This year the CRAFT OF WRITING blog is focusing on Aspects of the Novel, such as Plot, Dialogue, Characterization, etc. We’ve had some great discussions so far, including James Scott Bell on Voice, DiAnn Mills on Plotting, and Debbie Burke on Antagonists. If you missed any of these, go to kaydibianca.com/blog and choose the post you want to revisit.

This month, I’m excited to welcome back Randy Ingermanson, award-winning novelist and craft of writing expert.  Randy’s Advanced Fiction Writing books make him the perfect guest to talk about the subject of Scene.

So buckle up and let’s get ready to write a dynamite scene!

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Once again, we’re doing something fun for this interview. The name of each person who enters a comment will be put into the drawing for the unique “Wilbur and Orville 1903” Propeller pen, hand-crafted by my friend and colleague Steve Hooley. The pen is made from Ash, one of the woods the Wright brothers used to build their first aircraft. So join the conversation and earn a chance to win. I’ll post the name of the winner after 9 PM Central Time tomorrow night, so be sure to check back to see if you won.

(Previous 2024 winners are not eligible to win.)

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Welcome back to the Craft of Writing blog, Randy, and thank you for joining us!

Hi Kay, thanks for having me back on your blog.

You wrote a very popular book entitled How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. Why did you feel it was necessary to follow that one with How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method?

Because they cover very different topics. The book on the Snowflake Method teaches you how to design your novel before you write it. It’s a book on strategic thinking. Big-picture stuff. In Step 9 of the Snowflake Method, you plan each scene of your novel. But how do you do that? It doesn’t come naturally to most writers. So I realized I needed a whole book just to explain how to do that in detail.

The book on writing a Dynamite Scene teaches you how to write one good scene, which is typically 1000 to 3000 words. This is crucial because a scene is the fundamental unit of fiction. You write your novel as a sequence of scenes. A typical novel is anywhere from 50 to 200 scenes. So this is middle-picture stuff.

The important thing to understand is that if you can write one great scene, you can write a hundred. And that’s a novel.

You say a book should be an emotional experience for the reader, and you define two essential parts of story that create that experience. Please explain what they are.

A story is characters in conflict. Both are essential. If you’ve got no characters, you have no story. If you’ve got no conflict, you have no story.

But there’s more to it than that. Not all characters are equally good. You must have a character your reader can root for—or root against. If the reader doesn’t care deeply about whether your character wins or loses, then the book isn’t going to stay open very long. It’s going on the shelf and it won’t get a second look.

And not all conflict is created equal either. There’s blah conflict, and then there’s a crucible. You want your character in a crucible, because a crucible shows the reader what your character is made of.

There’s a secret to writing crucible-level conflict that kidnaps your reader right into the storyworld, where they don’t want to leave. Actually, there are two secrets. If you know those two secrets, you can write a dynamite scene about anything. Anything. And your reader will love it.

You also say every scene in a book is a miniature story. Explain that.

Every scene in your book needs to work as a short story. Every single scene. It must have a viewpoint character that the reader can root for (or root against). And it must have a single conflict that gets resolved by the end of the scene.

If you have even one scene that doesn’t work as a story, you’re going to lose readers at that scene. They’ll put the book down. And they’re done with that book.

So you need every scene in your novel to be pulling its weight. If a scene doesn’t work, then you have some options. You can kill the scene—just shoot it right in the head and throw its carcass to the wolves. Or you can fix the scene—figure out why it’s broken and solve the problem.

I have killed a few scenes in my life, but 95% of all scenes can be fixed. If you know how. And my book shows you how. One of the main reasons I wrote my book is to teach authors how to diagnose and fix a busted scene. (And also how to recognize a scene that works so you can leave it alone.)

In your book, you define two types of scenes: Proactive and Reactive. Can you describe each one? Why is it important to have both?

I invented the terms “Proactive Scene” and “Reactive Scene” about 15 years ago, because there just wasn’t good terminology for them. Words have power, because they give you analytic tools. If you know that there are only two basic structures for scenes, then your first question when editing every scene should be: “Is this a Proactive Scene or a Reactive Scene?”

Here’s how you tell the difference:

A Proactive Scene begins with a goal—some sort of short-term objective which the lead character could plausibly achieve by the end of the scene. But it’s a hard goal, and obstacles leap in front of the lead character to block them from reaching their goal. Most scenes have several obstacles. Then at the end of the scene, just as the lead character is about to reach their goal, something goes wrong. And the Proactive Scene is over. That’s it—a goal, some conflict, and a setback.

