Scene Structure

Last time we had a craft session we looked at scene openings. So, we've opened our scene, now what? Our readers and anchored and engaged, but what about the rest of the scene? We've got a whole lot of blank paper and a need to fill it. It helps if you know the structure. The skeleton to hang the words on. 

I’d like to thank Randy Ingermanson for the structure that follows (and apologies where I’ve grabbed straight from his website). You can get more detail on Randy’s website – so go there, what I’ve got here is just the basics. I’d also like to say Randy’s an excellent speaker if you ever get a chance to hear him. Thanks Randy!

Randy breaks a scene down into two parts: The scene & the sequel. However since we’re talking about scene’s calling one part a scene is a little confusing (they're terms he got from Dwight Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. I like to think of moving through a scene bite by bite, so I refer to these two parts as Bite 1 and Bite 2.
Bite 1 has the following three-part pattern:

1. Goal                2. Conflict                   3. Disaster

Bite 2 has the following three-part pattern:

1. Reaction          2. Dilemma                  3. Decision

What does that mean? Let’s break it down.

Goal: 

A Goal is what your POV character wants at the beginning of the Scene. The Goal must be specific and clearly definable. The reason your POV character must have a Goal is that it makes your character proactive, not passively waiting on events. 

Your character is going after what they want. It's a simple fact that any character who wants something desperately is an interesting character. Even if they’re not nice, they’re interesting. 

Your character’s goals don’t have to be big, “Save the President, or Catch the killer”, they can be small “Get the groceries and get home before favourite TV show, or “Eat lunch today instead or working through”. As long as they have a goal. Because, and this leads us to the next piece of the pattern..

Conflict:

Conflict is the series of obstacles your POV character faces on the way to reaching their Goal. If your character reaches the Goal with no Conflict, then the reader is bored. Your reader wants to struggle! No victory has any value if it comes too easy. 

Nalini Singh on her website says: Be mean to your characters.

When it comes to our characters, the easy way out is ALWAYS the wrong way. Our characters have to earn their victories and they have to earn the reader’s respect by fighting when things are hard. Readers need to care about the characters and the decisions they make, the outcomes.

Disaster:

A Disaster is a failure to let your POV character reach their Goal. 

When a Scene ends in victory, your reader feels no reason to turn the page. You can have success in a scene, you have to, or your character is never achieving anything. 

But you need to ask what else is happening in the scene. If things are going well, your reader might as well go to bed. Make something awful happen. Hang your POV character off a cliff and your reader will turn the page to see what happens next. 

Okay that’s Bite 1. (goal, conflict, disaster) Now let's look at Bite 2 . . .

Bite 2 has the three parts Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision. Why? Because when you've just been hit with a setback, you don’t just rush out and try something new. You've got to recover. That's basic psychology.

Reaction: 

A Reaction is the emotional follow-through to a Disaster. When something awful happens, you're staggering for awhile, off-balance, out of kilter. show your POV character reacting viscerally to their Disaster. 

Show them hurting. Give your reader a chance to hurt with your characters. This is not a time for action, it's a time for re-action. Eventually, your POV character needs to get a grip. To take stock. To look for options. That let’s us to…

Dilemma: 

A Dilemma is a situation with no good options. If your Disaster was a real Disaster, there aren't any easy choices. Your POV character must have a real dilemma. This gives your reader a chance to worry, which is good. Your reader must be wondering what can possibly happen next. Let your POV character work through the choices. Eventually, let them come to the least-bad option . . .

Decision: 

A Decision is the act of making a choice among several options. This is important, because it lets your POV character become proactive again. People who never make decisions are boring people. They wait around for somebody else to decide. 

So make your character decide, and make it a good decision. Make it one your reader can respect. Make it risky, but make it have a chance of working. Or if you make it a bad decision, make sure your reader knows why your character is doing it. Do that, and your reader will have to turn the page, because now your POV character has a new Goal. 

So: goal, conflict, disaster…followed by…reaction, dilemma, decision.

I find this most useful if I’m struggling with a scene. 

NB: Your bite’s don’t have to follow one by one, they can be interspersed with the other scenes…other character’s POV etc… to add suspense. E.g. The reaction to the disaster can be held off as we flash over to another character, this leaves the first character in a state of disaster and the reader wanting to know what happens next.

Little example below, see if you can spot the pattern: goal, conflict, disaster… reaction, dilemma, decision

e.g. 

