Jack M. Bickham, Scene & Structure, Chapter 8: Scene-Sequel Tricks to Control Pace

A disclaimer before we start: Bickham is writing about how to structure a very specific kind of book, which could be described as “action-oriented popular fiction”. His advice (as several commenters on earlier posts have noted) is not universally applicable.

Scenes are fast-reading, because they’re action-packed, full of conflict.

Sequels are slow-reading, because they’re thoughtful.

Therefore, you can control your novel’s pace by how you handle your scenes and sequels.

If your novel is too slow, consider ripping out a sequel between two scenes that follow on logically from each other (the disaster in one leads straight to the goal of the next), and just running them into one another.

Or replace the sequel with a brief transition.

Consider trimming or “boiling” (reducing down) the sequels you keep – make them less wordy, review less.

Look for more opportunities for big, extended scenes that you might have overlooked.

Raise the stakes. Make the characters more desperate, so that they escalate their argument. Look for other issues they can fight over.

Can you boost your disasters, make them bigger than they are?

Can you make your disasters require action in a shorter timeframe?

If your novel is too fast, with events falling over each other in a chaotic mess in which nobody stops to think and nothing makes sense:

Consider cutting a scene and summarising its action in a later sequel. Warning: this can flatten your book out unless you pick ones that are already at the milder and more minor end of the goals-and-conflicts spectrum. It’s the structure of the scene that makes it fast, not the content.

Trim or soften your scenes to shorten them. This may involve reducing the timeframe in which they take place.

Jump into the middle of the scene and trim out the first few back-and-forths of conflict.

Give your viewpoint character more internalizations during the scenes. They’ll cover little story time, but will slow the reading pace. (My note: this can be overdone, to the point where the reader has to page back to find out what the other person said, having forgotten by the time the protagonist finally responds six pages of internal reflection later.)

Give your protagonist more breathing time between scenes, in which to reflect. You may have to adjust your scene goals or disasters to make the timeline less urgent.

Look for sequels you’ve missed, and insert them; expand the ones you have. Go deeper into the emotion, consider more options. The lack of good options may even drive the character back into emotion again.

Have the character make a decision in the sequel that doesn’t lead to action right away.

Calm down your scenes: give the character a less clear goal, make the antagonist mildly helpful, have a subtle disaster that the character has to think about (in a sequel) before realising that it’s a disaster. This moves the disaster into the midst of the sequel.

Most [action-oriented] novels that fail, though, fail because they move too slowly, not too fast. Inexperienced writers dodge conflict, focus excessively on the interior life of the characters, underestimate how many scenes they need for the planned length and pad with sequels, avoid the hard work of writing scene conflict, or dwell too much on philosophy, ideas or character emotions. Or they overdescribe the action, slowing it to a crawl and choking it with internalizations.

#sceneandstructure

Jack M. Bickham, Scene & Structure, Chapter 7: Linking Your Scenes: The Structure of Sequel

Besides scenes, which leave little space for the character’s interior reflection (built, as they are, on outward events in cause and effect), there are also transitions and sequels.

Transitions are direct statements which signal a change of time, place or viewpoint. (“Meanwhile, back at the ranch…”)

Sequels provide linkages between scenes, characterisation, analysis of motivation, planning, information about backstory and summaries of events not played out in scenes.

Ideally, scenes and sequels alternate, leading into one another naturally and logically.

Sequels begin when a scene ends, and have an internal structure: emotion, thought, decision, action. Decision and action plus antagonist gives us the next scene.

Unlike scenes, sequels are largely or wholly internal, and generally involve summary (since emotional processes are often long-drawn-out). They can involve a character alone. They seek sympathy (feeling and understanding) from the reader.

The length of the elements of the sequel can vary based on the writer’s goal, but the order remains constant.

Emotion is the first response to the previous scene’s disaster, and is shown by description, example, or discussion.

Example is the outer gesture or action that displays the inner experience. It can (if well done) be more powerful than direct description, since we recognise emotion in others this way in real life.

Discussion is dialog between the character and another about the character’s feelings.

Thought reasserts itself as emotion runs its course. It usually follows the structure:

Review – looking back over the scene and disaster, thinking about the story goal and its importance, going back to earlier scenes that are relevant.

Analysis – trying to figure out the meaning. As well as reminding the reader what’s important and unwinding the plot, this shows how the character thinks and what he or she values.

Planning – the character tries to find a new way to struggle towards the story goal, given what has just happened. Considers options, weighs them, discards, ranks. Here, your character must come up with emotional and logical reasons, that make sense for who they are, which will drive them to take the next action in your plot.

Decision is when a specific new, short-term goal comes out of the planning. It may be a goal the character is unsure or worried or scared or confused about, but the character does come to a clearly articulated goal which leads into the next scene via action that the character takes.

Sequel is to scenes as internalisation is to stimulus-response.

It’s possible to skip scenes entirely and imply and condense them in the sequels, but it’s an advanced technique. It does allow for deeper characterisation and a slower, more thoughtful pace. However, you still need to plan the (missing) scenes.

Sequels can be a couple of sentences as long as the elements are present. The thought can sometimes be skipped as implied. In very high-action contexts where immediate action is demanded, the sequel can be skipped entirely. However, the skipped sequel should ideally be picked up and played later, when the action abates, so that we still see the character’s reaction to the scene (unless the course of action was obvious and inevitable).

Non-obvious reactions and thoughts in response to disaster are sometimes necessary or desirable, usually for plot reasons.

#sceneandstructure

Jack M. Bickham’s Scene & Structure, Chapter 6: Planning and Revising Scenes for Maximum Effect

The goal of each scene must clearly relate to the story question.

The conflict must be about the goal.

The conflict must be external.

