I write about scenes a lot in my blog posts, but what exactly is a scene?
A scene is simply an event that takes place in a particular moment in time. It isn’t a summary of events. It isn’t what happened over the course of a month or a few days. It isn’t like a movie montage of the summer you spent in Hawaii. A scene zooms in on a particular moment and narrates that moment for the reader. Once you zoom in on a scene, this signals to the reader that what happens is vital to the story.
Luckily, you already know that the scenes you include should connect to your quest, and therefore you have a limited scope of possibilities to choose from. Each scene you choose to render will have purpose in your story, because it will focus on a moment when you tried to achieve your quest, and what happened as a result.
For example:
Let’s say your quest is to reconnect with your great grandmother’s past in her old village in Sardinia. You went about achieving this quest by visiting the church where she got married to your great grandfather. Your visit to this church would therefore make a great scene in your story about this quest.
This scene could have several elements, such as a description of the space, what you imagine when you think about your great grandparents’ wedding, all those years ago, any interactions you have with parishioners or a minister / priest, and your interpretation of all of these encounters. All of that would comprise a scene.
Let’s take another example.
If you’re searching for the perfect amber ring in Prague, one scene might be a particularly special jewellery store that you visit. That scene would be comprised of a description of this store and what makes it special or well-known. You would also describe how you feel in this place: nervous? Confident? Hopeful? Another element of this scene would be your interactions with the salesperson, and any other customers in the shop. You would be interpreting what you think and how you feel throughout your encounters in the shop. This would make up an entire scene.
You can switch between scene and summary.
A summary, as I mentioned above, is simply a compressed narration of what happened over a series of days, weeks, months or years. In the example story about Prague, you might provide a summary of what most jewellery stores were like when you visited, and then zoom in on a scene of a particularly special or well-known store and choose to narrate that particular moment.
The reader is used to these switches between scene and summary, and they give the sense of a full experience. However, it’s very difficult to pull off a travel story without any kind of scene. A story told all in summary would read as rather dull.
So, make sure to zoom in on those particular moments that were important to the achievement of your quest. Read through your favorite travel stories and locate those scenes. Study their elements, and work on writing your own compelling travel memoir scenes.
