EMMA - Resources here for you. WIN THAT PRIZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is a scene? A scene is a unit of action and interaction taking place more or less in real-time and centering on some event of plot development.

Let's take that apart.  The important elements are:

         Action– Something is happening!  There is movement and progress and change during this time.  Where there is action, there is danger of some kind.

         Interaction– The viewpoint character is interacting with other characters and/or the environment.  This will cause sparks.  The interaction will force more action on the viewpoint character.

         Real-time– A scene usually takes place in a continuous span of time, with a starting time point and an ending time point.  (For instance, "This scene begins when she starts looking for her father, and ends when she learns from the cop that he has been arrested.") This sounds basic, but it's essential.  Unless the reader sees the action unfolding (that is, not in retrospect or summary), she will lose that important sense that this event is really happening.

         Event– Every scene should center on an actual event, something that happens– not a dream, not a flashback, not a passage of introspection.  A character is doing something, experiencing something, not just in her own mind, but in the external reality of the story.
     That can mean she's taking an action, discovering a secret, encountering another character, having a conversation, creating something new, enduring a trauma– but you should be able to identify what event has taken place in this scene.

         Plot development– Events are important because they are concrete and real and have consequences.  Most important, they have consequences on the plot.  This event, this scene, should cause a development in the story.

All this adds up to CHANGE.

  SCENE-BUILDER QUESTIONS:

1. What is going to change in this scene?  How will the world of the story be different when it's done?
In a romance, also, how will the relationship be different?  Think about  the state of this character, this situation, this relationship is in the beginning of the scene.  How are the events of the scene going to change that state?  If they're allies at the beginning of the scene, for example, scene events might lead them to become at odds by the end.  Remember, change is all-important-- otherwise the scene might as well not happen.

2. What is the central event of this scene?  How does it affect the overall plot?
Every scene should be built around a concrete event which somehow changes the course of the plot.  If you make sure that you have a real event in each scene, you'll find that your pacing picks up, because there's little "downtime"-- the characters and the readers are constantly facing change.

3.  Who is the protagonist of this scene?
That might not be the protagonist of the entire book. Who drives this scene?  Whose viewpoint does the reader share?  Who has the overriding goal and encounters the conflict?

4.  Think of the overall external plot conflict. How does it manifest in this scene? (For example, the external conflict is the murder, and she's trying to trap the murderer.)  You can improve your pacing by making sure that the external conflict causes some problem in nearly every scene.

5. Think of the overall internal conflict.  How does it manifest in this scene?  (For example, she is obsessed with the past, so she is prejudiced against Wanda who injured her in the past.)  You can deepen your story by making sure that the internal conflict that this character is grappling with develops in nearly every scene.

6.  When the scene opens, what is this character's goal?  What does he/she hope to accomplish during this period of time?  What's the agenda?
Example: "I want to trap Wanda into confessing to the murder.  So I'm going to meet her in a public place so she can't murder me, and I'm going to ask her a bunch of leading questions, and confront her with my evidence, and then she's going to break down and confess-- on my hidden tape recorder."

7.  What external obstacles can character encounter in trying to fulfill this agenda?
Look for obstacles in the setting, in the antagonist, in allies who won't cooperate, cars that won't start, etc.  These usually don't qualify as conflicts, but they're certainly complications, and that can make the scene much more fun, by testing the character's resolve and resourcefulness.

8.  What internal obstacles is this character likely to encounter in trying to fulfill this agenda?
For example, she's a terrible liar, and she's going to have to lie during this scene.  Use the internal obstacles to individualize the character's response to the scene events.

9. What goes wrong with the agenda?  What happens that he/she doesn't anticipate?
Think of the scene as building towards some surprise, something the viewpoint character doesn't expect.

10.  Does he/she achieve the goal?  Bickham's answers:
Yes, but....  (but something else happens, something unanticipated)
No...  (so they have to try something else)
No and furthermore... (no, and something even worse happens!)

11. What is the setting of the scene?  Can you strengthen that?
For example, a face-to-face confrontation is likely to be stronger than a phone conversation.  An encounter in the middle of the state fair as a storm is building might be more powerful than one in a nice restaurant.
How can you use the setting to increase the tension/conflict of the scene?

