How Taylor Jenkins Reid Crafts an Exceptional Opening Scene

Your reader experiences your story one scene at a time. Make every scene un-put-down-able.

Great stories are made of great scenes.

Sure, your novel has a clever plot with twists and turns from the first page to the last. But the way your readers will experience that plot is . . .

. . . one scene at a time.

Which means if you want your readers to fall in love with your novel, you need to captivate them with scenes they can’t put down.

How do you do it?

I’ll show you in this episode. I’m analyzing a scene from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo to show you how and why it works—

—and how you can create the same magic with your own scenes.

You’ll learn:

• The timeless structure behind this modern scene
• How every single detail in the scene enhances that structure
• What Taylor Jenkins Reid shares through exposition—and what she leaves out
• How to draw inspiration from this scene to craft an exceptional scene of your own
• And more!

This episode is a sneak peek inside my upcoming Scene Mastery Workshop. In fact, this is the first scene we’ll study in the workshop. Then, we’ll dig into seven more scenes from other great novels.

So if you enjoy this episode, you’ll love the workshop.

Want to master editing scenes this summer? Click here to get all the details and apply »

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Apply to join the Scene Mastery Workshop: alicesudlow.com/workshop
• Ep. 27: Value Shifts: How to Craft Compelling Change in Every Story
• Ep. 42: The 6 Essential Elements of Every Novel, Act, and Scene

