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Feb
7th
2014

Mythbusting: Scene + Sequel structure · 10:34pm Feb 7th, 2014

I tried to refer back to my blog post on Scene & Sequel, and found out I’d never written it. So here it is.

Dwight Swain wrote a book about 50 years ago called “Techniques of the Selling Writer” which says your book must be comprised of units with the “Scene-Sequel” structure. This is the same scheme you’ll find in Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. The Scene-Sequel structure looks like this:

SCENE
1. Scene
A. The main character in the scene has a Goal. This is, more generally, the SCENE’s Question (typically, Will she or won’t she achieve her Goal?)
B. The main character has a Conflict which threatens that goal. The conflict may be with herself, other characters, or forces of nature.
C. The main character suffers a Setback. (Swain calls it a “Disaster”, which gives the false impression that it needs to be a major setback. Using only major setbacks is a formula for writing bad action/adventure stories like those Bickham wrote.) More generally, it is the Question’s Answer, which can be “No” (failure), “Yes, but…” (success, but introducing an even worse Setback), or “No, and furthermore…” (failure, and introducing an even worse Setback).
2. Sequel
A. the emotional Reaction of the POV character to the setback
B. The main character thinks about this Problem. (Swain calls it a “Dilemma”, which I don’t like because “dilemma” means “two options”.)
C. The main makes a Decision on how to react to the setback.
D. The main character Acts on that decision, beginning the next SCENE.

Watch out! We now have three kinds of “scenes”:
scene: What most writers mean by a “scene”: A sequence of events without a sudden jump in time, location, or point-of-view (POV). This has nothing to do with the other two!
Scene: A Goal-Conflict-Setback unit.
SCENE: A Scene and a Sequel.

The Scene-Sequel structure seems like a good default structure. I don’t think about it consciously when I write, except sometimes when I run into specific trouble areas and don’t know why the story isn’t working. Buy the books, or google scene and sequel, if you want to read about its merits. I’m here to talk about its problems.

The standard presentation of Scene and Sequel, like many things emanating from Writer’s Digest, has been oversimplified to the point where it probably does advanced writers more harm than good. Bickham says you should present the components in order, clearly spelled out to the reader, and then on finishing the Sequel, jump immediately into another Scene. Iterate until the protagonist achieves his/her novel Goal, and the book is finished. Eliminate everything from the book that is not a Scene+Sequel.

Doing this makes it more likely you will write forgettable pot-boilers like Jack Bickham did. Have any of the people quoting him read his books? They lack theme, insight into human nature, or, well, anything other than one damn thing after another. Also, Bickham didn’t limit himself to scene+sequel structure. Twister contained many omniscient-viewpoint scenes describing weather and storms which had no characters at all.

Here are the big problems I see with scene-sequel theory:

1. Typical explanations of scene-sequel theory give examples of SCENE which are also scenes. This rarely happens in the wild. Rather, a complete goal-conflict-etc. SCENE is spread across multiple scenes. Each scene may contain numerous small, usually incomplete goal-conflict-etc. SCENEs. These match the SCENE template so poorly, however, that it might be more fair to Swain to consider them to be “motivation-reaction units” (another part of his theory).

2. The scene-sequel structure isn’t used serially. It’s used hierarchically, from top to bottom: The entire novel is a hero with a goal, a conflict, a disaster, and a reaction; each chapter is a lesser goal / conflict / setback / reaction / reflection / decision; and each chapter is likewise composed of smaller SCENEs. More or less. A Scene-Sequel structure may split across chapters, particularly with cliffhangers.

3. The formula is written for a single-protagonist story. Great books often don’t fit that pattern. Even a straightforward single-protagonist action-adventure like The Hobbit can't be easily stuffed into single-protagonist scene+sequel format, because the protagonist shares the problems and goals of the entire party.

4. Each character in the story has their own scene+sequel structures, and these overlap with each other. The "antagonist" will be having their own scene+sequel, and its Disaster may play a different part in the "protagonist"'s scene+sequel. Various compromises and POV problems prevent each of these scene+sequels from having all their parts visible.