12.  Assemble the basic events of the scene into the most powerful sequence.
Think of "greater risk"-- the events should require the character to take greater and greater risks.
(For example, Meggie has to say more and more inflammatory things to get Wanda to confess; she has to surreptitiously fiddle with the tape recorder to keep it running; she has to enlist Mike in her mission even though he's a dangerous ally....)

13.  Plot the emotional arc of the scene.
Where does the character start emotionally?  (Example: nervous but hopeful.)
How does that manifest in her actions? (She checks the tape recorder three times; she starts to imagine the police dragging Wanda away. She speaks cockily when Wanda appears.)
How does her emotional state change in response to the events of the scene?  Any emotional change should be preceded by some event or action or realization that happens within the scene.
How does this character end up emotionally?  It should be different than how she started.  (Now she feels deflated and foolish.)

14. When you finish the draft, how can you revise for greater power?
Try reorganizing the events for ascending risk.  Find new ways to use the setting to increase the danger.  Make things harder on the character– try the "near-miss" disaster to create more tension (that is, she almost gets caught; he almost knocks over the Ming vase but catches it just in time).

15. At the end of the scene, what has changed:
 – in the plot?
 – in the character?
 – in the relationships?
  

 

STORY STRUCTURE: PART ONE

I'm not really a very structured writer, or rather, what structure I write with is internalized. Subconsciously, and later consciously, as an English major and teacher, I analyzed stories for their structure. All that had an effect. Now, though I can't usually outline a structure ahead of time, give me a story start and I'll find "the story within" and "the structure within". It's a modest talent, but a useful one in critiquing.

Trouble is, it doesn't help much when I'm writing an article about structure! That is, I don't seem to have an existing external edifice, if you will pardon the alliteration, like "the three-act structure" or "the twelve-step journey" that are so popular in Hollywood and make so much sense when I see them all laid out. They make sense, that is, until I try to write like that. I know others have done wonders writing books based on the twelve steps of the hero's journey, but I get antsy, and very soon my hero is skipping Step 7 and rearranging Steps 9, 10, and 11....

What works best for me is to find the organic structure within the story, whatever that is, and explore the various ways I can develop that. This works well in critiquing too-- frequently I say, "Well, what your hero has to overcome is his detachment and his belief that emotions are dangerous, and so he's going to have to be forced to feel by the events of the plot--" and the writer will cry, "You must be reading my mind!" No, I'm reading the story, or what there is of it so far, or rather reading the character and imagining what will get him launched on his own journey.

THE STORY JOURNEY

Joseph Campbell, who analyzed myth to come up with "the hero's journey", and Chris Vogler, who applied Campbell's work to fiction-writing in The Writer's Journey, had the right of it. The story is a journey, the journey of the central character (the protagonist) through a highly charged series of significant events which reshape his or her life.

I don't think every journey is going to follow the twelve steps outlined by Vogler and Campbell (not every hero is reluctant, for one thing), but every writer can benefit from keeping the journey model in mind. Where is your protagonist going-- that is, where do YOU want the protagonist to go (that's not necessarily where the character wants to go!)? This is often a psychological journey, not just progress towards and achievement of a goal. What does he need to overcome? How does she need to change? What conflicts must be resolved?

Of course, the protagonist has a journey in the external plot. She is going to solve that murder, or grab that Holy Grail, or win that promotion. That's her conscious, chosen journey. Your task as a writer is often to send her on sidetrip, an internal journey.

In protagonist-centered popular fiction, this journey will generally be towards greater maturity or self-understanding or happiness-- that is, towards a better life or a better self. (In "litfic"-- contemporary literary fiction-- the journey might be towards despair or existential angst or dissolution, but still usually involves some personal or life change.) The protagonist is different at the end than at the beginning, can do something more than she could do at the opening of the book, or has earned something valuable (like love, or self-acceptance, or a home).

Here's my radical thesis: The primary purpose of the plot is to give the protagonist a reason to change in the direction she needs to change.

In other words, that clever murder mystery is more than an intellectual puzzle for the reader. It can serve as a vehicle for the character's journey to growth.

