Elements of a Scene

Opening/Transition a phrase, paragraph, description, etc. to get reader into the scene; tells where, when, why the scene takes place
Building momentum the scene starts to move through action, dialogue, etc.
Characters each has its own motivation, what he or she wants to get out of the scene or the other character
Dialogue a dance of words between your characters; two people with their own motivations (mis)communicating with each other.
Obstacle

 a resistance that each character faces
pre-existing condition that characters have to overcome
conflict between motivations of characters
Complication(s) change in the situation that changes the motivation or thwarts it if a scene has no complication, no obstacles to overcome, too linear Think of the Rolling Stones song: You can’t always get what…
Struggle without complication, need to overcome, no suspense, no tension
Resolution often is a partial resolution that sets up the conflicts for next scene otherwise it is likely to be the final scene
Half-scene a scene that lacks most of these elements may have an opening, characters, brief action, but no development; it is there to flesh out the narration, to add detail to description to add essential information, by showing it but not to advance the plot on its own may be one line of dialogue

A few more words on Dialogue
People rarely come out and say exactly what we want. We beat around the bush, we allude to what we want, we say one thing and really mean another. Dialogue is usually eliptical. If your characters just say what they want, and answer each other too directly, then there is no movement, no tension in the scene. You almost always have a character ask one question and other character answer a different one. They answer what they think they hear, what they want to hear, but not what the person actually says. Yet if characters in stories really spoke the way we speak in life, the story would be boring. So you can, and need to be more direct in a story than we are in real life. You need to create a balance between eliptical and planned dialogue to avoid having your characters sound like the mouthpieces of the author and still remain interesting.

Narration
Of course when you have a collection of scenes, you can’t just jam them together. You need some kind of glue, and that glue is narrative and summary. Narrative voice is an integral part of the story that analyzes, comments, and ties together the scenes. Narration may be as simple as “Next morning Sue got up. It was a beautiful day.” Or it could be a long, drawn out description of how she felt and what she thought.

Time Management
The most common management of time in a story is simple, straightforward linear, chronological time. Your story might be organized a lot like the scene we just talked about, where the opening scene introduces the main character(s), the next scene develops the action,and then you may have one or two more scenes of complicating the action (rising action) before a climax, and finally a scene of resolution that ties up some of the loose ends.

You might mix also things up a bit in terms of pacing, starting out in the middle of the action and only introducing characters in the second scene, while complicating action. You may not include much resolution. There’s no need to tie up all the loose ends, if you get your characters to the point where we can imagine what change will come later. A scene can be a flash-backs: a scene that takes place before the main present-time narrative abd fills in essential information. A flashback can go back one hour, one day, or years. A scene could be a be flash-forward a, though this is not common and can be difficult for readers to get. (Usually this would only be possible for a reflective narrator.)

How do you indicate shifts like this? As we’ve seen, it is often done with a narrative break, an extra line of space in the text. This can indicate a gap in the narrative that isn’t filled in with narration or summary, it can indicate a major change in time or place, or it can indicate a new perspective or point of view. Therefore, you still need key words to indicate where we are in time.