5. The scene+sequel components often aren’t presented to the reader in chronological order.

6. Goal, Setback, and Decision are often either absent or hidden. POV restrictions often prevent the Goal from being stated. The Scene may have a stacked structure, such as Goal-Conflict-Goal-Conflict-Setback or Goal-Conflict-Setback-Conflict-Setback.

7. Other things happen to affect the goal stack, such as fortuitous assistance or discoveries, or goal changes.

Scene-Sequel is most appropriate in action/thriller/genre novels. But even there, it doesn’t take the simple form Bickham prescribes. I just spent a couple of hours trying to find it in the wild, and the pure SCENE is a rare beastie.

Right now I'm reading Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding (MOTW), and E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Reading about a dozen pages from each, and recollecting what I still can of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I found no instances of a Scene-Sequel structure meeting Bickham’s requirements.

Literary fiction often has main characters who don’t know what they want, or don’t know how to get what they want. It has more protagonists and fewer antagonists, and so it may have several main characters in one SCENE. It has fewer decisions, in part because the setback may pass unnoticed by the main character, and because more characters drift from scene to scene without direction, or carried along by forces beyond their control. It has more dialogue and less action. And each character in the story has enough psychological depth to need their own goals, reactions, etc. This structure, when used, should probably apply to every character present.

Bickham says all the elements must be explicit and occur in that order; it appears that literary fiction requires this not to be the case. If a narrative section resembles Scene-Sequel structure, some part of it must be implicit or hidden until later. The elements occur in chronological order within the story world, but may be presented in a different order. A Passage to India might have some Scene-Sequel structures in it; but if so, they’re well-hidden. People rarely explicitly state their goals, and the multiple main characters and POV limitations means there’s no way for the narrator to tell us their goals.

The entire first chapter of MOTW’s three chapters is Frankie, the main character, trying to figure out what she wants, and to understand her reaction to the main “disaster” (her brother’s wedding). Hence the protagonist has no conscious Goal and so there are few places within that chapter with all the parts of this Scene-Sequel structure. Where it fits, it’s some secondary character who has a goal, not the main character.

The first chapter presents a Setback: Frankie’s brother is getting married. Frankie strongly feels this as a setback, but doesn’t know why. The bulk of the chapter is Reaction and Problem, showing how Frankie feels, and how she struggles to grasp her situation. Only at the very end of this rumination does Frankie realize that her Goal is to find some group of people she belongs with, “the ‘we’ for her ‘me’”, and Decide on an action. So the first chapter fits the Scene-Sequel structure, but doesn’t present its elements chronologically. And the Disaster of the chapter is not really a Disaster in Swain’s sense. It’s not a plot complication, but an incident that highlights the Goal Frankie had at the start but didn’t know she had.

I try The Last Unicorn. There are goals and conflicts and disasters, but they are distributed among the characters. Who is the protagonist? Schmendrick? Molly? Lir? The unicorn? I can’t apply the formula when there are four protagonists.

Now I’m reading through The Hobbit, an adventure story about a single protagonist facing Disasters and Deciding how to respond to them, so it should be chock full of Scene-and-Sequel.

The story opens with a long description of a hobbit-hole. This shows Bilbo’s Goal: Continue living a quiet, respectable, adventure-free life in his hobbit hole. Gandalf scratches a sign on his door, and dwarves begin arriving. Bilbo has a Conflict (be respectably polite, yet don’t run out of food or miss his own dinner or allow his plates to be damaged), which is a manifestation of the larger Conflict (adventure vs. respectability) of which he is not yet aware.

What’s the Setback? There is none; there is an Opportunity, a re-evaluation, a Discovery that Bilbo has some Took longing for adventure within him. Rather than trying to defend his Goal of quiet respectability, he decides to set it aside for a while. So instead of Setback, let’s say the third element of a scene is a “goal challenge”, and the protagonist’s Decision may be to abandon his Goal.

