint character, usually the protagonist, as a result of previous events and revelations.

FLASHBACKS

Backstory events that are presented in the form of a scene are known as flashbacks. These types of scenes allow the reader to experience events from a character's past through action, dialogue, character development, etc.

Note that even though I've included flashbacks with other slower-paced scenes, they can include high stakes and escalated tension. They can take the form of action scenes or other scene types we've discussed. However, they stop the forward motion of the current story in its tracks.

Let's look at three scene types that are involved in a story's conclusion: the climax, the closing scene or scenes, and epilogues.

CLIMACTIC SCENES

Climactic scenes are either a single scene or series that depict the moment of highest tension, drama, action, and stakes in the story.

Everything in the story has been building to this point, and this is where the conflicts will boil over.

FINAL (RESOLUTION) SCENES

The closing scene or scenes will provide an ending to the part of the protagonist's life depicted in this particular story—final resolution of the events caused by the inciting incident. However, this is rarely the end of the protagonist's entire life story. It may even signal the beginning of a new adventure.

Final scenes should reveal the state of the protagonist after the conclusion of the main plot, physically, emotionally, and relationally. Think of this as a snapshot of the protagonist at the very end of a significant situation.

These scenes should reveal the protagonist's change or lack thereof. (If the protagonist doesn't change, show the changes his or her actions have caused in others.) These scenes should be reflective and provide a full-circle feeling, recalling the significant story events and situations. This isn't a recap of everything that has gone on in the story. There just should be some hints at what came before.

These scenes should move at a slower pace and do not require as much action as other scenes.

EPILOGUES

An epilogue is a scene depicting an event that occurs after the resolution of the main story.

Epilogues usually show something happening in the future, whether that's near future—a few hours, days, or months from now—or the distant future.

They may show a snapshot of the protagonist's future life, a surprising twist in another character's point of view (used most often in a series), a glimpse at the story world as a whole through an omniscient narrator.

Note: as with prologues, you may not want to include information that's crucial to the main story, because some readers will skip epilogues.