choreographing a troupe

Making a scene requires artful choreography – animating your characters interactions so vividly and seamlessly that your reader forgets they are reading. This often means tracking a troupe of characters as they make their disparate and interconnecting way from the beginning to the end of the scene.

To do this, you must know each character – what they would do and how they would express themselves – so that they are distinguishable from the other characters while staying true to themselves. But that’s not enough – you must also track location, time and mood.

As you create a scene, give your characters something to do and say, and choreograph them as they move from point A to point B in the story. Make sure that the story keeps momentum, don’t let dialogue stray from what is important, don’t let descriptions interrupt forward motion, and remember conflict, conflict, conflict.