Continuing through the book, I come at random to Chapter 9, “Barrels Out of Bond”, in which the dwarves are taken captive by the wood elves. We switch to Thorin’s POV, and he is thrown into a dungeon. The only way to fit this into Scene-Sequel is to consider the whole span of events, starting from their being captured, to their escape, as a single SCENE from Bilbo’s point of view. That means that when we see Thorin being thrown into a dungeon, we should think of it as being a problem for Bilbo, who doesn’t even know yet what has happened.

Within that big SCENE, we have smaller units that resemble Scene-Sequel, but they result in Discoveries, Goals, and Decisions, but no Setbacks. The companions are already in a dire situation, and there’s no need for further Setbacks. Bilbo makes a series of Discoveries (where Thorin is held, the river leading out of the caves; the King’s wine cellars), and pieces them together into a plan. The chapter’s story arc, from capture to escape, has a Scene-Sequel structure; but not one of the scenes within the chapter has a Scene-Sequel structure.

So where have I used Scene+Sequel? I’ll look at my most-likely story, “The Magician and the Detective”, which is an adventure fic.

Magician & Detective

The entire story arc is one SCENE from Holmes’ point of view:
Goal: Apprehend Trixie for her crime, but more importantly, figure out how she did it.
Conflict: Chapters 3-9.
Setback: There was no crime.
Reaction: Admiration
Problem/Thought: He does not think he is worthy of what is offered him.
Decision: He will remain as he is.
Action: None.

Trixie, meanwhile, experiences the story as this SCENE:
Goal: Seduce Holmes.
Conflict: Holmes is uninterested in love.
Setback:The unusually destructive tea-party.
Reaction, Thought, Decision: Not seen, due to POV.
Action: Writes desperate letter.

Chapters 1-3: Not SCENEs, except for setting up Holmes' full-story SCENE.

Chapter 4: Trixie’s Goal is to for once in her life successfully use her great ability to perform a magic show that the audience will appreciate. This is odd in Scene-Sequel theory; the first subordinate Conflict in the story is a threat to the antagonist's goal. (The reader won’t discover until much later that Trixie is not on the moral low ground, and Holmes does not hold any moral high ground, so their situations are symmetrical.) Before this first SCENE finishes playing out, Trixie introduces a Holmes-centered SCENE by challenging Holmes, but we don’t know her Goal (and must not, until almost the end of the story). This is the start of Trixie’s story-length SCENE; note it begins in the middle of her smaller SCENE, which will conclude shortly.

Chapter 5: Trixie demonstrates that she could steal the painting, but does not threaten any of Holmes’ goals. The way she does it implies she can and will make problems for Holmes, and dares him to catch her. Holmes responds to the Conflict by taking an Action that ruins Trixie’s show and ends her SCENE in disaster, although the reader doesn’t know that until Trixie tells Watson in chapter 6 what Holmes did in chapter 5.

Chapter 6: Holmes’ Action in response to Trixie’s challenge has ruined her show, and her Action in response now prevents Holmes from his Goal of examining Trixie’s luggage. In the middle of this Holmes-centered Holmes-Trixie conflict, we have a Holmes-Watson-Trixie conflict, which can’t be broken down into two sides: Holmes wants Watson to stop her; Watson wants to stop her but chivalry forbids; Trixie takes advantage of this to leave unmolested. This conflict does not fit the SCENE pattern, but its resolution (Trixie leaving) is the Setback to Holmes’ Goal to inspect her luggage.

Chapter 7: Holmes and Watson’s Sequel, in which they Decide to find Trixie’s hotel by process of elimination. Their Action is interrupted by a lengthy scene discussing magical theory, which does not fit Scene-Sequel theory. At the end of the chapter, their Action leads not to another Conflict, but to unexpected intervention from Trixie which is both a help and a dare to Holmes.

