I was sitting in a little room at Writers Retreat Workshop with Jason, one of the staffers. He’d read my first chapter and was offering suggestions for improvement.

“Maybe she just wants a bowl of ice cream,” he said. “She bought a carton of Rocky Road, and she just wants to sit down and eat it.”

Click! The lights came on. In that moment I understood scene structure in a visceral way, like I never had before. And I couldn’t wait to get back to my computer.

If you followed my series on revising, you know the POV character should have a goal in every scene. The goal is what impels the character (and the reader) through the scene, and it adds a little flavor as well.

In my opening scene, Grace comes in from grocery shopping and finds her husband dead in his recliner. She’s not sure what to do, and she makes a lot of crazy decisions, and in the end, she gets drunk on his hoarded scotch to avoid dealing with him.

In this scene, the inciting event is discovering Howard dead. And I thought her goal was to decide what to do with Howard (and of course, she doesn’t get what she wants because she gets drunk instead of deciding). But Jason’s statement about ice cream showed me another whole level of scene building.

The POV character should come into the scene with a goal. This subtle change means the scene is already driving forward before it even begins. The goal cannot be her response to the inciting event without losing that momentum (though what she wants may well change as things happen).

I rewrote the scene. Now, she has just bought a carton of ice cream (I changed it to Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey). Soon after discovering Howard dead, she is startled by a loud noise and drops the groceries. Her cherished carton of Chunky Monkey rolls under the sofa. Although she still does all the crazy things she did before, now she’s aware of that ice cream, quietly melting under the couch. Not only is it humorous, it adds a deadline: we know how quickly ice cream melts in Phoenix, even in an air conditioned home, so every delay adds a layer of tension. Will she get her ice cream before it melts?

I sent the new version to three of my early readers, people who had read the version right before it. All of them said it was an order of magnitude stronger, though each gave different reasons why it was stronger. Ironically, none of the three reasons they gave were new. The only significant change in the scene was the ice cream — the character’s goal.

To hammer the lesson down, on the flight home, I was reading Stephen King’s novel Lisey’s Story, and there’s a scene where Lisey’s famous husband is shot at a groundbreaking ceremony. What’s Lisey (the POV character) thinking about? She just wants to get into private so she can pull her panties out of her butt-crack. A clear goal, stated explicitly. And it both personalizes the story and makes it more real (I can’t relate to watching my husband get shot, but I can soo relate to undies that creep up in public).

Sometimes, the character’s goal will relate directly to the primary conflict. In my second chapter, Grace’s goal is to get her husband’s body out of her living room before her guests arrive. Once she is successful (several scenes later), her goal changes: now she wants to hide the evidence of what she’s done, and that is the primary conflict throughout the book.

That reminds me. The character’s goals from one scene to the next may be related, and this can drive the entire story forward. For instance, if she doesn’t meet her scene goal, she may change her plans, and the very fact that she didn’t get what she wanted may well be the inciting event of the next scene.

Have you read The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard? It a great story, but it’s also very well crafted. Worth studying, for the sake of learning craft.

In the opening scene, a young man is about to leave for college, and he and his long-time girlfriend have each, silently decided this is the night they are going to have sex (character’s goal = have sex). Now, believe me, the primary conflict of this book is not about this couple (or any couple) having sex. That’s just the scene goal, and a pretty simple one at face value — after all, if both people want to go forward, it’s going to happen, right?

Well, life gets in the way (obstacles). Mom comes to the door and has a conversation with her daughter (while the boyfriend stealthily continues what he’s doing, trying not to giggle). Etc. When the house is quiet, and it’s finally safe, they realize neither has a condom (last obstacle). Her father is a doctor and keeps a box of of them in his home office, so the scene ends as she tells the boyfriend to sneak downstairs (new plan for meeting her goal).

The next scene begins in Dad’s office. The boy (now the POV character) wants to get a condom and sneak back upstairs (character goal = get condom). He’s about to do it when … well, something really dramatic happens, something that has nothing to do with this couple having sex, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say the dramatic thing that happens is the inciting event for the rest of novel.

The point is, these scenes are driven by need — by the simple fact that the POV character wants something (stated explicitly), is kept from getting it, and forms a new plan for getting it, which becomes the goal for the next scene.

If you have scenes that just aren’t working, ask yourself what the character wants. If you give your POV character a goal, even a silly goal like wanting to dig her panties out of her butt-crack, you may find it makes your scene sizzle. Heck, it might even lead you naturally into the next scene.

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Katrina Stonoff: Fiction for Women

Stone Soup Blog