Like story itself, each Scene* follows a specific structure. In fact, the arc of a Scene is a miniature version of the larger story structure exhibited over the course of the book:
1. Beginning=Hook
2. Middle=Development
3. End=Climax
When we look at the arc this way, it makes a basic sort of sense. It doesn’t, however, yet offer us any specific advice for how to create these elements within the Scene. Today, let’s break it down further still.
(Graphic by Christine Frazier of Better Novel Project.)
The Three Building Blocks of the Scene
Structuring Your Novel (Amazon affiliate link)
Both scene and sequel follow a basic three-part arc, but the elements are significantly different in each. Today, we’re going to take a look at the three basic building blocks of the scene. As we continue in the series, we’ll look at some variations upon these three parts of the scene arc, but, generally speaking, your scenes are going to need to possess the following three parts.
Building Block #1: Goal
This is where it all starts. What your characters wants on a large scale is what drives your entire story. What they want on a smaller scale drives your scene. If they don’t want anything, then the story has no impetus.
No goal=no giddy-up-and-go.
What your characters want in any given scene will be a minuscule reflection of their overall story goals and/or a step toward achieving those goals.
For Example: If a character’s overall story goal is to escape a POW camp, his scene goals might be to procure a shovel, bribe a guard to leave his post, or convince a buddy to come along.
Once you know your character’s goal in a given scene, you know the purpose of the scene.
No goal=no point.
Establish your characters’ goals as early as possible in the scene. Readers need to understand what’s at stake. What are the characters trying to accomplish? Why are they trying to accomplish it? And what will happen if they fail?
Building Block #2: Conflict
Once you have your main character’s goal in place, your next responsibility is to create an obstacle that will prevent the character from easily achieving the desired result. “No conflict, no story” might be said more accurately as “no conflict, no scene.” Conflict is what keeps the character from reaching his goal—and thus what keeps the story from ending too quickly.
Conflict makes up the middle/development section of the scene arc. Most of the meat of your scene will probably be created by the conflict.
For Example: In our POW story, the overall conflict might be about outwitting and escaping the camp’s cruel commanding officer. On the scene level, this conflict will manifest in specific ways, such as getting caught stealing the shovel, getting blackmailed by the bribed guard, or arguing with the buddy who is unsure about the escape.
Whatever the scene conflict, it must arise organically as an obstacle to the goal. A random spat with the camp bully may offer conflict, but if it doesn’t endanger the protagonist’s ability to achieve his scene goal, then it isn’t the specific scene conflict you’re looking for.
Conflict comes in many variations—everything from a knife fight to an avalanche to a lost credit card. It doesn’t have to occur between two people. It doesn’t even have to be a fight or an argument in the traditional sense. All that matters is that it hinders the achievement of the scene goal.
Building Block #3: Disaster (Outcome)
Finally, the conflict must be resolved decidedly—and probably not in the protagonist’s favor. The scene’s outcome is the build-up to the next Scene. If it’s all tied up too nicely, there will be no logical next step and the story will end.
Some authors dislike the “disaster” label for the scene’s outcome, since it seems to indicate something earth-shatteringly awful has to happen at the end of every scene. If you’re writing a thriller, that’s all fine and good, but what if your story is a romance or a quiet literary saga? You can hardly have folks getting shot or crashing their cars at the end of every scene.
True enough. In fact, it’s impossible to end every scene with a full-on disaster. Sometimes in order for the story to move forward, the conflict simply must be resolved in the protagonist’s favor. (We’ll talk more about this in our post on Variations of the Scene.)
Even with all that in mind, I still prefer the emphasis on disaster, if for no other reason than it offers a continual reminder to keep the stakes high and the protagonist off-balance. As such, disasters can come in many different varieties. Shootings and car crashes are the extreme end of the disaster scale. On the tamer side, we find unfavorable outcomes such as getting suckered into making a losing bet, getting a flat tire on the way to a crucial meeting, or even just letting that box of Valentine’s candy melt into a sticky mess.
The disaster must evolve organically from the conflict that created it. If your hero gets dumped by his girl as a result of an argument, that’s an organic disaster. If he argues with her and then gets arrested for jaywalking, that’s probably not going to be a sensible outcome. You either need to change the disaster to fit the goal and conflict, or change the goal and conflict so they properly set up the arrest as the disaster.
For example: Our POW camp scenes might end disastrously with the shovel thief failing to find a shovel, the bribed guard threatening to throw our hero into solitary, or the scared buddy hurling accusations of self-serving recklessness.
The point, in any disaster, is that the hero finds himself in a pickle—which will lead us right into the sequel (to be discussed in a later post).
The Scene in Action
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen (affiliate link)
As an example of these three elements of the scene, consider the third chapter of Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen:
Goal: Elizabeth wants to dance at the assembly ball and to catch the eye of the newcomers from London.
Conflict: The women outnumber the men, so there aren’t enough partners to go around.
Disaster: Darcy rejects Elizabeth as a partner.
Once you understand the inner workings of this most important of all story components, you can purposefully build strong scenes that will not only carry their own weight, but also bear up the story itself and create a plot that flows logically and powerfully from beginning to end.
*For the purposes of this series, “Scene” with a capital S will refer to the scene in general (which can include in its definition the sequel). I’ll use a small s and italicize scene and sequel to refer to the two different types of Scenes.
Stay tuned: Next week, we’ll talk about Options for Goals in a Scene.
