Structuring a scene...

So it's all starting to make sense.  Don't get me wrong, I still have a lot to learn, but the pieces are staring to fall into place.  I think I'm starting to see the light. When you write a novel, it's not just about the finished piece.  It's about all the little pieces that make up that final finished work.  I grew up in Chicago.  I spent a lot of time at the Art Institute.  Its one of the places you can walk to easily from the train.  As a result, my friends and I would take the train downtown on the weekends and walk to the Art Institute to explore its many exhibits.  When you go into the museum, there is a stairway in front of you.  At the top of the grand stairway, there is a room that houses the most amazing piece of art I have ever seen.  It is A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte  by Geoge Seurat.

This piece exemplifies the idea of the parts making up the whole.  It also shows how important it is to choose the correct parts to ensure the proper flow.  Each individual point works by itself as an individual dot, each image working alone as a beautiful image in and of itself, but then, as you move further and further from the image, the whole picture becomes apparent as a masterpiece.

Likewise, in your novel, each scene should be able to stand alone.  Each scene in your book should have its own purpose for existing.  It should move the story forward.  It should tell it's own story.  It should have its own POV, and the characters should have their own goals.  If your scenes do not do this, then they either need to be rewritten, or they need to be deleted.  No scene, no line, no word, should exist within your book without a purpose.  Each piece exists for a reason and each works with the others to create a masterpiece.