The Opening Moves.

Most writing advice tells you what a scene should accomplish. Raise stakes, reveal character, advance plot. Almost none of it tells you what a scene actually does on the page, moment to moment.

The Opening Moves is six things every good scene does, somehow, somewhere. Not in order. Not all at once. Not every time. But once you can name them, you can find them. And when a scene isn't working, you can usually trace it back to the one that didn't land.

The six, briefly:

1. Place. Where is this scene happening, and what does it feel like?
2. Person. Whose body is moving through that place?
3. Perspective. Whose head are we inside, and what are they noticing?
4. Action. What actually happens, in plain sentences?
5. Voice. How does it sound on the page?
6. Weave. How do these threads pull together by the end?

Some writers use The Opening Moves as a scaffold. Stuck on a blank page, they pick one move, start there, and write into the scene from a single fixed point. Other writers, the ones who already draft in rich sentences, use the framework as a diagnostic. Where did this scene go off? Which move did I skip?

Both uses are right. The framework is a tool, not a method. Use it when it helps. Set it aside when it doesn't.

Over four short emails, we walk you through each move. With working examples from Dorothy L. Sayers, an opening from a novel-in-progress by the school's founder, and a worked revision showing how a basic first draft can be revised into something richer in a second pass.

Works for mystery. Works for romance. Works for whatever you're writing.