Transcript

0:00

every single detail in this scene emphasizes the value shift. There are no extraneous details here, nothing to bog down the momentum. Every single line is carefully crafted to make the change in the scene as sharp as possible. Because after all stories are about change. Welcome to your next draft. Today, we're going to dig into scene structure more specifically, I'm going to pull out a scene from one of my favorite novels and show you how and why it works. And how you can use it as a model for a similar scene in your novel. See. Scenes are the building blocks of novels. Every great novel is made of great scenes. Of course. A novel needs a great plot to go with that. Something that the reader will want to read from the beginning to the end. But the way that you communicate that plot is via scenes. A novel of 80,000 to a hundred thousand words, we'll probably have somewhere in the range of 60 to 80 scenes. That's what the plot is made of the level on which your reader experiences, the story, a series of scenes one after the other, each one, like a miniature story that your reader can't put down. Which means that in order to craft a great novel. You need to craft great scenes. Now if you're listening and thinking. Wait, I thought we would be talking about time. You're not wrong. For the last few weeks, we've been in a series about how to convey the passing of time in a story. And I have not forgotten that we have a couple more strategies to cover for conveying the passing of time. But right now, I'm putting together my scene mastery workshop, which starts next week. And like, I always say, what you hear on this podcast comes directly from what I am editing every day. So I'm pausing the series on time for one episode. Don't worry. We'll get back to that in the next episode, but today I'm going to give you a sneak peek At one of the things we'll be doing in the scene mastery workshop. Analyzing scenes. See, one of the best ways to master writing and editing scenes is to study really good scenes from published novels. They work they're good. Readers, love them the way that you want readers to love your writing. And so a major component of the scene mastery workshop is analyzing published scenes. We're breaking down scenes from some of my favorite novels to see how and why they work and how we can draw inspiration from those scenes to craft excellent scenes of our own. And in this episode, I'm going to share my analysis of the first scene in the workshop and give you some actionable things to practice in your own writing based on what we learned from this scene. If you like what you hear in this episode, and you'd like to craft excellent scenes in your novel, Check out the scene mastery workshop by going to Alice said, though.com/workshop. And of course that link is in the show notes as well. Now. Let's dig into the scene. The scene we'll be looking at is the opening scene of the novel, the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins. Reid. Evelyn Hugo was published in 2017. It's a historical fiction novel set in the golden age of Hollywood. As you might guess from the title, one of its major plots is a love story. And the other major plot is a performance story. That is it's about Evelyn Hugo striving to build a career as a successful actress. When I say it to performance story, I'm not talking about the fact that she's an actress, but about the fact that she's a person with a skill and she's striving to be successful and gain recognition for her skill. And that skill just so happens to be acting. The novel also has a frame story. That means that while most of the novel is about Evelyn Hugo's life. And to set in the fifties, sixties, and seventies and eighties, there's also a second plot, but set in the modern day. That second plot has another protagonist. And this tolls from that protagonist point of view, the book begins and ends with this frame story. And we get a small number of scenes about the frame story in the middle. I'm telling you all of this, because when I look at a scene, I consider all of the context around that scene, too. It's the context that helps me decide what is important within a single scene and what kinds of edits I should make to enhance those important things. So now you have some context for our scene. Let's take a look at the scene itself. I highly recommend that you actually go read this scene yourself. You can do that for free by going to Amazon and reading the sample of the book. I'm linking to that sample in the show notes. So it's easy to find. If you're in a place where you can pause your listening and take five minutes to read the scene, do that now. Don't worry. I'll wait. Done reading. Great. Now here's a quick recap of the scene, just in case you're driving Or you're somewhere that you can't pause to rewrite now. And if you did read the scene first off. Good for you. And second, you'll get to see what really stood out for me about this scene. So. The scene opens with Frankie calling Monique into her office. Those are our two characters, Frankie and Monique Monique is confused because she missed her name at the beginning and she wasn't sure who Frankie was talking to. So she starts off really thrown off. Frankie. We learn it's Monique's boss and Monique looks up to her and wants to follow in her footsteps. Frankie tells Monique that Hollywood star, Evelyn Hugo has reached out to their magazine for an exclusive interview. Monique is confused again because wow, this is a huge deal for the magazine. She's not sure why Frankie is telling her about it. And then Frankie says that Evelyn specifically requested that Monique, do the interview. Monique is astonished. And so it turns out was Frankie when she heard. Frankie