Trixie appears to want to escape but really wants to draw Holmes further in, and Holmes wants to catch her but wants more to know how she did it. So they are secretly cooperating, each extending the chase rather than acting to best achieve their apparent Goals. That is, the Goals in their chapter scenes are false Goals, and the true underlying structure is more complicated. This pattern continues up through chapter 10.

I could continue, but I think we've seen enough. There are a multitude of Scene-Sequel-like structures here, but they are on different scales, for different characters, overlap each other, have missing or concealed components, are not always presented in chronological order, and may result in advances or final Goal defeats rather than setbacks. The Goals shown in the SCENEs may not be their true Goals; indeed, the characters may not even admit their true Goals yet.

If I'd written this story with Scene-Sequel structure in mind, it would have been much simpler. On the other hand, the first 2 chapters would have been more exciting. On the other other hand, the first 2 chapters are about Holmes and Trixie, because the story is about Holmes and Trixie. Diving right into a conflict in chapter 1 might have kept more readers reading, but I think the way I did it makes it a better story for those who stayed with it.

"Moments", on the other hand, didn't get the reaction I wanted from most readers, and it might be because chapters 4 and 5 aren't linked clearly to the rest of the story. I'm checking them against the Scene-Sequel structure to see if that will help me fix them.

Conclusion

My overall impression is that Scene-Sequel, like the Hero’s Journey, or character archetypes, is a template that you can hold up against your story to identify possible problem areas, but that is more likely to be used by lazy or bad writers to churn out formulaic fiction. It is certainly not, as its advocates claim, a formula that you need only iterate enough times in order to produce a good book.

The true pattern of SCENEs is more general than Swain or Bickham say it is. Instead of a Setback, you may have an Opportunity which leads to abandoning a Goal. Within an overarching Scene+Sequel, you may find the smaller structures have Discoveries or other Advances instead of Setbacks, which move the main character further forward toward their Goal. And the Goals may not be true Goals at all; a significant part of the novel may be the characters trying to understand what their Goals really are.

All in all, the Scene-Sequel structure is IMHO not as useful as just asking yourself 2 questions at all times:

1. What motivates each of my characters to do what they’re doing?
2. What motivates my reader to keep reading?

Unfortunately, like most bad writing advice, Scene-Sequel theory is infiltrating the writing community and will inevitably change our expectations and conventions so that scene-sequel stories seem better to us, just as sentences without speech tags now seem natural when they were initially merely bad prescriptivist grammar. I went to see the movie Gravity last night, and I thought it was very good; but it was a perfect Bickhamesque scene-sequel scene-sequel scene-sequel, from start to finish. Would it have been written this way before Bickham, or would the writers have given us something with a little more structure?

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Comments ( 7 )

On the topic of Gravity, its structure has been compared to the "sensation"-cinema adventure-serials of the silent era, which was well before Bickham was even born.

I never really got into the whole Scene & Sequel construct, though I can see why it's so useful for most commercial literature. If all you're writing is a single character's perspective and you have a tightly focused story, it's an excellent way to keep the action moving.

What do you think of Motivation-Reaction Units? Do a blog post on them!

I'm wildly guessing here you must be a very proficient speed-reader :rainbowlaugh:

Also here's a similar investigation of the Hero's Journey (in alll-caps tho). :twilightsmile:

1808232 I haven't got an opinion on MRUs yet. I haven't paid much attention to them. Some of the things I tried to parse as SCENEs might parse better as MRUs. The main falsifiable prediction scene-sequel / MRU theory makes is that you should find MRUs inside scene-sequels, but not scene-sequels inside of MRUs.

I gotta read Swain's book before doing that blog post. :unsuresweetie:

All the while I was reading this, I was thinking "Die Hard." Strong scenes, strong motivations, fairly clear actions...

