Two words have emerged from the computer programming world into the lexicon of writing fiction. (It’s actually three, if you count the word architecture, which the pioneering computer geeks actually borrowed from the building trade to describe programming in a design context.) Those two high-tech words are paradigm and optimize.
Ironically, it is architecture that programmers—and writers—seek to optimize. As for paradigm—the framework of assumptions and expectations that put a fence around a task or element—everything depends on which paradigm you work from.
Like diets and cures, all paradigms are not created equal.
Republicans and Democrats … different political paradigms. Fiction and nonfiction … different at every level. Planning and pantsing … not as different as you’d think (both are a search for story), but regarded as different process paradigms.
To optimize is to make something the very best it can be, given its use, context, and mission. The latter caveat is critical to one’s understanding of the goal of optimization. Sometimes a whisper is the optimal corrective tool, and sometimes it’s a two-by-four. That’s why context is critical to this understanding.
There is a fourth term the geeks have also snatched and applied to enterprise-level software: mission-critical. As in, the whole thing goes up in flames if this doesn’t work.
So it is with my very favorite writing tip. If you don’t completely know where a story is going, there is no way you can optimize your scenes. You can write them or string them together, but until you clarify their destination they are just your best in-the-moment guesses. Writers who claim they can optimize their stories one scene at a time in linear order within an early draft are one of three things: patient, geniuses, or unpublished. Trust me, if such a process results in a published and successful book or script—and it really does happen—there was a honkin’ rewrite in there somewhere. My position is that, through an understanding of these principles (which will, over time, lead you toward story planning, at least as a part of your process) you can cut down on the number of drafts required (reducing to one or two, in fact), and the time that expires between starting and finishing.
Mission-driven, mission-critical scene construction and execution is the make-or-break skill set of storytelling. You can plan like a mad genius, but if you can’t execute scenes at a professional level, then all that planning collapses in a heaving mass of unfulfilled intention.
Planning is the creation of an architecturally sound blueprint. Successful planning is when the mission-critical story beats—Hook, First Plot Point, First Pinch Point, Midpoint, Second Pinch Point, Second Plot Point, and the Climax scenes—have been optimized based on stellar story physics. Scene writing is all hammers and nails and drywall, assembled with the touch of a master craftsman. Without a seamless blueprint, it’s like putting a granite and cherry kitchen into a tent.
This is why scene writing is one of the essential Six Core Competencies.
Scene writing is always risky without a contextual mission that melds into a master plan. Without a mission, too often the result is scenes that don’t forward exposition or hit the pause button on the story with a side trip or overwrought backstory. To complicate matters, there are different species (categories) of scenes with differing contextual missions and therefore discreet forms.
Opening scenes read differently than expositional scenes … which are different than milestone scenes … which are again different from scenes with unique and vital roles in a story (like flashbacks, behind-the-curtain cutaways, first-person reflections, etc.). To a great extent these differences are defined by an understanding of the four different contextual realms of a story (which go a long way toward defining the context of the scenes within them; see Chapter 22), and what happens just before and after a given scene.
A scene that is just characterization, with nothing added to the exposition, is not good. Not optimized. When you add a piece of narrative exposition to that characterization, the scene has a mission. When you add a second or third mission to a single scene, you risk compromising power and clarity. James Patterson has mastered this, and it has become the accepted model of effective scene writing today: One mission per scene.
Think of each scene as a frame in a PowerPoint presentation. That single bullet of information is the mission. What you might say about that frame in live presentation … that’s what you insert in your beat sheet or outline, or, if you can keep it all straight in your head, in the actual execution of a scene.
Ask yourself: What does this scene need to accomplish? Why is it here? How does it propel the story forward? What about it is interesting or emotionally resonant? What is the conflict in this scene? The subtext?
Sometimes a key moment within a story calls for a microcosmic drama that stands alone as a chunk of dramatic power. Big moments certainly call for big scenes, and often for preliminary setup scenes. Other times, scenes can be in and out, quick and clear. You get to make that call, but in either case, your scenes work best—they are optimized—when conceived and then executed from a mission-driven perspective.
Once you know the mission for each scene, the next step is to conceive a creative treatment (approach) for the scene, using the power of story physics to drive it home. This treatment should make the scene as effective—scary, dramatic, multifaceted, mysterious, impactful, sexy, or whatever it needs to be—to best fulfill its mission. This, too, is the art of writing … an intuitive feel for the type of creative treatment that is indeed optimal.
The more you understand the Big Picture of your story and the principles that prop it up, the quicker and closer you’ll come to that intuitive creative solution.
Enter your scene at the last possible moment. This can only happen if you do, in fact, understand the mission of the scene and have defined the single kernel of essential exposition it delivers to the reader.
Is the setup of the scene necessary? Are there extraneous chit-chatty character greetings or side conversations? Is there gratuitous characterization or unnecessary backstory? Are descriptions of places and people required to get the point (the mission) across? Are you giving the reader enough credit to see and get the moment, without slamming them over the head with the obvious or mundane?
The deeper you go into a story, the less this type of minutia should be present. Even then, don’t describe things that don’t need describing; that is, details the reader can intuitively understand. Don’t describe how a coffeemaker looks, even when coffee is being served in a scene. Believe me, it happens in those unpublished manuscripts you don’t get to see.
Get to the point. Get to it. Less is more.
If your story leans to the more literate and character-driven variety, these rules still apply, but with a different veneer. If your words don’t reveal and connect to a mission, to a purpose, then chances are they should be economized or reconsidered.
Make your scenes microcosms of dramatic theory. They should apply story physics directly to the mission at hand. If there is a major reveal, lead into it, then deliver the blow (the key revelation at the heart of the scene’s mission) at the last moment of the scene. This is called a cut and thrust, and it propels the reader into the scene that follows so she can learn more about what just happened.
Many scenes have a setup (done with prior context), a confrontation, and a resolution. Sometimes the elements can be implied and not shown; that’s your choice. A great scene asks and, to some extent, answers a dramatic question. Just know that overwriting a scene is a deal killer, a pace sucker. Give the reader credit for the ability to make leaps. Explain only what requires explaining.
And, going back to Writing 101—show, don’t tell. When you can. This is a flexible principle that needs to be applied artfully. But don’t show everything … because everything doesn’t need to be on the page. The subtext of a vicarious journey (one of the realms of story physics) is allowing readers to visualize settings and circumstances through their own frames of reference.