tried to recommend bigger name writers to Evelyn's people, but they responded to say either Monique does the interview or Evelyn doesn't do it at all. So Frankie starts digging to try to find out why Evelyn is asking for Monique. She asks whether Monique knows Evelyn. She doesn't. She asks whether she has any personal connections to Evelyn. And Monique says that the only way she'd have any connection is if her father who worked in film decades ago. Ever worked on one of Evelyn's films. Monique texts her mom to see whether there's a connection there. And her mom says that no, he never worked on any Evelyn Hugo films. So Frankie shares the second theory that Evelyn's people chose someone with less clout so that they can control her and the narrative. Monique asks why she's telling her this. And Frankie says it's because she thinks Evelyn's people are underestimating, Monique and Frankie really wants this interview for the magazine. And then she says, I'm asking you if you have the guts to go toe to toe with Evelyn, Hugo. Monique thinks about it. Then she says, yes. Frankie asks if that's all. Monique says yes, more firmly. Frankie says she's not convinced. Monique thinks about her own dream for her career to be a great writer, To be the kind of name that people scramble to call for these kinds of stories to rise in the ranks of the magazine world. And then she tells Frankie. Evelyn wants me. You wants Evelyn. It doesn't sound like I need to convince you, Frankie. It sounds like you need to convince me. It's quiet for awhile and Monique wonders if she's gone too far and she nearly backs down. And then Frankie says, okay. And gives her the story. Frankie says there is one more reason why Evelyn might have chosen her. She might have read a really spectacular piece that Monique wrote a few months ago. One that showcases her skills as a writer. And Evelyn wants her because she's good. They both acknowledge. That's probably not the reason. But if Monique does well with Evelyn's story, next time, her skill as a writer will be the reason that people come calling. So that's the scene. Frankie offers Monique, an opportunity to write a story far greater than Monique's current status in her career should allow. And Monique has to convince Frankie that she's the right woman for the job. If you think back to when I was explaining the genres of this novel, you might notice that this scene isn't about Evelyn, Hugo, herself. It's the opening scene of the frame story where we're in the present day meeting the frame story protagonist. Now. How does the scene work? I'm going to break down exactly how this scene is constructed and why it's so effective. I'll show you the structure of a scene and some of its key features and I'll end by distilling it into an archetype that you can use to inspire your own scenes. I have a number of episodes of your next draft that explain the terms that I use when I'm analyzing scenes. Those are the terms that I'll be using here. So if you've listened to those episodes, this approach to analysis should be familiar to you. If you haven't listened to those episodes, I won't be explaining each term again here, but I will point you back to the episodes that go into more detail. And happily these terms are generally, at least somewhat self-explanatory. So I think you'll be able to follow along either way. So. Let's dig into the analysis. The first question I'll ask of the scene is what is the protagonist's goal? Monique is our protagonist and her goal in this scene is first to figure out what Frankie wants from her. And then to prove that she can handle writing Evelyn, Hugo story. A story that has the potential to make or break her career. Frankie isn't the protagonist, but we can look at her goal two. She wants to publish an extraordinary exclusive story from Evelyn Hugo. The only way that Evelyn will agree to it is if Monique writes it and Frankie, isn't sure that Monique has what it takes to write an extraordinary story about Evelyn Hugo. So her goal in the scene is to figure that out. To find the way to land this story and make sure it's extraordinary. Monique wants to prove herself to her boss without stepping on her boss's toes. Frankie wants to land an exclusive story from Evelyn Hugo without trusting that story to someone who can't handle it. So right off the bat, we've got strong goals driving each character. The second question is what values shift in this scene. In other words, what changes. I'm going to focus on the values that change for Monique, because she's the protagonist. Externally, what changes for Monique? She goes from being under utilized within her job to having a breakout opportunity far above her current level. Dead end to opportunity. And what about internally? What changes in tangibly inside Monique? She goes from having the lowest status at her job to being treated as though she has high status. Low status to higher status. And she goes from having low confidence in herself to both projecting and feeling greater confidence, low confidence to higher confidence. These are great value shifts. Dead-end to opportunity, low status to higher status and low confidence to higher confidence. There's a really clear change within this scene. Things are one way at the beginning and they're another way at the end. That change has an external component. Something tangible is different. Monique has been assigned a story. And that change has an internal component, A way that it impacts Monique. She started off low in status and low in confidence. And she's now been boosted both higher in status and higher in her own confidence. If you'd like to learn more about value shifts, check out Alice solo. low.com/ 27. For my episode, all about value shifts. Now do you