I'm tempted to do a full deconstruction of "Traveling Tutor and the Librarian" this way, just to see how well/badly my stuff is treated when examined with this process.
Green Grass' Goal: Have nothing unusual happen while trotting happily through life the way he wants.
Conflict#1-Through a misunderstanding, manages to assault Twilight Sparkle with a bucket of water.
Setback#1- Twilight wants to fry him.
Reaction#1: Run like a chicken.
Sequel: Reaction #2 - Avoidance (stay away from her and write an apology note)
Decision#2 (Forced on him) Return and apologize in person
and so on...

1808243 I love that post! Let me paste in some advice from the end, taken from this video, which sounds similar to Scene-Sequel theory, but simpler and more general:

DO EXACTLY AS THEY SAY: LINE UP EVERY SINGLE BEAT IN YOUR STORY. THEN REWORK THE BEATS IF THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN LINK THEM IS WITH THE PHRASE “AND THEN.” IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE “THEREFORE” OR “BUT.”

I skipped the section on Magician and Detective, since I haven't read that story. But everything I wholeheartedly agree with, and it's encouraging to see another person realize the same limitations inherit in so many ideas about and break-downs of "good" story structures.

One of the largest issues I have with how-to's like the scene building technique above is that they engender the belief that this is the only way to write or construct good stories. It isn't, not by a long shot. I won't deny that writing scenes driven by a desire which is then prevented from being satisfied can't build reader interest, because it's a source of conflict. A story where everything goes according to plan or the characters get everything they want without any sort of struggle is boring.

But such a model tends to emphasize (whether purposefully or not) external conflicts, which, in my opinion, are never as interesting or full of potential as internal conflicts. For example, at the end of Sweet and Elite, where Fancy Pants asks Rarity if she knows this interesting group of five ponies that just crashed the party, aka her friends. There's a great, dramatic moment where she hesitates, because she's battling two impulses, both of which are very powerful and yet central to her personality/character makeup: maintain her position of admiration and acceptance among the social elite she cares so much about fitting in with, or maintain her loyalty to her friends--who she cares very much about--by admitting that they're, you know, her friends. She can't do both. The choice she makes says volumes about who she really is. I think that's what builds good drama: conflicting impulses. You're confronted by a bear in the woods; it's terrifying, and you have a clear path behind you to run and escape. But then you spy your rifle resting on a log between you and the bear. What you do next will tell the reader who you are on the inside. It's dramatic, because the reader can sense your inner conflict and there are big risks no matter what you do (fight and you might die, run and you might consider yourself a coward for not trying to fight).

When it comes to the sort of scene breakdown you highlighted here, I think it's very useful for writing television, cartoon, movie and play scripts. You have limited time and space to tell a story, and thus economy is recommended. Even for many kinds of books this is helpful.

But for novels? I would say NO. Fanfiction it can go either way. Case in point, there are so many other ways to write fantastic stories, which don't follow such a structured format. And part of the risk in even trying to follow a formula is you focus on fulfilling your good-story-element-checklist instead of making things natural. You end up like King Neptune: making patties with magic, not love. Just because you have the right ingredients doesn't mean you know how to make a good burger--or story.

I read in a book called "The Technique of the Novel" that the real artistic impulse or urge is to produce an effect on the viewer or reader--an emotion. You want to affect your audience in some way. This includes convincing them of some idea--a theme--through the use of your characters and what they do in your story and what happens to them. I just read Albert Camus' The Plague, which is entirely thematic and doesn't (for the most part) come close to following the sort of scene by scene structure explained above. Yet it's still read and published more than half a century after its initial release.

How do you encapsulate what life means to you, which has been distilled from very personal experiences over the course of your time on earth, in a story? How do you convey what existence in its essence means to you? How do you make a person read your book or fanfiction, set it down or finally close out the internet page, bearing an expression of thoughtful contemplation? Or perhaps make them ashen faced, with a complicated mix of feelings boiling on the inside, the reader unhappy to consider the painful truth so clearly spoken to them, yet unable to ignore it?

Is all a story can be is a series of events where a protagonist consecutively fails to get what they want, until they eventually do (or don't)? Is that the only way you can use characters, events, consequences, emotions and setting?

I don't think so.

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