Scene, summary, and exposition are three key tools in fiction that are used to advance a story and create a believable and engaging world for the reader. These elements work together to create a pace and rhythm in a story and can be used in different ways to achieve different effects.

Scene is a detailed and vivid moment-to-moment description of action that takes place in a story. Scenes are typically made up of dialogue, action, and description, and they are the building blocks of a story. Scenes are used to bring the story to life by creating an immersive experience for the reader. They allow the reader to see and feel the world of the story, as if they were there. Scenes usually range between a few lines to several pages. If a period of time is central to the plot, contains character development or a strong emotional reaction, or is otherwise interesting, it belongs in scene. When someone is telling you “Show don’t tell,” what they usually mean is “Put it in scene.” And they’re usually right, but the thing is, writing in scene is not efficient, and it’s not the only tool in your toolbox.Sometimes a bit of “telling” is necessary to keep the focus of the story where it should be. Narrative summary is a condensed description of events that continue to move a story forward. Good candidates for narrative summary include content that would be tedious to write in scene (or aren’t the main concern of the story—for example, the apocalypse isn’t usually covered in the post-apocalyptic genre even if it’s not tedious, because the aftermath is the concern of the story) but are necessary to understand the plot. Tedious and unnecessary content shouldn’t be in the story at all. Summaries are used to condense time, to provide background information, or to transition between scenes. For example, instead of “She stood, walked to the door, placed her hand on the knob, and turned, pulling on the door to open it, before she walked into the hallway” one could simply write “She left the room” and the reader would fill in the blanks. Summaries usually take between one to three sentences. Any longer than that, and you risk losing the reader’s attention. If you cannot summarize in fewer than three sentences, you might consider using scene to convey the information instead.Exposition is a method of revealing information about a story’s setting, characters, or plot. Exposition can be used to provide background information about a character, to introduce a new setting, or to explain the rules of a fictional world. Exposition is presented immersively in dialogue, description, or action. Think of it as hinting to your reader. For example:Grandma’s loud, braying laugh filled the room before she swept through the doorway, chattering on the phone with her old bandmate. I cringed. Though I loved her dearly, Grandma was an assault on the senses even when you weren’t hungover. Her custom pink, glittery Bulgari sunglasses perched atop her bleached-platinum bob, and the spots on her leopard print leggings swam before my eyes.She took one look at me and covered the mic on her phone, whispering loudly, “There’s some Pedialyte in the fridge, sweetie. Help yourself.”Exposition shouldn’t take long. Ideally, it would only be a word to a few words in a sentence. Using just a few words, I conveyed in scene that Grandma is a wealthy rockstar who keeps hangover remedies around. We don’t need a scene of Grandma up on the stage to convey that she’s a rockstar if the focus of the story is on, say, the main character’s romance. On the other hand, if Grandma falls off the stage and breaks her hip halfway through the story, that would be worth a scene given the impact that it has emotionally on the main character.Scene, summary, and exposition are all important elements in writing that are used to advance a story and create a believable and engaging world for the reader. A complete piece of prose will need some combination of the three to feel balanced.