remember how I said that? Evelyn Hugo story has a performance plot. Monique story does too. That's exactly the plot that this scene is setting up. Monique has a skill writing for magazines, and she wants to Excel at her skill and be recognized for it. This scene is the inciting incident of Monique's performance plot. She's given an opportunity to use her skill that could change everything for her. And she has to decide whether to take it or not. Now that we know what happens in the scene with the characters goals are in the scene. And what changes in the scene. Let's look at how this scene is structured. And to do that, I'll be using the six elements of story, the inciting incident, progressive complications, turning point crisis, climax and resolution. If those terms are new to you, or you'd like to refresh her on them. Check out. Alice said though.com/ 42 for my episode, all about the six elements of story. And now let's walk through the structure of this scene. First up what's the inciting incident. Frankie cosmos sneak into her office. What are the progressive complications? There are several First Frankie tells Monique that Evelyn Hugo's people have asked for an exclusive interview. Then we learned that Evelyn specifically requested that Monique write the feature. Frankie makes it clear that Vaughn's magazine wants to send one of their top writers to write the feature. And Monique is a young new writer with no cloud and wouldn't be considered for this role at all. If Evelyn hadn't requested her specifically. But they're in a bind because Evelyn won't do the feature unless Monique writes it. Frankie asks Monique to confirm whether she has any personal connection to Evelyn that could explain this request. She doesn't. Frankie says that if there's no personal connection, they've probably chosen Monique because she's green and there'll be able to control her and the narrative. And this brings us to the turning point. What's the turning point. Frankie asks Monique, whether she has the guts to take the assignment. In fact, I would say the turning point is this line specifically. I'm asking you, if you have the guts to go toe to toe with Evelyn, Hugo. What's the crisis. At this point, Monique has two choices. Convince Frankie. She can do it or pass on the piece. Each of these options has positive and negative consequences. Those consequences are the stakes of this choice. What are the consequences. If she convinces Frankie that she can do it. The positive outcome is that she'll get to write the biggest story of her career yet. One that could make her entire career. But the negative consequences are that Evelyn might try to manipulate her to take control of the story. Plus Monique, isn't a hundred percent sure that she does have what it takes. And if she doesn't she'll bungle her big break, a highly sought after exclusive feature that Vivana really wants. What are the consequences. If Monique passes on the piece? On the bright side, she'll continue to write pieces that she's fully confident in writing. And she won't be at risk of manipulation by a Hollywood star. But the problem is she'll pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity to get a big break. She'll be stuck writing puff pieces and a job that is under utilizing her. She'll fall short of Frankie's belief in and expectations of her. And she'll hurt the magazine cause Vivanta won't get the Evelyn Hugo exclusive. So that's Monique's crisis choice. Convinced Frankie that she can do this. Take her shot at her big break and risk biting off more than she can chew. Or pass on the peace, stay safe and miss out on a once in a lifetime chance at her big break. What's the climax. Monique tells Frankie that she can do it. Frankie pushes back. She won't take an easy, yes. She's testing Monique and making her work for it. So Monique demonstrates her ability to go toe to toe with people in power, by telling Frankie that since Evelyn already wants her really. Frankie should be trying to win Monique over, not the other way around. What's the resolution. For a long moment, Monique is afraid that she's blown it and trying to prove herself to her boss. She did step on her boss's toes and now Frankie might pull the whole thing. But Frankie accepts her argument and tells Monique she's got the story. She tells Monique to ACE it. Then she observes that Monique is a genuinely good writer and references an article that Monique looks back on with pride. And Frankie assures her that if she does this Evelyn Hugo piece, well, it will launch her career. So there you have it, the structure of the scene. I'll sum all that up in a quick recap, so you can see it all together. Inciting incident, Frankie calls Monique into her office. Progressive complications. Frankie tells Monique that Evelyn Hugo has asked her to write an exclusive story on her And then Frankie challenges Monique on why Evelyn would have sent this request. Turning point. Frankie asks Monique. If she has what it takes to go toe to toe with Evelyn, Hugo. Crisis. Well, we'll need to convince Frankie that she can do it. Or will she pass on the piece? Climax. Monique tells Frankie that Frankie should be convincing her to do the piece, not the other way around. Resolution. Frankie gives Monique the story and tells her that if she does this well, which she has the writing chops to do, it will launch her career. Do you see how this one scene is a little miniature story? All its own. This is what I mean when I say that readers experience your novel on the level of the scene. Yes, they come to your novel for the entire plot. You're promising them, but page by page minute by minute, as they read, they're experiencing your novel as a series of scenes of tiny little stories that hook their