Scene

Scene according to Cambridge Dictionary is “a part of a play or film in which the action stays in one place for a continuous period of time”(“Scene”).

A scene is made with a union of different elements such as: setting, dialogue, character and a plot.

In a literary context: A scene is the part/section of a novel where character/s engage in dialogue or action.

Here is an example of a scene in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (2019).

Examples of scenes in literature:

1. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

“Nikki, the name we finally gave my younger daughter, is not an abbreviation; it was a compromise I reached with her father. For paradoxically it was he who wanted to give her a Japanese name and I – perhaps out of some selfish desire not to be reminded of the past – insisted on an English one.”

2. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

“Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his 14th birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late.”

3. Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell

“Her first name was India – she was never able to get used to it. It seemed to her that her parents must have been thinking of someone else when they named her. Or were they hoping for another sort of daughter? As a child she was often on the point of inquiring, but time passed, and she never did.”

Here are more examples of a scene in famous scripts:

The Dark Night by Christopher Nolan

The blade runner by Denis Villeneuve

For some extra information about a scene, here is a link:

https://writingcooperative.com/what-is-scene-in-a-novel-8f08df1dba94#:~:text=A%20scene%20is%20a%20section,within%20a%20chapter%20are%20related.

SOURCES:

“Literary Scene Collocation: Meaning and Examples of Use.” Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/example/english/literary-scene.

Strohm, Paul. "The social and literary scene" The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer (1997): 1-14.

“Scene.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scene.

-María José Cinta Velázquez