Scenes & Sequels - Anybody have a firm grasp?

As long as scenes move the story forward, you're in good shape. That means no scenes where the character is boiling eggs or taking a dump or skydiving unless it affects the STORY.

And yes, I've heard that each scene should have a beginning (where the goal is stated) a middle, and then a resolution that sets up the next scene. That's all well and good, but very formulaic and can lead to stiff and boring writing if every scene is like this.

For the record, I love formulas, and find that my writing follows them even when I'm not trying. But that's the key: don't try too hard to make things fit. Just keep the story in mind for every word you write.

As for sequels, I've noticed they have kind of phased out over the years, and are more or less incorporated into the scene itself, and therefore harder to pick out as a true sequel.

I tend to think in chapter terms. What is going on in this chapter? What is it intended to show, how will it be shown, etc. Thinking in these terms is akin to what Don Maass calls, "Tension on every page."

If you go to Randy Ingermansen's website Advanced Fiction Writing.com, or Google The Snowflake Method to get there. In his archives he has lots to say about both Sceen/Sequel and MRU's (Motivational/Response Units). Helpful stuff.

I'm struggling with this a lot, too, so I'll be watching this thread.

What I'm trying to do as I'm revising:

Figure out what each character in the scene's doing at this moment, broken down into small pieces. So:

Main goal: he wants to fight the oppressors and free his country (or whatever).

*To achieve that, he wants to keep his own people fed, armed, etc.; harrass any new initiatives the enemy starts; make the enemy believe there's nothing going on and it's not worth their while to poke into dark corners, etc.

**To achieve those, he wants to raid supply trains (food/arms/harrassment); watch key people to get advance information; etc.
**>>This is where I can start breaking it into scenes. Attack a supply train. Aftermath of the attack, distributing the loot. Disguise himself to travel home -- which throws in personal motivations (wanting to see his family without endangering them). And so on. Each scene supports the main goal, but each has its own mini-goal and conflict.

Beyond that, ah, I'll let you know when I figure it out! It's slow going, even with my specific goals (ha) in mind.

The goal/conflict/disaster format of a scene (Dwight Swain) is just a guideline to make sure you, the author, are always aware of your story's forward momentum and that you never let your main character completely relax (tension on every page). That's the whole idea behind a story in the first place: Someone wants something, but other things and/or people are getting in the way. So for the character to reach his end goal, he'll have to fight for it, scene by scene. The GCD formula just keeps you on the right track. The point is not to write a story about the land of the happy people. That's not interesting. Characters with problems are interesting. They're the kind of people readers can relate to and care about.

A scene is basically a fictional unit in which something happens. A sequel is the fictional unit following many scenes in which the characters think about or discuss what happened in the preceding scene or scenes and decide what to do next.

I feel it's too artificial to expect a character to have a clear goal for every scene. Sometimes he will, sometimes he won't. Sometimes he'll have a goal that extends over several scenes, with the occasional sequel in between where he assesses his progress and changes tactics. Sometimes a scene is more about revealing character or setting the (well) scene, or both, with just a hint of plot development.

In my opinion, the best way to develop a plot from scratch is to put the right character in the right situation. Generally this character is the one who will care most about the outcome of the situation, or who will at the least care about it a lot. How does this character want the story to end? Can you throw a lot of increasingly high hurdles in front of him, requiring him to change or grow in some manner along the way to success or failure? If you can muster the character, the situation, the hurdles, and an arc of growth or change, you should be able to develop a sound and involving plot.

Each scene should have a conflict of some kind. (Says she, having broken this rule more than once.) The goal doesn't have to be stated up front, sometimes the goal is acquired during the scene. If your character has gone for a walk in the woods and is attacked, his goal shifts immediately from taking a walk to staying alive. Taking a walk does not make for an interesting scene if that's all that happens. If he is taking the walk to work out some issues and has some pretty good arguments with himself in his head, that can be sufficient conflict, if you write it well.

The point is, someone wants to accomplish something, big or small. Something or somebody gets in the way. Things have to be worked out, often unsatisfactorily. Drinking tea, looking out the window and meditating on life is not the stuff of gripping writing. So shake it up. Have her see something truly disturbing when she looks out the window, something that obliges her to take action. Or the stepkids run in screaming, disrupting her all too rare quiet time yet again, which leads to a major fight with her husband and she storms out the door, her entire marriage in question. Or whatever. Her only goal was to have a quiet cup of tea, but that got thoroughly messed up and opens up bigger questions and conflicts.

I hope these rather disjointed thoughts are a wee bit helpful.

Another way to look at is that you spend the first third of the book getting your character up a tree, the second third throwing rocks at him, and the final third getting him down. LOL! This is in reference to a 3 act screenplay, but a novel isn't much different in structure.

Regarding conflict, I once heard of an attendee at a workshop complain to the instructor: "But all my character wants to do is sit in her chair and pet her cat." To which the instructor replied, "Kick her off the chair and shoot her cat, then see what she does." So you see the object is to force your character to act since she, or he, is the engine driving the story.