This doesn't mean you have to give up your clever, complex plot-- only that you give it the additional purpose of character-propulsion. That's really easier than it sounds. Just think of it this way: What protagonist could most benefit from the events of this plot?

Now benefit is a funny word to use, because your protagonist is very likely not going to perceive these events as beneficient. In fact, he might very well think he's been cursed by the gods! That's because we generally don't change unless we're forced to, especially if the change is towards the sort of growth that will require more strength and endurance and courage from us. After all, if it were easy to become better people, we'd do it in a minute, right? But it's not. It's hard to overcome the inertia of life, of habit, of familiarity, to take on the challenge of change. That's why we need to give our characters the external conflict that will cause them, once and for all, to confront their internal conflicts and resolve them.

THE JOURNEY INSIDE

Let's take an example-- the priest sleuth. Say you start with the idea of a mystery thriller that takes place in the upper realms of the Catholic church. The murder victim is the cardinal. The murder site is the cathedral, the time of death sometime before Easter Mass, the discovery of the body just after Mass, as the priest exits from the sanctuary. You've got a hot premise (murder in the cathedral!) and a noteworthy situation-- the church hierarchy. And you've got a good plot-- the cardinal was murdered by the bishop who hoped to be named in his place. And there's that other essential component, the investigator/sleuth, who just happens to be the priest who discovers the body.

There's your external plot. That will guide you to all sorts of other elements:

Story question: Who killed the cardinal?

Protagonist goal: Identify the murderer.

Protagonist motivation: Justice.

Plot journey: Priest is drawn into investigating when police arrest a street kid for the crime. He searches for clues at the murder site, then starts asking questions among the employees of the cathedral, and knows he's onto something when someone tries to kill him. He sifts through the evidence he's attained and realizes the murderer had to be someone high up in the archdiocese. In a climactic scene, he gathers together all the bishops and archbishops and tricks the murderer into betraying himself.

Good plot. Good sleuth. But something's missing.... emotional involvement.

If you want to give the readers more than a merely intellectual experience, where they try to figure out the mystery before the sleuth does, you need more than an external plot journey.

If you want the mystery to be more than just a blip in your sleuth's life, you need to send him on a psychological or emotional journey too.

That's where the internal conflict comes in. That's whatever internal issue or problem the plot forces the protagonist to confront. This adds an additional layer to your story, and greater coherence and plausibility too. After all, most people aren't driven to risk their lives to unmask a murderer-- that's why we pay for a police force. This sleuth, if he's to be more than a serial mystery-solver, has to have a good reason, however unconscious, for taking on this task.

And that reason is to grow. Whether he knows it or not, the priest's life and self are constrained by some internal demon. Only the dramatic and extreme events of this external plot will be enough to make him confront that demon and resolve it, or risk letting a murderer go free.

STORY COHERENCE

The goal of story coherence -- everything in the story working together for a profound overall effect-- is served when the plot events (so dry and generic above) are developed to bring this particular protagonist's internal conflict to the surface. While the basic structure will remain the same (the sleuth will search for clues, put them together, unmask the murderer), the individual scenes will take on greater individuality and force as they not only progress towards solving the murder, but also reveal and resolve the internal conflict.

That is, the specific internal conflict will shape the course of the plot journey, and heighten the dramatic tension of the story events.

So let's look at what's going on within those story events listed above. Right away I notice that the murder is an authority figure. Maybe the police think it's just a particularly nasty example of random street violence, or an unusually tasteful burglar after the gold altar fixtures, but in the end the sleuth will reveal that the real murderer is a man of God, indeed, a Big Man in Church. So there's an echoing theme of the bringing down of authority-- the bishop brings down the cardinal, and the priest brings down the bishop.

I don't know about you, but I find that intriguing. And I want to explore that theme of authority. I can do that by figuring out the priest-sleuth's atttitude towards authority and making that a significant motivation (if unconscious) in his decision to investigate the murder.

This is where I start to individualize. For example, the priest can be a rebel. He hates authority. He doesn't like the power bishops and cardinals have. He thinks they waste the power of the church and the money too on trivial things like expensive vestments and fine Communion wines. He wants to bring the church back to its roots among the poor and outcast.

