Author Ian Fanselow breaks down his methodical approach to writing with an example scene from his new novel “Worlds Apart”
I am a very methodical person and planning is my strength. So when I learned about the idea of “Scene and Sequel” it immediately clicked for me, and I developed a system I used for writing every scene in my latest novel “Worlds Apart”. I’m going to break down exactly how I did it with a real example.
First, for those not familiar with the concept, let me explain “scene and sequel”. Every major beat in your story can be broken down into a “scene” and a “sequel”. The “scene” is the physical things, which relate to the plot. And the “sequel” is the internal reaction to those events. The sequel follows the characters interiority and thus is related to your story rather than plot. Scenes and Sequels are broken down into a few steps each that play out in order:
SCENE
-Goal: What the character wants
-Conflict: What stops them from getting what they want
-Disaster: How do they not get exactly what they want. (disaster could be minor, like getting 90% of their goal)
SEQUEL
-Emotion: Your character’s initial emotional reaction to the disaster
-Thought: Your character considering the new state of affairs
-Decision: Your character making a decision on what to do next.
-Action: Actually doing what they say.
Great, you’ve probably heard that before. I took this as a baseline and created my own system for plotting a scene. Let’s walk through my process writing a high tension interaction from my own novel “Worlds Apart”. First allow me to set the stage
You may have noticed the color coding on the characters. That is a big part of this process. What I do from here is write a short sentence for each step in the scene/sequel flow using the character’s color. Now, you may remember the advice of sticking in one POV, especially within a scene/sequel pair. This is very good advice and I do not suggest breaking it. What I am doing here is using scene/sequel to both track my side-character’s motivations while also moving the plot forward. Dwyn and Fais will have emotions, thoughts and decisions. But us readers may not be privy to them until later reveals.
Here is what this looks like.
Alright, that might be a little confusing at first, it seems hard to follow. That’s because even though every step is in order, they are not in order between characters. They all have their goals and conflict at the very beginning, but Lora’s conflict comes to a head and she faces her disaster first. Meaning her action becomes the disaster for Fais. Here is the same data in chronological order.
This is a relatively simple example, as each character’s Action is the disaster for another. Also, it may look like our POV character is rendered complete with her contribution to the interaction only halfway through, that is not the case. Because we are in Lora’s POV each of her steps is given to the audience, while Fais and Dwyn’s are all compressed into a tiny bit of subtext.
Planning out scenes like this can be incredibly powerful. It makes it easier to write, because you know exactly where your character needs to go, but also practically forces good subtext into your story because you have so much written for your side characters in the moment. There is also an invisible benefit where it can trigger an alarm if there is something wrong with your characters. Allow me to explain.
I won’t break down the entire next scene, but both Lora and Dwyn’s goal is essentially the same. The money Fais demanded, and the friend Lora wants to save are in the same compound. Meaning when I plotted out the next sequence I saw I had written the same goal twice. This is fine of course, because sometimes people want the same thing. But a story is not a story without conflict, and if you find that the characters in a scene want the same thing, and have the same conflict, and experience similar disasters, that means you basically have one character copy pasted.
So when I saw that they had the same goal walking in to the next scene, I made sure to have their conflicts achieving that goal be distinct, and their respective disasters push their eventual actions in opposite directions.
Conclusion:
I look at writing processes as ways to mitigate weaknesses. That’s why some writing advice clicks for you, and some doesn’t. Everyone one of us has things we struggle with when it comes to writing. A chain might be as strong as its weakest link, but with some reflection, you can find that link before the chain is pulled tight and you have the chance to reinforce it. In many cases, the reinforced link becomes one of the strongest in the whole chain.
Keeping all of the character’s goals on theme and consistent is a weakness for me. Armed with that knowledge I utilize this scene/sequel process to make sure that weakness doesn’t see the light of draft number 2.
If you are curious where Lora and Dwyn will go from here, order the novel on amazon. Available in print and kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1964826004
If you want to hear more from me, check out my website.