How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method

by Randy Ingermanson

  Example 2: How Claire Breaks Her Scene Crucible

  Claire’s Scene Crucible is her being held captive by Captain Randall. She is broken out of her Scene Crucible by the mysterious wiry Scotsman. Together, they escape the evil captain. Her next Scene Crucible will be her captivity by this Scotsman and his clansmen, who are just as suspicious of Claire as Captain Randall is.

  Example 3: How Michael Breaks His Scene Crucible

  Michael’s Scene Crucible is that the killers are coming and they know where his father is. He breaks out of his Scene Crucible by hiding his father in a new room and calling his brother for reinforcements. Michael’s next Scene Crucible will be outside on the street. Unarmed and alone, he’ll be waiting for the killers to arrive, knowing that he has to hold them off for fifteen long minutes.

  So at the end of the scene, you’ve broken the Scene Crucible and you’ll never use it again. You’re ready to move on to a new Scene Crucible.

  But what about the Character? Do you need a new Character too?

  There you have a choice. You can use the same Character in the next scene. Or you can bring in a different Character. You generally have only a few Characters in your story who are important enough to take the lead role in a Scene Crucible. Some novels have only one such Character. Some have several.

  In the rest of this book, we’ll focus on the details of either the Character or the Scene Crucible.

  We’ll start with the Character, because that’s simpler.

  You need to make three important decisions about your Character before you start writing your scene.

  Read the next chapter to learn what those three decisions are.

  Chapter Four

  Every Scene Needs a Point-of-View Character

  A scene is never emotionally neutral.

  Suppose you’re writing a scene about a bank robbery. That could be a really exciting scene, giving your reader a stupendously powerful emotional experience.

  But there’s a problem. Whose emotional experience will it be?

  Your reader, obviously, will share this powerful emotional experience. But who will they share it with? To have that powerful emotional experience, your reader needs to step inside the skin of one of the Characters.

  Will you put your reader inside the skin of the bank robber, who desperately needs money to pay for surgery for his mother who’s dying of cancer?

  Will you put your reader inside the skin of the aging security guard, who is three days away from retirement and dreams of long walks on the beach, away from the rat race?

  Will you put your reader inside the skin of the teenage hostage, who came into the bank to open a new checking account and now has a bomb wired to her head?

  Whose Skin Is the Reader Inside?

  So your first decision for your scene is to choose which Character to make your reader identify with. We could call this Character the “Scene Character,” to highlight the fact that she’s the Character in this particular Scene Crucible. But there are already three standard terms people use. The principal Character in a scene is commonly called the “point-of-view Character” or the “POV Character,” or the “viewpoint Character.” For consistency, we’ll stick with the term “POV Character” throughout this book.

  Your POV Character gives your reader an emotional yardstick.

  The emotions your reader feels will depend on who your POV Character is.

  Your story will have many characters, usually at least half a dozen, and often many more.

  How do you choose which character should be your POV Character in this scene you’re writing right now?

  That’s a tough question to answer.

  You might be using only one POV Character for the entire story. In that case, there’s no decision to make. Once you’ve settled on that one POV Character, they’re it for every scene.

  But most stories are written with more than one POV Character, and in that case, you have a choice.

  A good rule of thumb is to ask who has the most to lose in each scene.

  The person with the most to lose in a scene will probably have the most powerful emotional experience. That character is a good bet to be a strong POV Character. Remember that in every scene you’re giving your reader the emotional experience of your POV Character.

  Think about the Tale of the Tiger in chapter 1.

  We could have used the village headman as the POV Character.

  Or the village story-woman.

  Or the mother or father of the young man who killed the tiger.

  Each of these might have made an interesting POV Character.

  But none of them stood to be killed by the tiger.

  The character with the most to lose was the one the tiger singled out to attack.

  That’s why he’s the POV Character.

  So that’s your first decision—who is your POV Character?

  Once you’ve decided on that, you have to make another crucial decision.

  You’d like to tell your story so vividly that you create a movie in your reader’s brain. That means you must decide …

  Where Do You Put the Camera?

  If you’re making a movie, you have many choices on how you show each piece of the action. Here are a few of your options:

  You can put the camera on a character’s shoulder looking out at the world, showing what that character sees.

  You can put the camera in front of a character, looking back at the character, focusing on the person himself.

  You can pull the camera back so it shows all the characters without really centering on any single one.

  Lots of other options.

  But you’re doing something even more complicated than making a movie. A movie only shows images and plays sounds. Your story shows images and plays sounds and also tells the inner thoughts and feelings of your POV Characters.