It's no surprise that he will be willing to take on the church hierarchy. He does it every day of the week, after all. So he takes on the establishment, searches boldly for the facts, refuses to be intimidated by the assembled power of the bishopry. And at great risk to himself and his career, he forges ahead until he discovers and reveals the truth in all its sordid glory-- that the bishop he despises most killed the cardinal, out of greed and ambition, just as he suspected.

Ummm.... what's wrong with this story?

Why doesn't it work?

After all, the rebel priest has motivation in his burning passion for truth and justice, and he's got conflict in his constant flouting of authority and the retaliatory actions of the church hierarchy. Isn't that enough?

Well, no. Has he learned anything? Not that authority can be bad. He knew that already. Not that rebels encounter opposition from those in power. He's already experienced that in his other battles with the bigwigs. How has he changed? He's probably a bit more smug, since his claim that authority is corrupt and hypocritical and unworthy got proved right in the end. He's likely to be interviewed on the evening news shows, and maybe that'll open up a new career for him, Father Wapner in the People's Confessional! And he's been tested. Now he knows that he really can stand up against authority and win.

Trouble is, his life and career might be at stake, but his identity never is. He never has to question whether he's really a rebel after all, or if he's truly a moral man surrounded by immoral ones. At the end, as at the beginning, he's a lone voice of truth in a wilderness of lies... only now everyone thinks he's cool.

Yes, he's got problems throughout the story, but all of them are mostly from the outside-- the skeptical police, the lying bishop, the retaliating authorities. He suffers, in a way, but the suffering is that of a martyr, unjust and externally created. He never has to face the long dark night of the soul, because he knows all along he's on the side of the angels. In fact, he's in great danger of being... holier than thou.

Let's face it. This guy needs some internal conflict.

Let's give it to him.

STORY STRUCTURE: PART TWO

THE OTHER STORY QUESTION

The way I add internal conflict is to consider how this person should be affected internally by this plot, or, alternatively, what character is most likely to be changed by the experience of these plot events?

So let's ask: Who is most likely to be changed by going through the experience of challenging authority?

Not someone who challenges authority all the time, or wishes he could. But someone who believes in authority, respects it, wants to become a part of it-- he will find the experience disorienting and life-changing.

Not the rebel, but the good boy. The one who started out as an altar boy and never made fun of the priest's habit of drinking the leftover communion wine. The one who never sneaked out of the seminary for a night on the town. The one who truly believes that the cream rises to the top, and that he can best serve his God by being one of the creamy ones.

Let's see what happens when we make our priest the good boy. Let's give him the heroic but problematic quality of loyalty. (If he's just serving authority because he's a sycophant, it's going to be hard for the reader to identify with him. But loyalty to a leader or an institution is something most of us can understand and even admire.)

Say the bishop was his mentor, and got him his job at the cathedral, and has been kind and generous and helpful throughout the priest's entire career. The priest is uneasily aware that without the bishop's help, he'd be saying Masses in some decrepit old church in a dying neighborhood. Instead, he's on the fast track to diocesan success.

Well, according to our plot journey, outlined above, the bishop is the murderer. His mentor did the murder! That sure sets up a conflict, right? And dramatic tension?

Not necessarily.... only if we make the external events heighten the internal conflict, and the internal conflict complicate the external events.

Remember that your readers already know part of the end, even if they don't skip ahead and read the last few pages. They know that the murderer will be unmasked and brought to justice in the end. They maybe don't know who the murderer is, but they know they'll probably guess before your big Revelation Scene. It's the internal conflict, that extra layer of complication, that will keep the tension high enough to keep reading. See, you've added another story question-- an internal one: not just "Will the murder be solved?" but "Will Father Ryan be able to solve the murder even when he's prejudiced by his loyalty to the bishop?"

INDIVIDUALIZING THE EXTERNAL

Hey! You know, asking the question often shows the way to the answer. Let's go over that internal story question again:

Will Father Ryan be able to solve the murder even when he's prejudiced by his loyalty to the bishop?