interest And compel them to keep reading. So what makes this scene stand out? What makes it really effective? What can we learn from it? I have three takeaways to share with you Three things I particularly want to note about this scene. First. The structure in this scene is incredibly clear. I've analyzed hundreds of scenes, just like I did here, both scenes from published novels and scenes from my client's manuscripts. And this scene stands out to me as a scene where the scene structure is very clear and evident. We've got something very obvious that kicks off the action. Frankie calls Monique into her office. We have a series of complications, the challenge Monique, as she tries to suss out what her boss really wants from her and how to respond to that. We have a sharp turning point that demands action. Frankie asks Monique directly, whether she's up for this task. We have some great interiority for Monique, as she wrestles with her own confidence, her status, her dreams and goals. And stumbles through figuring out how to respond. We have a stark climax where Monique takes a risky stance, turns the tables and challenges. Frankie. And we have a resolution. We're Monique reaps, the rewards of that risky choice. Frankie gives her the story and they both acknowledge the impact that this will have on Monique's career. There are a few factors that make this scene structure so easy to spot. First the duration of the scene is short. The whole thing takes place over the span of probably just 15 minutes. Second, the focus of the scene is narrow. It's a conversation between two characters. There's not a large cast or a lot of action to complicate things. It's very simply that one character has a question for another character. Third, both characters have clear goals with high stakes attached in opposition to each other. Monique is trying to gain major momentum in her career without attracting her bosses. Ire Frankie is trying to land a massive cover story without giving it to an incompetent newbie. It's a 15 minute conversation in an office. And yet, because the stakes are so clear and so high, we are hooked to see how this conversation will go. And when we reached the end of the scene, we can feel how much has changed. So the first thing I want you to notice here is that the structure of the scene is exceptionally clear. If you've been struggling to see how the six elements of story work. I recommend printing out the scene and highlighting each elements so you can see them on the page. The second thing I want to note about this scene is that the scene structure perfectly emphasizes the value shift. Let's look back at the values that we noted at the beginning. Dead end to opportunity. Low status to higher status, low confidence to higher confidence. At the beginning of the scene, Monique is stuck with dead into assignments She joined avant less than a year ago, so she's one of the newest and most junior writers, very low in status. And while she's ambitious and goal oriented, she's not very confident. Every detail that Taylor Jenkins Reid includes in the first half of the scene, emphasizes these beginning values. Here's some examples. First I look at Monique's reactions when Frankie calls Monique into her office, Monique is surprised when Frankie tells her that Evelyn Hugo requested an interview. Monique is surprised when Frankie tells her Evelyn specifically asked for Monique. Monique a surprise. It's a surprise of someone working dead into assignments, someone who doesn't get noticed, someone who doesn't get opportunities, someone who doesn't expect opportunities, someone who doesn't get asked to write exclusive features of Hollywood stars. Now I look at the passages of narrative, the thoughts and contexts that Monique gives us in between lines of dialogue. Monique tells us that before Yvonne, she was working at the discourse, what she describes as a current events and culture site that calls itself a newsmagazine, but is effectively a blog with punchy headlines. And before that she was freelancing. Although she's pursuing her dream of writing. She's not impressed with her career trajectory. See, how about emphasizes dead end. Low status, low confidence. And then after the turning point, every detail emphasizes the opposite values. This is the realm of opportunity, higher status, higher confidence. Monique's actions reflect this. After Frankie gives her the story, they shake hands and Monique makes sure that her handshake is strong. The dialogue reflects this. Frankie tells Monique that her writing really is strong enough That Evelyn could have asked for her on the basis of her skill alone. And the details of backstory and context that Monique gives us in her thoughts emphasize this as well. Monique thinks back on the piece that Frankie is referencing. On how passionate she was about the topic, how hard she worked to write it, how proud she still is of it. And how it opens the door to her working at vivant. See how every part of this emphasizes opportunity, higher status, higher confidence. So that's the second thing to notice that every single detail in this scene emphasizes the value shift. There are no extraneous details here, nothing to bog down the momentum. Every single line is carefully crafted to make the change in the scene as sharp as possible. Because after all stories are about change. And the final thing I want to draw your attention to is related to that. I want to point out to the exposition in this scene, The explanatory information about the current situation and backstory from before the scene. Remember, this is the opening scene of the novel. So at this point, the only information the reader has is whatever information is on the page in this scene. The scene is mostly