  You have six basic strategies for doing all this. Each strategy is called a “viewpoint.” Let’s talk about each one and show an example.

  Strategy 1: First-Person Viewpoint

  In the first-person viewpoint, you narrate your story as if the POV Character is the author. You use the pronouns “I” and “me.” You show the reader only the things the POV Character can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or feel. You don’t show anything the POV Character doesn’t know.

  Here’s an example snippet, revising the Tale of the Tiger to be first person:

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at me, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

  My body desperately wants to turn and run.

  I face the tiger and wait for the perfect moment.

  The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.

  He reaches the peak of his flight.

  He’s coming down.

  Straight at me.

  I wait till the last possible moment.

  I throw.

  The tiger crashes into me, knocking me senseless.

  My very last thought before darkness falls is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.

  Notice that in first-person viewpoint, you are putting the reader inside the POV Character’s head, but not inside anyone else’s. The reader knows exactly what the POV Character is thinking and feeling.

  But the reader can only guess what the tiger is thinking, or the village headman, or the other characters, based on what the POV Character can see of the tiger or the headman or the other characters.

  The reader is inside the POV Character and outside all the other characters.

  Strategy 2: Second-Person Viewpoint

  In the second-person viewpoint, you narrate your story as if the POV Character is the reader. You use the pronoun “you.” Again, you show only the things the POV Character knows.

  Here’s the same example from above, now in second-person:

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at you, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

  Your body desperately wants to turn and run.

  You face
the tiger and wait for the perfect moment.

  The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.

  He reaches the peak of his flight.

  He’s coming down.

  Straight at you.

  You wait till the last possible moment.

  You throw.

  The tiger crashes into you, knocking you senseless.

  Your very last thought before darkness falls is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.

  Notice that the only real difference between second person and first person is the choice of pronouns. In both cases, the reader is inside the POV Character and outside all the other characters.

  Strategy 3: Third-Person Viewpoint

  In the third-person viewpoint, you narrate your story as if the POV Character is neither the reader nor the author but some third person who can be known completely. Once again, you show only the things the POV Character knows.

  But this time, you can’t use the pronouns “I” or “you.” In third-person viewpoint, you have to give the POV Character a name. (This is the reason I wrote the Tale of the Tiger in second person—because I don’t have any idea what sort of names were used in the village.)

  Let’s show the same section from the Tale of the Tiger, this time in third person. Since I have to use a name for this viewpoint, I’ll call our hero Yung.

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at Yung, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

  Yung’s body desperately wants to turn and run.

  He faces the tiger and waits for the perfect moment.

  The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.

  He reaches the peak of his flight.

  He’s coming down.

  Straight at Yung.

  Yung waits till the last possible moment.

  He throws.

  The tiger crashes into Yung, knocking him senseless.

  Yung’s very last thought before darkness falls is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.

  Notice that in third person, we typically alternate between the POV Character’s name and a pronoun. There are no hard rules on how you mix these up. You want to be clear. You want to avoid repetition.

  Just as in first person and second person, the reader is inside the POV Character and outside all the other characters.

  Strategy 4: Third-Person Objective Viewpoint

  The third-person objective viewpoint is similar to the normal third-person viewpoint, but with two very important changes.

  In third-person objective, you see the POV Character from the outside, not from the inside. So you can see things he can’t see, such as the spider dangling above his head.

  In third-person objective, you don’t tell what the POV Character is thinking or feeling.

  It’s as if you were pointing a video camera at the POV Character and expecting the reader to figure out his thoughts and feelings from his words, his actions, and his facial expressions.

  Third-person objective is hard. It forces you, the author, to think like an actor. In a movie, each actor has to show what he’s thinking and feeling using his face, voice, and actions (unless the director decides to use a voice-over to tell the character’s thoughts out loud, but this is not common in movies.)

  Let’s change the snippet from the Tale of the Tiger to try to show the hero’s thoughts and feelings from the outside.

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at Yung, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

  Yung’s body twists as if to turn and run. But he doesn’t.

  He faces the tiger and waits for the perfect moment.

  The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.

  He reaches the peak of his flight.

  He’s coming down.

  Straight at Yung.

  Yung waits till the last possible moment.

  He throws.

  The tiger crashes into Yung, knocking him down.

  Notice the changes we had to make. In the second sentence, we couldn’t simply say what Yung wanted. We’re outside Yung. So we had to show his body beginning to twist so he could flee. And then resisting that motion. This takes a little extra time.