Hmmm. Do you see what I see? "Prejudiced." "By loyalty."

Loyalty leads to prejudice. We're automatically prejudiced whenever we're loyal, because we see the best in those we respect and love. That's the conflict inherent in loyalty-- it can blind us to the truth.

That heroic quality of loyalty becomes a conflict the moment it causes that blindness, that prejudice. And so the events of the plot have to cause that prejudice to emerge... and eventually to be overcome.

So the priest has to prejudge. He just knows the bishop who helped him, the patriarch he respects, the "His Excellency" who has done so much to make the archdiocese work efficiently-- he can't have committed a murder. "He's a man of God. Besides, I owe him!"

Now think of how we can make the plot events force this conflict. Why does he have to prejudge the bishop? After all, if the bishop isn't a suspect, it would never occur to the priest to defend him. I suppose we could make the priest get some uneasy suspicion on his own, without any provocation from outside. But somehow that feels too interior to me, too insular, too much too soon.

Yes, I know I've just been pushing internal conflict, but remember, the internal conflict should be forced to the surface because of external events. Until this story begins, loyalty hasn't posed a problem for the priest, or not one serious enough to make him question its virtue and its value to himself. Only this series of events is significant enough, dramatic enough, to force him into conflict, into an identity crisis-- into a reversal.

PERIPETIA

Aristotle called it peripetia-- the turnaround. That's when what seemed true turns out to false. What seemed to be good turns out to be bad. What seemed to be right turns out to be wrong. The dramatic tension, the character torture, is most intense when the plot turns around at that moment of peripetia. Afterwards, the protagonist will never be the same, because his assumptions about who he is and where he fits in the universe are proved invalid.

See how scary this is? Let's skip to the peripetia, so we can know our destination. He learns the bishop is the murderer. What does he do now?

This is the crisis point of the plot. It's that moment of reversal, when all that he knew before is lost to him. He is forced to change his longheld assumption that the man he respects is worthy of respect... but also that he himself is a man of moral acuity, because this immoral man had him fooled. His judgment is going to be proved flawed, and that central trait of his, the one he cherished in himself (and that we admire too), will turn out to be misguided, if only in this situation. Not to mention he's contemplating betraying the man who has been so good to him.

The identity crisis is: Who am I now, when I'm not the loyal apostle, when I'm facing bringing down the man who raised me up? Am I ... Judas?

To get to this point, to make it really hurt, he has to start out as that loyal apostle, not as the first doubter. If he immediately suspects the bishop, the identity crisis will start too early and thus have much less force. We won't have experienced his loyalty before we're experiencing his "betrayal".

So I think the initial suspicion should come from outside. The police find some clue that implicates the bishop-- his surplice is found on the floor of the room beyond the body? He was overheard arguing with the cardinal before the Mass? Only one clue-- we don't want to stack the deck. Just enough for the police to ask him a few leading questions, like "Where precisely were you just before Mass? Can anyone confirm you were there?"

What's a loyal apostle, a good boy, likely to do when his mentor's honor is challenged? He's going to rise to the defense, isn't he? After all, he knows the bishop. The bishop's a good man. A pacifist. And anyway, bishops don't murder! He'll tell that homicide detective to stop being stupid and go look for the real murderer. He'll tell the avid reporters how the bishop took him out of that orphanage and placed him with a nice devout foster family and got him a scholarship to the Catholic high school, that a man so good couldn't do anything so bad. If the police get too difficult, he might even tell the bishop not to worry, that he'll investigate on his own and track down the real murderer. After all, he'll say, "I owe you one."

ON THE ROAD TO REVERSAL

Once we've given him motivation to investigate, we've put him on the road to conflict.

Once we establish his belief in the bishop, we've set up for that painful moment of reversal.

He'll resist it at first. He'll be looking for evidence to justify his loyalty, not destroy it. And he'll find it, since he's prejudiced. He'll find the housekeeper who admits guiltily that she just washed that surplice and must have dropped it as she was putting the vestments away in the cupboard. He'll get the cardinal's secretary to recall that the overheard argument was actually about whether the Bulls would repeat their championship this year.

