Scene by Scene

• One way of building the element of time into a story is to concentrate on building the action scene by scene. Holly Lisle, an expert on the craft of writing, describes the scene as an atom-like building block for a work of fiction. This is because it contains the action or movement that keeps the story moving.
  
  

Definition of a Scene

• A scene is defined as an instance in which some kind of change occurs. Lisle says the completion of a scene takes place when the change occurs. As in life, nothing in a story can change without the passing of time. A time frame is one of the important elements of a scene, thus enabling time progression to build, like the story itself, from scene to scene.
  
  

Out of Time

• There are a few special instances in which normal time progression within the story is interrupted. The most common of these is the flashback. Harvey Chapman with Novel Writing Help points out that the flashback is a special kind of scene in which the action took place at some point before the opening of the story.