Bob pressed harder on the accelerator, he had to get to the hospital before Meredith gave birth or she’d never forgive him. 
Without indicating an SUV in the next lane swerved in front of him. Bob slammed on his brakes and swore out loud, berating the other driver.
The impatient SUV swerved lanes again and Bob’s eyes widened as he watched helplessly as the car behind the SUV failed to slow in time. Metal crashed and screeched as the two car’s collided. Bob’s foot hit the breaks again, as the cars slid partway into his lane.
Bob was trembling as his car came to a stop. He stared in horror at the mangled cars beside him. 
Shit, what was he going to do now? He should stop and check to see if anyone was hurt, call an ambulance, and wait to make a statement. He glance at his watch, but damn it he needed to get to the hospital. 
Reluctantly, he pulled around the smash and onto the shoulder. Parking the car, he opened his door while dialling 111, he needed to check for survivors.

Goal: hospital before baby born
Conflict: Stupid SUV in pulling in front & him swearing
Disaster: accident
Reaction: shock at accident
Dilemma: help or hospital
Decision: stay to help (this could well lead to the next conflict as he’s not going to be late to hospital)

Anyway that’s a little look at scene structure. 

I suggest you go to Advance Fiction Writing for more – Randy even breaks it down lower, the pieces within the pieces.

On top of all that, it goes almost without saying, if this doesn't work for you - don't do it! Writers have their own ways of doing things, this may not be the way for you. To be honest I don't really go through this as I work on a scene, the time I find it most valuable is if I'm stuck or if a scene isn't working.

Happy Writing.

25 ways to F*** with your characters

25 ways to F*** with your characters (or building conflict one cruelty at a time).

As storyteller, you are god. And to be frank, if you want the story to be interesting, you’re not a particularly nice god. After all if life is nothing but a pretty, sunny day in the park, without even a hint of rain clouds in the distance - well, that's just not very exciting to read is it? With that in mind I rather liked this list:

1. Your Proxy: The Antagonist

Gods have avatars, mortal or semi-mortal beings that exist on earth to embody the deity’s agenda. Avatars — be it Krishna, Jesus, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man — are the quite literal hand of god within the material plane. And so it is that the antagonist is the avatar of the storyteller, at least in terms of fucking with the other characters. A well-written and fully-realized antagonist is your proxy in the storyworld who steps in and is the hand holding the garden trowel that continues to get shoved up the protagonist’s most indelicate orifice. The antagonist stands actively in the way of the protagonist’s deeds and desires.

2. The Mightiest Burden

The audience and the character must know the stakes on the table — “If you don’t win this poker game, your grandmother will lose her beloved pet orangutan, Orange Julius.” But as the storyteller, you can constantly adjust those stakes, turning up the heat, the fumes, the volume until the character’s carrying an Atlas-like burden on his shoulders. The world’s fate suddenly rests in his hands. Character fails at his task and he loses his wife, his family, and all the nuclear missiles in the world will suddenly launch. In unrelated news: Orange Julius is the best name for an orangutan ever. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. Show your work.

3. Never Tell Me The Odds

Impossible odds are a powerful way to fuck with a character. “It’s you versus that whole army of sentient spam-bots, dude. And they’ve got your girlfriend.” It certifies that the task at hand is an epic one, and is the dividing line between hero and zero. Confirming heroism means beating those odds. Confirming mortality means falling to them. Note that a character doesn’t always have to beat the odds. Failure is an option.

4. Torn Between Two Horses

Drop the character smack dab between two diametrically opposed choices. A character is torn between a love for her country and a love for her family. She’s torn between her obsessive devotion to science and her religious upbringing. She’s torn between saving the life of Orange Julius the genetically-modified super-orangutan or giving all the world’s children infinite ice cream. Okay, maybe not that last one. Point is, tie your character to two (or more!) difficult choices, and let those horses run like motherfuckers.

5. Life On The QT, The Down-Low, The No-No-Nuh-Uh

Give the character an untenable secret life: a forbidden romance, a taboo, a transgression. Confirm that the revelation of this secret life will destroy her. “As soon as they find out you’re really an android, Mary, I can no longer protect you.” The character must constantly protect her secret life, must constantly work against revelation. And you as storyteller will constantly threaten that, won’t you? Because you’re evil.

