5 Great Examples of Scenes in Novels

Recently, I’ve been reading novels with a lot of exposition and “telling” rather than “showing.” But the funny thing about it is (and I’ve known this for years now), is that, like many rules in writing novels and short stories, if you know how to break the rules, you can absolutely do it. Right now, I’m reading Nathan Hill’s Wellness. The book is about a couple who initially meet because they’re staring at each other from their windows, which are across from each other in Chicago, and how they sustain their interesting relationships over time. As I read it, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through, it’s clear that the hype is well-deserved. If you don’t know who he is, you should change that. Hill’s first novel, The Nix, was fascinating. That normally doesn’t happen when I read new novels. Mostly, I’m left wondering if the reviewer even read the book. Not so with The Nix. So, I thought I’d give Wellness a shot, and I’ve not been disappointed so far. Like Nix, much of Wellness is told rather than shown in scene, though scenes often pop up in the telling. As any writer knows, that’s not how you’re normally taught to write, primarily because readers want the action, and action comes in scene. But, as I mentioned above, if you know how to break the rules . . . and Hill does. And exceptionally.

            So, what is a scene in fiction, and what is its purpose?

            Well, fiction is made up of a few elements, which, if you’re a new writer, you may not know, and if you’re an old pro, you know very well. Scene is basically when characters interact. When they have dialogue. When they hug, or punch, or kick, or shake hands, or . . . well, you get the gist. It’s the showing part of fiction rather than the telling of it. It’s where readers watch the little drama that’s occurring between two (or more) people on stage. It’s also where the reader leans in a little to see what happens, because scene is where things happen before the readers’ eyes.

When we read fiction, we love a lot of it (if the book is well-written), but it’s always the scenes that we remember. The scenes are what’s visual for us, even above description, though the term “description,” when you’re first starting out as a writer, might trick us into believing that’s what we’ll remember, i.e., the things “described” by an author because they’re visual. Now, I’m not saying that that is always the case, but it pretty much is, at least in my view. Sure, we see Dennis Lehane’s Southie (South Boston) in his novel, Small Mercies. We see the proud Irish faces walking around, the tough police with their batons, the small corner bars where everyone hangs out after working their blue-collar jobs. The drunk husbands and many-kidded mothers smoking their cigarettes as they stand and sit on the sidewalks, enthralled in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade marching by. But we remember things like the opening scene, which begins in scene:

The power goes out sometime before dawn, and everyone at Commonwealth wakes to swelter. In the Fennessey apartment, the window fans have quit in mid-rotation and the fridge is pimpled with sweat. (So, the scene is set). And then we get the characters in the scene . . . “Mary Pat,” he says. “How are you?”

She can picture her hair splayed sodden on her head like congealed spaghetti. Can feel every splotch on her skin. “Power’s out, Brian. How are you?”

“Marty’s working on the power,” he says. “He’s made some calls.”

She glances at the thin slat of woods on his arms. “Help you with those.”

And on we go. Lehane’s Southie is right there in your face, though we haven’t even begun the drama. But we see Marty and Mary Pat, we see their situation—the fans not working, the heat, the beading up of the water on the fridge. Even just their names. If we know anything about the Irish in Southie during certain decades, we already feel like we’re there, sitting on a stoop, listening to Maureen calling out for her daughter Kathleen to come home, it’s dinner time. Or Shawn yelling at his son, Nicky, because he forgot to get him his cigarettes from the pull machine at Murphy’s on West Street. And what’s funny is that we haven’t even gotten to the good parts yet. But that is why Lehane is Lehane—he yanks you into the story through scene, but scene with such knowledge of setting and place that his writing becomes irresistible to the reader.

Great scenes leave you feeling like you’re in the middle of the action. They often punch you in the face, open your eyes to what the characters believe, why they act the way they do, how they interact with their friends, their neighbors, their husbands. Their kids (meaning scenes should provide insight into your characters). And scenes should also advance the plot. A good scene provides an emotional impact. It should create tension. And if you’re the writer, if you’re God the writer, you work on scenes until you know the reader won’t forget walking into that scene, walking out of it, and thinking, Wow, that was intense. It’s what I strive for in my fiction, and it takes work. But it is worth every second you spend developing them, your scenes.

Here are five great examples of scenes in novels I thought were excellent examples of what writers were able to do with some words, some characters, and some great settings.