Complete Series:
- Part 1: Mastering the Two Different Types of Scene
- Part 2: The Three Building Blocks of the Scene
- Part 3: Options for Goals in a Scene
- Part 4: Options for Conflict in a Scene
- Part 5: Options for Disasters in a Scene
- Part 6: Variations on the Scene
- Part 7: The Three Building Blocks of the Sequel
- Part 8: Options for Reactions in a Sequel
- Part 9: Options for Dilemmas in a Sequel
- Part 10: Options for Decisions in a Sequel
- Part 11: Variations on the Sequel
- Part 12: Frequently Asked Questions About Scene Structure
- Further Posts About Scene Structure
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Does your current scene structure have all three components? Why or why not? Tell me in the comments!
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8 Different Types of Scenes
How to Write Emotional Scenes (Without Making Them Cringey)
6 Ways to Craft Spectacular Set-Piece Scenes
3 Questions to Make Sure You Aren’t Missing Out on Important Scenes
About K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
Lovely post! Scene is so important. 🙂
Yes, indeed. It’s the foundation for everything else.
Thank you K.M. I’ve just copied your badge to my blog to make it easier to catch your posts. I’m in the midst of a re-write so your posts are really helping me focus on each scene (and to get rid of filler.)
Thanks, Denise! Glad to hear the posts have been useful. Have fun with that rewrite!
Working on figuring out what my MC needs to accomplish (or be thwarted in accomplishing) in this scene (more of a sequel than a true scene.) So, I’m stuck at the moment! But, this is definitely helpful in keeping my perspective correct.
Oh I love this formula. I can easily go through my scenes and check them now. I never thought about the goal part in those terms. I tend to write scenes as they come to me and then put them together later – a style that has just recently evolved for me. This really helps me as I focus on one scene at a time.
@Liberty: Sequels have a totally different three-par structure. We’ll be getting to that in a few weeks.
@Jan: Most of the time, the ideas that “come” to us are already set up to support the three parts of the scene. Usually, getting them to work well is just a matter of emphasis.
How would you actually go about showing a scene instead of telling the scene?
Also, its not particularly challenging thinking of a scene, its in thinking of an antagonist that conflicts with the characters goals, while having his own motivations aside from the main character.
Case in point, the joker from batman. I stopped caring (As in being glued as him being interesting) about the joker because every scene he’s in directly conflict with the bat. He has no motivations aside from the bat.
Showing is all about dramatization vs. summary (which is telling). You may find this post helpful.
Goal, Motivation, and Conflict is another formula I’ve read about. I suppose goal and motivation can be combined. When I think of the importance of transition or build up to the next scene the disaster(outcome) portion makes a lot of sense.
Thanks! Looking forward to the rest of your scene series.
We can think of motivation as the “backstory” to the goal. It’s the reason there is a goal in the first place.
This is exactly what I need to read currently! I am having trouble with knowing where to take each scene, and I think it’s mostly the fault of not having enough preplanning, but that’s also because I am waiting until after the holidays to write a solid outline.
Outlines are (of course) my first recommendation for when writers get stuck. But even outlines are’t a cure-all for scene problems. Sometimes we have to get right down to the very basics to discover why something isn’t working.
This is a very informative series. I’m learning a lot. You are helping me make sense of some of the meta-data fields in yWriters. Now I’ll have a better idea of what to fill in when I’m outlining my scenes in the program. Thanks!
I love that feature in yWriter! It allows us to keep track of each scene’s arc. Very handy.
I appreciate this series; and, the “structuring your novel” category as a whole. These posts are turning up the volume for the advantages of using yWriter – up to 11! 🙂 ..fully agree with Adam’s post. My current project is driving me batty. Your posts are soothinly de-battitizing. Thank you!
Really like this post! Extremely helpful!!!
What a wonderful series! This is something I really need to learn. I’m thrilled to find out about sequels, because I’ve always secretly adored the parts of novels where the characters get together and drink tea and bandage their wounds and make clever deductions about what the baddies are up to. I always felt vaguely that these weren’t proper scenes because they didn’t have conflict, yet I enjoyed them so much.
Hah. That is *exactly* how I feel about those scenes. :p
I recognize Dwight Swain’s techniques from his book: “Techniques of the Selling Writer”
It is quite simply the finest book ever written on how to write fiction. If you don’t have this book, you are robbing yourself blind.
Hi K.M. Thank you for these great articles, it has been very helpful. I’m trying to wrap my brain about having my Main Character go through this training period where he is learning fighting with weapons(swords), and of course he has no experience with, but in the end come out looking like a champ.
This training period is just a small stepping point to something larger within the book, so I don’t feel like I need to spend much time on this aspect – would you have any recommendations on how one might go about writing that training experience/period? The Main Character asks a skilled fighter to help him train, and I was thinking I could simply spend the first half of a chapter “Telling” the reader that he has did all this training, just to speed up the entire process. And then in the second half of that same chapter”Showing” him in this battle/fight scene where he wins – is that how you would structure/write that scene?
I would look for ways to inject conflict into the scene to make it interesting. How can you use the training scene to advance other areas of the story–relationships or the characters internal conflict?
Serendipity. Two days before reading this post I realized that one of chapters was just a group of people sitting around a campfire and talking. Oops. So I dropped a couple of those characters and combined that chapter with another, similar one, that had ended with a bandit attack. In splitting the scenes into 2 new chapters, I ended the first one with arrows falling out of the sky onto the camp. The first part of the second chapter is now the battle and its outcome. Anyway, I’m having a blast. 😀
Hi and thank you for bringing so much insight to the craft.
I am wondering one thing, is the Scene (I’ve been careful to capitalize it, haha) an item in terms of story structure, or is it about book structure? Asking it differently: is it generally better that the scene and the sequel are back-to-back in the book, or it’s okay to slide another chapter (different POV for instance) in between ?
I talk about this later in this series, but the short answer is: yes, you can mix and match scenes/sequels from different POVs.