  In the very last paragraph, we couldn’t tell what Yung was thinking, because we’re not inside his head. So we had to remove the sentence of interior monologue. There’s really no way to show that from outside Yung’s head. So we’ve lost something by going to this viewpoint.

  In third-person objective, the reader is outside all the characters, including the POV Character.

  Strategy 5: Head-Hopping Viewpoint

  The head-hopping viewpoint is a bit controversial. Many writers and editors believe this is not a valid viewpoint. But some think it’s not only okay but a good thing. Personally, I’m not a fan, but I’d rather not lay down the law here, because there are people who like it.

  So what is head-hopping? It’s essentially an alternating form of third person in which you switch from one POV Character to another within a single scene.

  People who dislike head-hopping argue that you are putting your reader inside the skin of multiple POV Characters in the same scene. Therefore, head-hopping is bad, because your reader doesn’t know whom to root for.

  People who like head-hopping argue that if you want to capture all the emotions in the scene, then you need to be able to get inside the heads of multiple characters. This is especially true in, for example, a scene from a romance novel in which the relationship itself is the main character. You can argue that the reader is rooting for the relationship, and a relationship takes two, and therefore it’s legitimate to get inside two heads in one scene.

  I won’t tell you what to do. You can make up your own mind on this question.

  Let’s look at our example from the Tale of the Tiger. I’ll hop heads midway through, going from Yung’s mind into the mind of the old village headman, whom we’ll call Auld. Since he had no role in this snippet before, I’ll tweak things a little so that now he does.

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at Yung, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.

  Yung’s body desperately wants to turn and run.

  He faces the tiger and waits for the perfect moment.

  The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.

  He reaches the peak of his flight.

  He’s coming down.

  Straight at Yung.

  Yung waits till the last possible moment.

  He throws.

  The tiger crashes into Yung, knocking him flat.

  The spear pokes out of the tiger’s back. It has just missed his heart. The great beast is still writhing, twisting, screaming in a death agony.

  Auld races toward the tiger in giant strides that seem to take forever. He throws his spear into the tiger’s heart.

  The tiger collapses on top of Yung.

  Auld heaves at the tiger’s corpse, desperate to know Yung’s fate. Is he too late? Could he have been quicker?

  All that he can think as he rolls the tiger off the boy is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.

  We begin this snippet in Yung’s head. We stay there until Yung throws his spear. Then we segue out of his head, pulling back the camera to show him knocked flat (rather than knocked senseless, which we can’t know if we’re not in his head). For a brief moment, we’re in third-person objective. We’re not in anybody’s head. Then Auld comes on the scene. We show him running. We show him throwing the spear. And then we glide into his head and we know his thoughts. We’ve hopped heads.

  In the head-hopping viewpoint, the reader is inside the POV Character and outside all the other characters; then the reader moves outside all the characters; then the reader moves inside a new POV Character while remaining outside all the other characters. It’s a little bit like having two mini-scenes within a scene. And of course you can do that several times in a scene. But beware. The more you hop heads, the more you’ll yank
your reader around.

  Strategy 6: Omniscient Viewpoint

  The omniscient viewpoint is rarely used these days, although it was common in the nineteenth century. In the omniscient viewpoint, you give the reader a God’s-eye view of the story. You might say that the POV Character is God. Of course, the God of the story is the author. So you could just as well say that the POV Character in omniscient viewpoint is the author.

  In omniscient viewpoint, the reader can know what all the characters are thinking and feeling. In fact, the reader can know things none of the characters know. The reader can know the long history of the village, the current zeitgeist of the village, the whole future of the village. No character could know all that, but the reader can.

  The omniscient viewpoint is hard to pull off, but it can be done.

  The Tale of the Tiger was written to be up close and personal with one POV Character. In order to recast our snippet in omniscient form, we’re going to need to pull back the camera and bring in more characters. We’ll keep Yung and Auld, and we’ll add in the other men of the village and we’ll also get a look inside the tiger’s head.

  You can decide for yourself whether this is a good way to tell a story.

  The tiger lunges forward, straight at Yung, faster and faster, roaring in his fury. He knows men are weak, and this small man is the weakest of the weak. He means to crush him like grass.

  Like a hundred thousand men before him, Yung feels his body desperately wanting to turn and run.

  Like a hundred thousand men before him, he faces the tiger and waits for the perfect moment.

  Yung vaguely knows that a dozen men are racing toward him with spears. He does not know that none of them are near enough to help. The only man near enough is Auld, who is frozen into inaction, bewitched by the tiger’s roar. The boy will live or die, and nobody can save him but himself.