1.     Here’s the opening scene of A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, which had mixed reviews when it came out, but that has become one of my favorite novels. The visceral nature of the novel pulled me in from the get go and explodes with emotion later on:

The eleventh apartment had only one closet, but it did have a sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony, from which he could see a man sitting across the way, outdoors in only a T-shirt and shorts even though it was October, smoking. Willem held up a hand in greeting to him, but the man didn’t wave back.In the bedroom, Jude was accordioning the closet door, opening and shutting it, when Willem came in. “There’s only one closet,” he said.“That’s okay,” Willem said. “I have nothing to put in it anyway.”“Neither do I.” They smiled at each other. The agent from the building wandered in after them. “We’ll take it,” Jude told her.But back at the agent’s office, they were told they couldn’t rent the apartment after all. “Why not?” Jude asked her.“You don’t make enough to cover six months’ rent, and you don’t have anything in savings,” said the agent, suddenly terse. She had checked their credit and their bank accounts and had at last realized that there was something amiss about two men in their twenties who were not a couple and yet were trying to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a dull (but still expensive) stretch of Twenty-fifth Street. “Do you have anyone who can sign on as your guarantor? A boss? Parents?”“Our parents are dead,” said Willem, swiftly.The agent sighed. “Then I suggest you lower your expectations. No one who manages a well-run building is going to rent to candidates with your financial profile.” And then she stood, with an air of finality, and looked pointedly at the door.So much emotion, so much is told in who Jude and Willem are (aspirational and naïve and impulsive and lacking furniture) and the agent (kind of stuck up, but also a realist!). And the interaction? Priceless. We’re there with them, and it’s painful to watch, which is what we, as readers, crave—drama!

2.     This is the opening, or a page or two into the novel, of Olive Kitteridge: Otherwise, Mrs. Granger did her job well. He appreciated that she was not chatty, kept perfect inventory, and almost never called in sick. That she died in her sleep one night astonished him, and left him with some feeling of responsibility, as though he had missed, working alongside her for years, whatever symptom might have shown itself that he, handling his pills and syrups and syringes, could have fixed. 

“Mousy,” his wife said, when he hired the new girl. “Looks just like a mouse.” 

Denise Thibodeau had round cheeks, and small eyes that peeped through her brown-framed glasses.

“But a nice mouse,” Henry said. “A cute one.” 

“No one’s cute who can’t stand up straight,” Olive said.

It was true that Denise’s narrow shoulders sloped forward, as though apologizing for something. She was twenty-two, just out of the state university of Vermont. Her husband was also named Henry, and Henry Kitteridge, meeting Henry Thibodeau for the first time, was taken with what he saw as an unself-conscious excellence. The young man was vigorous and sturdy-featured with a light in his eye that seemed to lend a flickering resplendence to his decent, ordinary face. He was a plumber, working in a business owned by his uncle. He and Denise had been married one year. 

“Not keen on it,” Olive said, when he suggested they have the young couple to dinner. Henry let it drop. This was a time when his son—not yet showing the physical signs of adolescence—had become suddenly and strenuously sullen, his mood like a poison shot through the air, and Olive seemed as changed and changeable as Christopher, the two having fast and furious fights that became just as suddenly some blanket of silent intimacy where Henry, clueless, stupefied, would find himself to be the odd man out. 

Again, we have lots of telling interchanged with sparse dialogue, but the scene is completely there. We feel like we’re in the room with them, we can see everything at the characters see it, and because the author, Elizabeth Strout, gives us such rich detail and background and insight into the characters, the scene pops (again, we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet).