I see a scene as a unit of tension. It's not simply that something happens, but that something interesting happens. I divide "interesting" into action and reaction:

Action: Some character tries something difficult, dangerous or risky

Reaction (aka "sequel"): Some character faces a dilemma

In each case there should be a situation, an objective, something opposing that objective, and some sort of risk.

Action examples include all the things you'd see in an "action adventure" story, such as leaping between buildings, defusing bombs, car chases... but they also include less physical situations like a schoolkid waiting outside the Principal's office, or someone proposing to their loved one - the risk needn't be physical. It can be emotional, social, psychological.

Reaction examples include any significant choice that the character can make. The choice can be conscious (e.g. deciding which suitor to marry) or subconscious (e.g. favouring one friend over another); it can be a logical or an emotional choice. The main thing is that the choice has consequences that affect the stakes in the story.

I personally like every situation to have some action or reaction in it - I find "scenes" that simply impart information are usually dull. But scenes often need to do other things as well as action/reaction. In particular they'll also establish character, setting, background, mood or unfold plot. It's possible to do all of these while creating tension. Here's how:

If you think of the basic questions who, how, what, why, where and when, all this information will be imparted somehow in each scene. Some of these can be used to create tension while others can be used to impart the other information. E.g. 'who' is trying to kill the investigator, 'how' does the heroine get off the train tracks, 'why' has the character's friend tried to kill him, 'where' have grandma's spectacles gone, 'when' can the orphan next see a meal? You only need one 'tension question' per scene; you can use the other questions to establish the other parts of your scene.

Hope this helps!

Star said:

I've read tons of articles on this, and I still don't fully get it. They say a character should have a goal in each scene. Huh? I thought the character has a goal that should be achieved by the end of the book.

Click to expand...

Yes, the character has that overall story goal that is acheived (or not) by the end of the story.

Along the way the character has a hierarchy of smaller goals that fit into the story goal...

Let's say the MC lives in Venezuela, and his father lives in Boston. The MC's father is dying, and the MC wants to reach him to express his love while he still can.

In order to accomplish that overall story goal, the MC will have to travel to Boston. That's a goal, too, subordinate to the story goal.

And in order to travel to Boston, he will have buy a plane ticket and renew his expired passport. Those are goals, subordinate to the goal of traveling to Boston.

And in order to renew his passport, he will have to make an emergency appointment with the relevant local authorities...

As you slice the goals into finer and finer subgoals, you reach the point where the immediate goal is small enough in scope (it can be done in one place, in a short amount of time, with a small set of people) that you could write a scene about it. That's a scene goal.

Swain's Scene/Sequel scheme works at that level. In a Scene, the viewpoint character tries (and usually failing) to accomplish one of those scene-level goals. In a Sequel, the character reacts to the disaster that ended the previous Scene, sorts through the options (all lousy), and makes a decision about what to do next to take a step toward the story goal. That decision of what to do next becomes the scene-level goal for the next Scene.

I really like what Jim Butcher has to say about scenes and sequels. His livejournal has some great advice about writing: http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/.

Star said:

So can a character begin with one goal and get side-tracked by another "goal" (that ends up being her downfall)?

Click to expand...

Oh, definitely! That's what obstacles and conflicts and antagonists do: They thwart the MC's immediate goals so that the MC has to dig deeper and try something else.

In other words, I'm trying to fake the audience out. Does this make sense?

Click to expand...

You could use this stuff to fake the audience out, but that's not the main idea. Mostly you use it to reveal the MC's true character. It does that by stripping away all of the MC's easy options, and forcing the MC to make harder and harder decisions...

The MC first tries easiest thing -- the MC's habitual response -- and it doesn't work. Then the next easiest thing fails, too. The choices become more difficult to make, until they put the MC into a hopeless dilemma. The MC must make a horribly painful choice and that choice tells us (and the MC) who the MC really is, what the MC's values really are.

So you could use it to mislead the reader. But the main idea is to use it to force the MC to show us who she really is.

Dale

I think a scene has to have two things: interest (the reader should want to read it) and momentum (the sense the story is heading somewhere).

"Conflict" and "Tension" are the easiest ways to achieve interest*. They don't necessarily provide momentum. Momentum isn't really a feature of a scene, but rather how the scenes are stacked one after another, so that the story seems to be building.

-----------

*"Conflict" and "Tension" have become such items of gospel that people will read any scene that works and somehow detect these qualities: "Well, he's breathing...the tension comes from worrying that he might stop!"

Plenty of other thiings work, including humor, grief, catharsis, or just plain fascination. But conflict and tension are the easiest to pull off.

Here's my checklist for scenes:

A scene should have 3 reasons to be in the book:

1) It must reveal character (in at least one of these ways).
i. Dramatically illustrate a character’s progress toward the goal or provide an experience which changes the character’s goal.
ii. Bring a character into conflict with opposing forces.
iii. Provide a character with an experience that strengthens his motivation or changes his motivation.
2) Reveals and moves the plot forward.
3) Locates the character in time and place.