A Reactive Scene usually follows a Proactive Scene. The lead character is shocked by the setback of the previous scene. Now what are they going to do? They experience intense emotions, and the reader experiences those with the character. But now something has to be done. And there are no good options. The lead character has only bad options. A dilemma. The lead character sweats for a bit, mulling all the bad options. And finally settles on the least-bad option. It’s not great, but it could plausibly work. And now the Reactive Scene is over. That’s all it is—an emotive reaction, an intellectual dilemma, and a decision.

Please note that not all Proactive Scenes are followed by Reactive Scenes. Sometimes the next step is pretty obvious, and you can go from one Proactive Scene to the next to the next. You use a Reactive Scene when the next step is NOT obvious.

Does every scene need a POV character?

Yes.

I’m tempted to leave it at that, but maybe a little explanation is in order. Almost nothing in the universe is obviously good or bad, all by itself. Explosions happen. Rain falls. Babies are born. Explosions are good if it’s the Death Star and you’re Luke Skywalker; they’re bad if it’s your car exploding with your kids in it. Rain is good if you’re in the middle of a drought; it’s bad if you’re caught in a hurricane. A baby is good if it’s your long-awaited child; it’s bad if it’s Baby Hitler.

Stuff happens in every scene. How is your reader to know if that stuff is good or bad? That’s simple. You give your reader a yardstick to measure goodness or badness. The yardstick is called a point-of-view character. You put your reader inside the skin of that POV character for that scene. Your reader experiences the story through the eyes and ears of the POV character.

Please note that your reader doesn’t have to LIKE your POV character. A villain or a hero make equally good POV characters. But here’s the thing. Whether your reader likes the POV character or hates them, your reader has a yardstick.

If your reader likes the POV character, then everything that is good for that character is classified as “good” by your reader. Ditto for bad.

If your reader hates the POV character, then it’s the reverse. Anything good for that character is classified as “bad” by your reader.

So the POV character tells your reader how to feel about what’s happening in the scene. And that’s the whole point of fiction—to give your reader a powerful emotional experience.

What questions does an author need to ask him/herself about each scene to determine if it’s working?

I have several questions I ask every scene:

• Is it a Proactive Scene or a Reactive Scene or is it neither?
• If it’s Proactive, what is the goal, what’s the conflict, and what’s the setback?
• If it’s Reactive, what is the emotive reaction, what’s the dilemma, and what’s the decision?
• Does the scene move me emotionally, especially the final sentence?

I’ll be honest that about 70% of my scenes don’t work on the first try. That’s fine. The diagnostic questions above give me clues on how to make them work.

Remember that a scene doesn’t have to work on the first draft. It just needs to work on the last draft. And once you’ve got it working, stop messing with it. My old writing mentor Sol Stein used to warn against “disimproving” a scene, once it’s done.

What do you think is the biggest mistake authors make when constructing a scene? How can they fix the problems?

The biggest mistake is not making the scene pull its weight emotionally. But there are several reasons a scene might be failing. I’ve sketched them out above, but the solution is different in each case. Chapter 14 of my book is titled “Triage—How to Fix Your Broken Scenes”. The chapter is 11 pages long, and it’s very succinct. But I can’t make it shorter, which means it won’t fit here.

Where can we find out more about you and your writing?

Visit my website at www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com. I blog there when the spirit moves me. Also, the site has about 17 years of archives of the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine that I published from 2005 through 2021. Most of it is still relevant, and readers are smart enough to know what isn’t.

Thank you, Randy, for being with us today.

Thanks for having me, Kay!

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Meet Randy Ingermanson

Randy Ingermanson wants to teach you how to write excellent fiction.

He’s been teaching for over twenty years, and he’s known around the world as “the Snowflake Guy” in honor of his wildly popular Snowflake Method of writing a novel.

Randy is an award-winning novelist and published the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine for 17 years before moving on to other things. He says that “Fiction Writing = Organization + Craft + Marketing,” so he focused on those three topics in his e-zine.

He now blogs when the spirit moves him. He is trying to get the spirit to move him weekly, but the spirit gets touchy about schedules.

Randy lives in the Pacific Northwest and worked for many years as a manservant to a number of surly and demanding cats. The cats have all moved on to a better world, but Randy has doggedly stayed in this one. Visit him at https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/.

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