3.     This is from the wonderful novel Normal People by Sally Rooney:

JANUARY 2011

Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell. She’s still wearing her school uniform, but she’s taken off the sweater, so it’s just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights.Oh, hey, he says.Come on in.She turns and walks down the hall. He follows her, clos­ing the door behind him. Down a few steps in the kitchen, his mother Lorraine is peeling off a pair of rubber gloves. Marianne hops onto the countertop and picks up an open jar of chocolate spread, in which she has left a teaspoon.Marianne was telling me you got your mock results today, Lorraine says.We got English back, he says. They come back separately. Do you want to head on?Lorraine folds the rubber gloves up neatly and replaces them below the sink. Then she starts unclipping her hair. To Connell this seems like something she could accomplish in the car.And I hear you did very well, she says.He was top of the class, says Marianne.Right, Connell says. Marianne did pretty good too. Can we go?Lorraine pauses in the untying of her apron.I didn’t realize we were in a rush, she says.He puts his hands in his pockets and suppresses an irritable sigh, but suppresses it with an audible intake of breath, so that it still sounds like a sigh.I just have to pop up and take a load out of the dryer, says Lorraine. And then we’ll be off. Okay?He says nothing, merely hanging his head while Lorraine leaves the room.Do you want some of this? Marianne says.She’s holding out the jar of chocolate spread. He presses his hands down slightly further into his pockets, as if trying to store his entire body in his pockets all at once.No, thanks, he says.Did you get your French results today?Yesterday.He puts his back against the fridge and watches her lick the spoon. In school he and Marianne affect not to know each other. People know that Marianne lives in the white mansion with the driveway and that Connell’s mother is a cleaner, but no one knows of the special relationship between these facts.I got an A1, he says. What did you get in German?An A1, she says. Are you bragging?You’re going to get six hundred, are you?She shrugs. You probably will, she says.Well, you’re smarter than me.Don’t feel bad. I’m smarter than everyone.Marianne is grinning now. She exercises an open contempt for people in school. She has no friends and spends her lunch­times alone reading novels. A lot of people really hate her. Her father died when she was thirteen and Connell has heard she has a mental illness now or something. It’s true she is the smartest person in school. He dreads being left alone with her like this, but he also finds himself fantasizing about things he could say to impress her.You’re not top of the class in English, he points out.She licks her teeth, unconcerned.Maybe you should give me grinds, Connell, she says.He feels his ears get hot. She’s probably just being glib and not suggestive, but if she is being suggestive it’s only to degrade him by association, since she is considered an object of disgust.It’s pretty easy to break down this scene: class division dynamics, male/female relationship dynamics, education/smarts competition, and yet two kids who get along well enough that they’re cheeky/playful with each other despite all of their differences. Sally Rooney has exploded over the past decade, and for good reasons—her economy with language accompanied with her ability for sharp, pointed scenes that relay much to the reader is something to be admired.

4.     From Comac McCarthy’s The Road: When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell.McCarthy gives us zero dialogue, and almost no character involvement in the scene, only the creature raising its “dripping mouth” and staring “into the light with dead eyes,” and yet the scene and setting are so powerful you can’t take your eyes away from it. He was a different sort of writer, McCarthy, and if you’ve read his books, you know how dry spoken his characters are, and you know how tough they are in speaking to each other, as well as how much the landscapes are part of the scenes the characters interact with each other in. That’s the beauty of writing, isn’t it? The ability to do things, once you’re skilled enough, that lesser writers may not be able to do.

5.     And last but not least, here’s a scene from Rachel Kushner’s The Flame Throwers:

I walked out of the sun, unfastening my chin strap. Sweat was pooling along my collarbone, trickling down my back and into my nylon underwear, running down my legs under the leather racing suit. I took off my helmet and the heavy leather jacket, set them on the ground, and unzipped the vents in my riding pants.

I stood for a long time tracking the slow drift of clouds, great fluffy masses sheared flat along their bottom edges like they were melting on a hot griddle.

There were things I had no choice but to overlook, like wind effect on clouds, while flying down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. I wasn't in a hurry, under no time constraint. Speed doesn't have to be an issue of time. On that day, riding a Moto Valera east from Reno, it was an issue of wanting to move across the map of Nevada that was taped to my gas tank as I moved across the actual state. Through the familiar orbit east of Reno, the brothels and wrecking yards, the big puffing power plant and its cat's cradle of coils and springs and fencing, an occasional freight train and the meandering and summer-shallow Truckee River, railroad tracks and river escorting me to Fernley, where they both cut north.

Again, no one’s speaking here; all we’re getting is the first-person narrator telling us about what she’s doing: walking out into the sun; unfastening her chin strap; taking off her helmet; riding a Moto Valera east from Reno. So, we’re watching everything she’s doing, learning who she is through her own words and description of what’s happening, and getting scene without dialogue. It’s all coming through action, yet we learn so much, and because of Kushner’s excellent writing, we’re mesmerized.

I hope you understand why these are 5 great examples of scenes in novels. I hope you’re able to use these scenes in your own writing, in your own understanding of what’s possible as a writer, in how you can bend the rules (or stray completely from them) while also achieving what a scene is meant to achieve.

Cully Perlman is author of a novel, The Losses, a short story writer, a blogger, and a substantive editor. All he does is write. And write. And write. Sometimes he takes his medium-size dog for walks.

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