I’m sure you’ve heard the advice that your first chapter needs to hook your reader. But once you have your opening hook, how do you make sure you don’t lose your momentum in the middle? How do you avoid writing boring scenes? The secret to writing a story that never lets your reader go lies with your story’s driving narrative question.

What Is a Driving Narrative Question?

Your story’s beginning should pose a question that the middle explores and the ending answers. We call that question the driving narrative question. It’s what propels your reader through your story.

We keep reading The Hunger Games to find out whether Katniss will survive the games. We keep reading The Lord of the Rings to find out what happens to Frodo, the One Ring, and the fate of Middle Earth. We keep reading A Game of Thrones to find out who will survive and come out on top in this struggle for power. Every story poses a question that motivates the reader to keep going until the end: Will Katniss survive? Will Frodo save Middle Earth? Who will win the throne?

For every scene to be gripping, each one needs to make significant progress toward answering the story’s driving narrative question.

Using the Driving Narrative Question to Identify Boring Scenes

If any scenes don’t contribute to the driving narrative question, they will act like dead weight and feel boring. A lot of authors think that if there are enough dramatic events, their readers will stay engaged. That’s not always true.

There could be the most dramatic fight scenes and intense moments of conflict, but if those events don’t have anything to do with the driving narrative question, it will feel as though nothing is happening. Star Wars episode eight is a great example of how dramatic events can just feel blah when they don’t significantly contribute to the core plot. I remember sitting in the theatre as Finn and Rose went through the motions of a dramatic chase scene through the visually stunning casino planet of Canto Bight, and I just felt irritated and tired. It didn’t feel like this escapade was going anywhere that meant anything to the story. It felt like Finn and Rose went there just to eat up screen time with cool visuals of a new planet and some inconsequential action.

Just because something is dramatic doesn’t mean that it’s compelling. The driving narrative question is the very reason why readers are invested in your story. Even if it’s a subplot, it needs to connect with and be relevant to the central story arc. Otherwise, the scene will act like dead weight, making your readers forget why they want to keep reading.

A Quick Note About the Driving Thematic Question

In addition to a driving narrative question, your story will also have a driving thematic question. Whereas the driving narrative question will relate to your character’s external goal, the driving thematic question will relate to your character’s internal goal.

Take The Hunger Games as an example. In the first book, Katniss’s external goal is to survive the Hunger Games. The story’s driving narrative question is, will Katniss survive the games? But every character also has an internal goal that drives every action they take. Characters may or may not be aware of their internal goal, but it still fundamentally defines who they are as a person. It is the underpinning motivation behind their every decision. An internal goal could be to be in control of one’s own life, or to be a good person, or to gain the security of always having more power than everyone else around you.

In The Hunger Games, Katniss’s internal goal is to protect her loved ones. The driving thematic question of the whole series is, how do we rebel against and change a corrupt society without becoming corrupt ourselves? Katniss’s pure internal goal, to place protecting her loved ones above any other desire, acts as the story’s response to the driving thematic question.

I’m pointing out the distinction between character-developing scenes and plot-developing scenes so that you don’t inadvertently cut out all your character development in your attempt to keep every scene engaging. Ideally, most scenes will progress the driving thematic question and the driving narrative question at the same time. But some scenes only significantly progress one question or the other. Just make sure that there’s a good balance between both.

How to Identify Boring Scenes

Once you figure out what your story’s specific narrative and thematic questions are, you need to make sure that every scene works toward answering those questions. The most effective way to do that is to chart out every scene in your story. Yes, it’ll time and work. But it’ll be worth it, especially if you’re getting feedback that your story’s middle is slow or dull.

In my editing, I find it easiest to chart scenes in an Excel spreadsheet. You can also use Google Sheets, a notebook, or whatever writing device works best for you. Often chapters contain more than one scene, so make sure you’re isolating individual scenes and not just chapter marks. In the story chart that I use for editing, I put the chapter number in the first column, the scene number in the second, the scene word count in the third, and a brief summary of the scene in the fourth. Again, organize your chart in whatever way works best for you. Once you have all those columns in place, add another for the driving narrative question and one for the driving thematic question.

As the author, you’ll be able to identify the driving narrative and thematic questions before you start your analysis (you lucky ducks). So, you can also put your driving narrative and thematic questions at the top of the sheet. Here’s a scene-chart spreadsheet that I formatted for you:

By the way, if you’re looking for a faster way to calculate your chapter word counts in Microsoft Word, check out my post Macros for Fiction Writers, Part 1. In it, I describe how to use a macro called HeadingWordCounts that will allow you to complete this task within a couple minutes.

Filling Out the Chart

Once you have all your scenes in the chart, ask yourself whether each one progresses the driving narrative question, the driving thematic question, or both. If a scene doesn’t progress one of them, put a big old X in the corresponding box. If it progresses the theme, you can put in a Y for “yes” (or a smiley face, or whatever you want to indicate that there’s thematic/character development in the scene). Since we’re assessing each scene for pacing and boredom, we’ll pay more attention to the driving narrative question column.

If the scene does progress the driving narrative question, you’ll need to figure out how effectively it progresses the plot. There are two main problems that can still make plot-progressing scenes come across as boring. They can progress the plot in a very minor way that doesn’t feel significant. Or they can take far too long to get to the point. As you’re assessing a scene, ask yourself if the plot progression is significant enough to feel rewarding. Then ask yourself if the length of the scene is proportional to how complex the plot development is. For example, if a very simple plot point takes 3,000 words or more to covey, the internal pacing of the scene may be a bit off.

