Scenes v. Summaries

I've been learning a lot from Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul lately.  I was lucky enough to win it during National Picture Book Writing Week and have thoroughly enjoyed working with it.  Today, I wanted to share one little tool that applies to picture books and (ahem) non-picture books.  It's about choosing when to write a scene or a summary. 

A scene is like a line by line from real life...the story you would expect to see in a movie or on a stage.  A summary skips the details and quickly tells you what happened. 

Ann explains that scenes do one of two things: move the plot forward or reveal something new about your characters.  If you're writing a scene that does neither of those things, cut the scene and summarize it.  If you're summarizing a move in the plot, slow down and take the time to write a good scene. 

I immediately began thinking of the scenes that I've enjoyed reading: Katniss shooting the apple at the game-makers feast, Mat Cauthon using a quarterstaff to beat a small army, Nancy tripping over her sparkly parfaits, and many others.  They are all full of action and either move the plot forward or teach us something about the characters. 

Writing a scene is a lot more work than writing a one or two line summary, but it is so much more fun to read.  Are you up for a challenge?  I'm so excited to try writing some scenes that I can't wait to finish posting this!