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Monday, July 22, 2024

Then vs. Now Scenes


Recently I did an article on types of scenes that have little to no conflict, and it seemed like the proper time to write up a little post on another pair of scenes: Then vs. Now scenes.

This topic has been sitting in my "draft queue" for quite a while, but I haven't covered them yet because . . . frankly, they don't need much of a word count to explain. Nonetheless, they are worth going over. So, let's go over Then vs. Now scenes in a short post today.


Then vs. Now scenes are pretty much what they sound like. They are usually a pair of scenes, one at the beginning of the story and one at the end, that illustrate how things have changed (or less commonly, haven't changed). So for example, there could be a scene at the beginning of the story that shows a depressed protagonist missing the bus to work. Then, there could be a similar scene at the end that shows the protagonist happy as she arrives at the bus stop early. This blatantly shows how the story has transformed her.

When people talk about Then vs. Now scenes, they typically reference how the protagonist has changed, but as I mentioned, you can technically use them to show how the protagonist has remained the same. I could have the end scene show the protagonist once again depressed and missing the bus. This communicates that, despite all that has happened through the middle of the story, the protagonist remains (or has gone back to) the same state.

Then vs. Now scenes are commonly used to showcase the protagonist's character arc. Perhaps the protagonist started the story believing that she had to take advantage of others to get ahead. Perhaps we showed her in the opening stealing money from the panhandling homeless. In one of the closing scenes, we show her giving money to them instead. This clearly illustrates she has a new worldview: It's better to help others.

As you've probably guessed, Then vs. Now scenes can be used to show an infinite number of things--how a character has aged, how a character has mastered a skill, how an occupation is the same, how a setting has changed, how a best friend continues to be a scoundrel.

When we think of these scenes, we usually think of being obvious, but you can implement them subtly as well. Maybe we don't show the protagonist giving money to the same homeless people. Instead, we show her pulling her car over to help someone change a tire. This still illustrates "It's better to help others," but it's less obvious.

It's also possible to have more than a pair of scenes. Perhaps you have three that build off each other--one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. In the first, the protagonist steals from the homeless, in the second she ignores them, and in the third she donates to them.

These scenes also don't have to strictly show up at the beginning and end. One could be at the beginning of Act I and at the close of Act I, or at two different places in the middle.

In any case, I think you get the idea of how these work.

There really isn't much more to say about them, but they are a great way to show what has (and what has not) changed through the story. And just to follow up with what I covered last time, these scenes may or may not have conflict--they may be structured as a typical scene, or an incident, or a happening, or whatever. It's not unusual for the first one to be a typical scene in the opening of the story, and the second to be an incident at the close of the story. 

In Coco, we see how Miguel's interest in The Day of the Dead has changed.



2 comments:

  1. I forgot about these types of scenes! Lol.

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    Replies
    1. I did too for a while, then I remembered and stuck them in my queue. I think a lot of times they can come up naturally in less obvious ways, but it's good to be aware of them too.

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