The viewpoint remains the same throughout the scene, and is the viewpoint of the person with the goal. Don’t break this unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

Disaster moves the story forward by seeming to move the character backward, further from achieving the goal. What is really happening is that the character’s desperation and commitment to the goal is increasing, and options are being eliminated, until we reach the climax, where the character has only one desperate option left.

If you keep making things worse for the character, the audience will stay interested.

The end of each scene dictates what can happen later, so it can’t be planned in isolation from the overall story. Scenes should link in cause and effect.

Make the relevance of the scene goal to the story question, and its importance to the viewpoint character, obvious and explicit.

Provide adequate justification for the opposition, have the opposition clearly stated early in the scene, and don’t let up.

Know what both the protagonist and antagonist are thinking, even if you don’t tell the reader, because it will guide the development of the conflict.

Make a list of possible disasters. Don’t pick the first one – it will be too obvious to the reader.

The antagonist can try to get the protagonist off the point of the argument, but the protagonist must keep focussed on the scene goal and fight to keep the argument on topic.

Dialog at cross-purposes is a form of conflict. Use it occasionally, to convey background information in the form of clarifying dialog.

People aren’t always logical under stress. Characters can lose their temper or act irrationally if it’s in character for them.

Get as much out of the scene as you can. Revise it if it has too much impact, and cut it if it has too little and you need to up the pace.

Watch out for opportunities to raise the stakes (but don’t go over the top).

Never let your characters relax or feel comfortable in a scene.

#sceneandstructure

Jack M. Bickham’s Scene & Structure, chapter 5: Scenes with Results

Scene goals, conflicts, and disasters should be considered in terms of the scope, immediacy, finality and direction of the result.

A scene goal, for example, should be big enough to affect the course of the story, but not so large as to derail or end it entirely.

The goal must lead to a result with immediate effect, but not so much so that the action never pauses for a moment and the character can’t think, plan, or breathe.

A result that’s too final will end the story, but one that’s not final enough won’t be interesting (example: if turned down for a loan, there are four more banks in town to try).

A result that changes the direction of the whole story is also not good.

The conflict must be proportionate, not escalating too much or, on the other hand, blocking off angles of escalation for fear that it will get out of hand, only to leave it bland.

Ducking the conflict comes from shyness, fear or fatigue: being conflict-averse in real life (this is me), afraid you can’t write well enough to do it justice, or being mentally and emotionally weary from too many powerful scenes earlier in the book.

Overescalation is sometimes misinterpreted as “the characters taking over the story”. If your plot has gone off the rails, track back through your disasters looking for one that overshot (or undershot) in scope, immediacy, finality or direction.

If all that seems fine, perhaps you picked the wrong disaster, one that affected the later plot too much.

Scene planning exercise:

Write out a goal in 10 words or less.

Who is the conflict with, where, for how long?

At least four twists and turns in the conflict.

What is the disaster?

#sceneandstructure

Jack M. Bickham’s Scene & Structure, chapter 4.

“Just as causes result in effects and stimuli result in responses, the scene inevitably – if written correctly – leads to another scene.”

A scene is external action written moment-by-moment in the story’s present. Its basic pattern is:

1. Goal statement. The character has a clear, specific goal which looks attainable, and will move towards the attainment of the overall story goal; the character generally states what it is explicitly in dialog or thought. This leads to a “scene question”: will the character succeed?

2. Conflict introduced and developed. This is not the static, circling conflict seen in many arguments; scenes are dynamic. Conflict makes up most of the scene, and is presented moment by moment, without summary, for maximum lifelikeness. It consists of a series of stimuli and responses, constantly shifting ground. It occurs externally.

3. Character fails to (simply) reach the goal (a “tactical disaster”). The character leaves the scene worse off than at the beginning. The answer to the scene question is either “no, and furthermore” or “yes, but”.

Bickham also offers a simple “no” as the answer (in which case the character is only worse off by one less option), and the “yes, but” is a yes with so many strings attached that the character may, by making the choice to turn down such a terrible option, give themselves their own “no”. I’ve heard other writing teachers put this slightly differently, that the “yes, but” is a yes that carries a complication that the character has to live with in order to get the yes.

The disaster must logically grow out of the conflict (but should be, to some degree, unexpected), and must answer the scene question.

The higher the stakes of the story question, the longer the scene should be. It’s better to develop it more and risk overwriting than not develop it enough and leave it with no punch.

#sceneandstructure

“[F]iction must make more sense than real life if general readers are to find it credible.”

You can make almost anything happen in your story if every cause has an effect and vice versa. This implies a rational universe, which is comforting to the reader.

“Stimulus and response are cause and effect made more specific and immediate.”

Stimulus and response are both external – we could see them if the story was taking place on a stage. They always occur in pairs, and usually without delay, and with a clear logical connection (which may involve internal processes, in which case, show them to the reader).

They occur in the order stimulus-(internalisation)-response, unless you deliberately re-order them to create an effect of momentary confusion.

– Jack M. Bickham

#sceneandstructure

“For maximum effectiveness, you should start your story at the time of the change that threatens your major character’s self-concept.”

“…at the outset of your story… show your character coming up with a vital intention or story goal, designed to “fix things” for him in terms of his sensation of being out of equilibrium with his environment. Every good fiction character is thus goal-motivated.”

“…you end the novel… by answering the story question you posed at the outset.”

“Plan to make the start and end as close together in time as you can, and still have room for a minimum of 50,000 words of dramatic development.”

– Jack M. Bickham

#sceneandstructure

Just started Jack M. Bickham’s Scene and Structure (1993). I’ll be sharing my notes as I go, under the #sceneandstructure hashtag.

“Structure is nothing more than a way of looking at your story material so that it’s organized in a way that’s both logical and dramatic. Structure is a process, not a rigid formula.”