Maybe he'll even track down some street junkie who is known to have used the cathedral as a shooting parlor.

He'll be triumphant, and the bishop will be grateful. And all will be well.

Except, of course, he's wrong. The bishop really did commit the murder. And he's going to have to start suspecting it... probably right about the middle of the book, just when the readers are thinking, disappointedly, "You mean it was just some stupid junkie?"

Keep in mind his privileged position at the cathedral gives him access to information the police won't have-- employee gossip, secret financial records, knowledge of the bishop's nature and activities. What does he learn, in his attempt to vindicate the bishop, that winds up implicating him?

Whatever it is, it will have to be compelling enough, and dramatic enough, that he will start to doubt what he was certain was the truth-- and once that filter of delusion is cracked, it's only a matter of time before he starts seeing the other evidence in a new light. Still, it's going to take more than a few doubts to make him consider that everything he believed about himself and his mentor is no longer operative. What can be a good dramatic way to force him into that despair we call the Dark Moment?

I say "dramatic" because it usually does take something extreme to force us to change the habits of a lifetime-- and remember, supporting authority loyally has been his habit all his life. In fact, it's a central value in his life. (By the way, these days editors and readers appreciate events which are as heightened and intense as possible within the context of the story-- that intensity contributes to the degree of reader involvement... but that's another article.) What can cause him to question and ultimately betray that central value?

You could go with the tried and true and have someone take a shot at him-- imminent death, as Dr. Johnson pointed out, has a way of concentrating a man's attention. But I wouldn't do that. I see the priest's conflict as one of values, not merely survival. It takes a value to trump a value-- so what event could cause this valuer of loyalty and authority to decide another value is actually more important?

Right. The street junkie is arrested. Sure, he's a sad excuse for a human being, and he's probably guilty of plenty of crimes... but not this one. The priest finds himself in a conflict of values-- between his comfortable and central value of loyalty, and his heretofore untested appreciation of justice and truth. (Values must be tested... or they're mere posturing. It's easy to say "Honesty is essential" if you're never faced with a good reason to lie.) Now he's got conflict. Does he reveal what he's learned and release the junkie, or stay quiet and earn the gratitude of the bishop forever?

DEEPENING THE DILEMMA

To tell you the truth, this might be where I go back to the beginning and texture a bit, just to heighten this eventual conflict. I might make the cardinal a bit of a bad guy, so that his murder isn't so clearly an outrage against goodness. Maybe he's a dictator of sorts, one who opposes something important the priest supports, something nice and liberal like a homeless mission. Or, for greater coherence, I might make the cardinal's sin have to do with that issue of truth and/or justice-- maybe he's been lying about that budget surplus so he can de-fund all those liberal programs the priest supports, or denying the right of the convent sisters to speak to the press about conditions in the parochial schools. Maybe the bishop even breaks down and confesses that he did indeed kill the cardinal, but accidentally-- he only meant to shove him away from the telephone to keep him from calling security to arrest the nuns protesting on the cathedral steps.

My purpose would be to make the priest's eventual decision more difficult by making the bishop more worthy of loyalty. If he has killed the cardinal in order to usurp his position, the priest's loyalty is going to seem misplaced, and his judgment horribly flawed. How much conflict can there be, if he discovers his mentor is not only a murderer, but venal and greedy besides? His loyalty was to an illusion, and once the illusion dissolves, so will the loyalty. But if the bishop is pretty much just as good as the priest always assumed, except for this one lapse, the priest's dilemma is more purely loyalty vs. justice, and his Dark Moment that much darker, because a good man, not an evil one, will be destroyed by his actions.

The choice the priest makes will determine not only the bishop's fate, but his own new identity, as a man who values truth more than loyalty, justice more than authority. The internal story question has been asked and answered through the choices made and actions taken by the protagonist.

In this way, the plot events have significance beyond the external (a murderer is brought to justice): They have caused a fundamental change in the protagonist, and he can never go back to the person he was before. This will transform a conventional story into something at once more individual and more universal, for the uniqueness of the human being is the ability to change in response to experience and choice. A story that demonstrates such a change will, quite simply, resonate on a deeper and more profound level.