Colour coding can be helpful here. If the scene doesn’t progress the plot at all, colour the corresponding box red. When a scene does progress the plot, but not in a significant or succinct way, colour its box yellow. If it does progress the plot in a significant and proportional way, colour the box green. For red and yellow scenes, be sure to describe the issue at play so you can reference it later.

After all this analysis, you have now pinpointed the scenes in your story that need work. Let’s talk about how you can strengthen those scenes.

How to Address Boring Scenes

Addressing Wholly Thematic Scenes

If there are too many character development scenes that have nothing to do with the plot, you risk damaging your pacing and losing the reader’s attention. For scenes that only progress theme, not plot, you should ask yourself whether the character development is interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention, especially considering the length of the scene. If it isn’t engaging enough, one solution is to blend the character-developing moment with a plot-progressing event. That way, the story maintains its narrative momentum while the character development and thematic exploration still happens.

Addressing Dull Scenes that Don’t Contain Necessary Information

When you have a problematic scene that’s unrelated to theme, you need to ask yourself whether the scene contains information that the reader needs to know. If the scene is entirely irrelevant to the plot and doesn’t contain other necessary information, then you can just cut the scene.

As I’ve mentioned, some relevant scenes are too long-winded relative to the complexity of the plot event. Often, such scenes are littered with unnecessary details throughout the relevant action. In this case, you’ll need to cut or shorten the irrelevant details to streamline the scene.

Addressing Dull Scenes that Have Interesting Worldbuilding

Especially in speculative fiction, a plot-irrelevant scene may still contain interesting worldbuilding. In that case, you should probably still remove the scene. But, you can always pepper some of those worldbuilding tidbits throughout other scenes that do progress the plot. That way, the reader still gets immersed in the world but doesn’t lose touch with the story. The reader also doesn’t need to know absolutely everything about the world you’re building. In fact, keeping some knowledge hidden from the reader can make the world seem more complex, mysterious, and realistic.

Addressing Dull Scenes that Have Necessary Information

Sometimes, your reader will need to know about events that aren’t significant to the plot. In this case, you get to break the most common piece of writing advice. You should tell the events, not show them.

Yes, you read that right. The advice to “show, don’t tell” is far too simplistic. I prefer to rephrase the advice to, “tell what the reader needs to know, but show what the reader needs to experience for themselves.” My version may not be as pithy, but I find it more helpful.

How to Use Telling to Quickly Get Back to Showing the Good Stuff

Showing and telling are two different methods for depicting plot events. Showing is when you directly depict the action. Telling is when you summarize or describe the action from a distance. The difference between telling and showing is easier to recognize with some examples:

• Telling: I was sad to see him go.
  • Showing: Tears welled in my eyes as I watched Jeffery board the plane.
• Telling: I told her to meet me in the library and that I’d tell her everything.
  • Showing: “Meet me in the library at two o-clock,” I whispered into the receiver. “I’ll tell you everything. I just can’t do it here.”
• Telling: The crew were called on deck to fight the storm.
  • Showing: I awoke to the clang of a frantic iron bell and someone yelling “all hands on deck!” A wall of thick drops hit my face as I emerged from below. Someone whose face I couldn’t recognize through the downpour handed me a soaked lifeline. I moved quickly to tie the rope around my middle as I strained to make out the captain’s orders.

Showing is the most immersive way to depict a scene, but telling is a lot faster. In all of your plot-relevant action, you should mostly show, not tell. But when a reader needs to know about events that aren’t very significant to the plot and driving narrative question, then you should quickly tell readers what they need to know. That way, you can get back to showing the main action as quickly as possible. Remember, even dramatic scenes can still be boring when they aren’t significant to the plot.

An Example from Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss has a short scene in his novel The Wise Man’s Fear that brilliantly demonstrates how to quickly tell necessary events and get back to showing the main action:

My curiosity was also glad to take the sea route. I had never been on any water larger than a river. My only real concern was that I might become bored with nothing but wind, waves, and sailors for company.

Several unfortunate complications arose during the trip. In brief, there was a storm, piracy, treachery, and shipwreck, although not in that order. It also goes without saying that I did a great many things, some heroic, some ill-advised, some clever and audacious.

Over the course of my trip I was robbed, drowned, and left penniless on the streets of Junpui. In order to survive I begged for crusts, stole a man’s shoes, and recited poetry. . . . However, as these events have little to do with the heart of the story, I must pass them over in favor of more important things. Simply said, it took me sixteen days to reach Severen. A bit longer than I had planned, but at no point in my journey was I ever bored.

Chapter Fifty-Three: The Sheer

I limped through the gates of Severen ragged, penniless, and hungry.

The scene before chapter fifty-three is entirely telling. If Rothfuss had shown all these events, they would have filled chapters upon chapters. Those chapters would have been filled with adventure and excitement. They would have also been boring scenes because they wouldn’t have been relevant to the plot. Instead, Rothfuss brilliantly chose to quickly tell the reader what happened so that he could get back to showing plot-relevant action right away in chapter fifty-three. I love this scene because the narrator goes out of his way to explain why he is skimming over these exciting events. It’s a little lesson on storytelling within a story.

Summing Up

To keep your reader engaged, every scene in your story needs to significantly progress your driving narrative question. Sometimes a scene will focus more on the themes and character development than direct plot events. Be careful with such scenes. If there are too many of them or if they are done poorly, they can slow down your pacing and bore your reader.

If you’re worried that you have boring scenes, you can use a scene chart to help you identify potential problems. You then need to either cut or reshape any problematic scene to make it contribute better to the driving narrative question. Sometimes, you’ll need to tell the reader about a peripheral event so that you can quickly get back to showing the central story.