dialogue. In a scene of 2,195 words, 580, 2 of those words are direct speech. The words that Monique and Frankie say to each other. Amid all that direct speech. There are three sections of narrative where Monique pauses the dialogue to give the reader more information about what's going on. The first happens early in the scene, as Monique is following Frankie into her office. There, we find out what Monique admires about Frankie and how she wants to follow in her footsteps. It's 145 words. The second happens midway through when Frankie expresses her surprise that Evelyn asks for Monique. There Monique tells us about her career history and why that surprise is a totally reasonable response, even though Monique is a little bit offended by it. This is 231 words. And the third happens at the end of the scene when Frankie is entrusting Monique with Evelyn story and comments, that there's always the possibility that Evelyn really does want her for her skill as a writer there, Monique tells us about the story that she's most proud of writing. That's 315 words. That is in total 690 words of exposition. Extremely carefully chosen exposition. Notice how every bit of that exposition is directly tied to something that's happening in the scene. It's hyper-relevant context because it's, what's on Monique's mind right now. And it helps the reader understand how every part of this conversation is impacting Monique. We learn how Frankie's words make her feel. We learn why the opportunity with Evelyn matters to her. What do we not learn? We don't learn any details that aren't immediately relevant. There are no long info dumps here. For example, what city does Monique live in? When did she move here? Where is the Lavant office even located? We have no idea. And we also do not care. And we don't learn any details that will siphon away the tension from the story and answer so many questions that we no longer need to keep reading. Why the heck did Evelyn Hugo ask for Monique? Frankie and Monique do not figure it out in this scene and we won't figure it out either until the very end of the book. It's a mystery, a gap in information that keeps us hooked so that we have to keep reading. So that's the third noteworthy feature that I want to draw your attention to. Every piece of exposition is precisely chosen to help us understand this specific moment, as clearly as Monique does while avoiding the trap of boring info dumps and increasing the tension of unanswered questions. And there you have it. The three major takeaways I find so powerful in this scene. First it seems structure is exceptionally clear. Second, every detail emphasizes the value shift so that we can really feel the change that happens from the beginning to the end. And third. The exposition is precisely chosen to heighten this moment without boring the reader or sapping the tension. There's just one question left and that's this one. What can you do with this? How can we take this analysis of an excellent scene and turn it into something actionable that you can do in your writing? I'm glad you asked. I've taken the scene and I've distilled it into an archetype, a fundamental framework for a scene. I invite you to take this framework and use it to write a scene of your own. Put it in any setting, you like make the characters, any characters you like put it in your work in progress or make up a completely different story with it. Just use it as a writing prompt to inspire you and try your hand at crafting a scene using the scene structure that I've shared in this analysis. All right. Here's the archetype. This scene has two characters, one of high status, And the other have low status. The higher status character has received word of an opportunity That must be given to the lower status character. Both are aware that it is weird for low status to be given this opportunity and high status interrogates, low status about why it's on the table. Low status must decide whether or not to accept the opportunity and then convince high status that she can do it. There you go. That's your challenge. What will your scene be? And that's it for this analysis of the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and for the sneak peek at what's inside the scene mastery workshop. If you enjoyed this analysis, you'll really enjoy the workshop. It's a 10 week course in editing scenes. And in it, I'll teach you how to use these exact tools to not just analyze published novels, but actually edit your own scenes. Each week, we'll study a scene from a published novel, just like I've done here. Then I'll workshop a scene from one of the writers in the workshop and I'll help them figure out how to edit their own scene. By the end of the workshop, you'll have edited a scene of your novel based on my feedback. And you'll be equipped with the tools and process that you need to edit every scene and your novel. If you're listening to this episode on the day that it airs, the workshop starts next week, and there are just a couple seats left. So if this sounds exciting to you, go to Alice sedler.com/workshop and apply. And of course that link is in the show notes as well. And if you're listening to this well, after it airs, but you're interested in the workshop. Go ahead and check out. Alice said though.com/workshop and fill out the application to join me in the next round. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found this analysis helpful. Learning how to do this was transformative for my own editing. And I love sharing it with you. Take a stab at writing your own version of this scene archetype. And if you want more like this, be sure to check out the scene mastery workshop at auto.com/workshop. That's all for now. Until next time. Happy editing.