6. Deny Success With Speedbumps, Roadblocks, Snarling Tigers

This one? So easy. Whenever your character reaches for That Thing He Wants (a girl, a cookie, world peace, a leprechaun’s little hat), slap his face. Throw a tiger in his path. Chop off his hand. Thwart his every grope for the brass ring. That said, don’t let your story become torture porn. A character needs smaller iterative successes to match the longer, larger failures. “I didn’t get the leprechaun’s hat, but I got one of his little shoes. We can use it to track him.”

7. Go Down The “Do Not Want” Checklist

You frequently hear that a character is defined in part by what he wants, but you will find it useful to take the opposite tack, too. Take your character. Dangle that poor fucker by the ears. Give him a good look-over and pick, mmm, say, five things he does not want. Outcomes he fears. He doesn’t want his wife to leave him. He doesn’t want to die young. He doesn’t want to have his penis stolen by wizards. Now, your job, as Evil Mastermind Storyteller is to constantly put the character in danger of these outcomes coming true.

8. A Victory That Tastes Of Wormwood

An old classic: “We finally got the leprechaun’s hat! Ha ha, now we’ve the little basta — OH MY GOD THE HAT IS FILLED WITH BEES.” Die Hard has exquisite false victories. John McClane succeeds in calling the authorities and ultimately ends up causing a bigger shitstorm as a result.

9. Storyteller As Robber Fly

Everybody has something they love. Identify those things. Then take one away. Or more than one! “Sorry, dear character, in the fire you lost your house, your husband, and your mystical manrikigusari given to you by your immortal sensei.” You have a choice, here, of paths, a divergence of “lost now” and “lost forever.” Lost now intimates the story can continue, and in fact, the reclamation of lost things is a story unto itself. Lost forever moves the conflict inward, where a character must learn to deal with that loss.

10. Tickle Them With A Ticking Clock

If you ever wish to squeeze my heart and cause my blood pressure to build so that my brain is smothered by swollen arteries, give me a ticking clock time limit in a video game. Freaks me out. Do that to your character. Throw him, his goals, his story, between the turning gears of a ticking clock. “You have one week to save Orange Julius from the leprechaun cult. After that? He becomes one of them.”

11. Beat The Donkey Piss Out Of Them

Again we call upon John McClane, who ends up basically sticking a gun to his back in his own blood at the end of Die Hard. A simple way of dicking with your character is to hurt them. Again. And again.

12. Shot Through The Heart, And You’re To Blame

That being said, a broken jaw, shattered foot, or stapled labia has nothing on the betrayal by a loved one. Maybe it comes down to a simple, “I’m leaving you in this, the moment you need me most,” or maybe it’s, “For your own good, I’ve alerted the police. They’re on their way. I’m so sorry. Now hand me the orangutan.” However it shakes out, the treachery of a loved one is a deeply twisting knife.

13. Shattering Lives With Your Story Hammer

Think about all the pieces of the puzzle that add up to a picture of “you.” Now, do the same for your character. Imagine all those identifiers: lover, father, friend, sheriff, amateur chef, jazz fiend, leprechaun hunter. Now, break the puzzle apart. Throw away most of the pieces. Calamity and cataclysm rob the character of his fundamental identifiers. Force him to question who he even is anymore. What impels him forward? How does he rebuild? What is rebuilt?

14. Shatter Their Preconceived Notions

A deeper, more internal version of the last: take what the character thinks she knows — maybe about her family, her government, her childhood — and throw that paradigm out on its buttbone. The character’s comprehension of events and elements has been all wrong. And not in a good way. The character must respond. Must act. Can’t just go on living like everything’s the same.

15. Motherfucking Love Triangle

The love triangle. Never a more hackneyed, overwrought device — but, just the same, a device that works like a charm if invoked with skill and nuance. Becky loves Rodrigo and has since they were young. But Orange Julius vies for her attention and Rodrigo is off fighting the Spam-Bots in the Twitter War of 2015. And Orange Julius is one sexy orangutan. Who does she choose? Swoon! You needn’t stop at three participants. What about a love rhombus, aka the “lovetangle?” Point is, this is a more specific version of forcing the character into a difficult choice. Do it right and the audience will be right there with you, wearing their shirts, TEAM RODRIGO or TEAM SEXY ORANGUTAN. Gang wars in the streets.

See the rest of Chuck's list here.