“I must turn the page to see what happens next.”
When you end a scene with a Setback, it’s clear that the scene has ended, but it feels like the story as a whole has unfinished business. That creates an open loop in your reader’s brain.
And human brains are not wired to accept open loops.
Human brains want closure.
Human brains insist on looking for closure.
Your reader has to turn the page to get closure. And that’s what you want her to do. You want her to turn the page and read the next scene and the next and the next.
So when you end a scene with a Setback, you’re exploiting the so-called “Zeigarnik effect”—the heightened focus that all humans have when they face an open loop. (The Zeigarnik effect is named for Bluma Zeigarnik, a psychologist who published her results in 1927. The story goes that her PhD adviser noticed in a restaurant that a certain waiter could remember tremendous detail about an order—until it was paid, at which point he seemed to forget everything. The payment closed a mental loop, and he lost focus.)
Why a Proactive Scene Sometimes Needs a Victory
When a scene ends in a win for a likable POV Character or a loss for an unlikable POV Character, we call that a Victory.
As we just saw, a Setback punches some powerful emotive buttons. A Victory also punches some buttons:
“Yay, that feels good!”
“Now I can relax. Actually, what time is it? Uh-oh! I had no idea it was so late.”
“I don’t really have to turn the page right now. Things are good. If I turn the page, things might go south, and I’d like to end my reading for today on a high note.”
One of my friends once explained why she didn’t want to enter any more writing contests: “It hurts more to lose than it feels good to win.”
It’s just a fact. Winning feels good. But losing feels terrible.
If your goal is to keep delivering a powerful emotional experience and to keep your reader flipping pages, you should deliver far more Setbacks than Victories.
But sometimes you have to end a scene with a Victory.
Because it’s just not plausible that anyone would always always always lose.
And sometimes, the only way to lose is to die, which means your POV Character probably needs to live, which means she needs a Victory.
But even if you deliver a win at the end of your scene, you may still be able to turn that win to ashes if you’re lucky. Then it becomes a bittersweet ending to a scene, and it has all the advantages of a Setback along with all the advantages of a Victory. More on that in a later chapter.
Advice on Goals, Conflicts, and Setbacks
Establish the POV Character’s Goal as quickly as possible, preferably in the first sentence of the scene. Why? Because until you have a Goal, you have no story. The instant your scene gets a Goal, it becomes a miniature story.
Spend most of the scene in Conflict, with your POV Character trying and trying and trying to achieve her Goal. During the Conflict phase, your POV Character is neither succeeding nor failing. She’s trying things with a Goal in mind, and she knows that she only has to find one thing that works in order to win. So she tries and tries and tries again.
At the end of most Proactive Scenes, give your POV Character a terrible Setback instead of her Goal. This is not just one more attempt that doesn’t work. This is the last attempt. And not only does it not work, it smacks your POV Character down hard. It leaves your POV Character worse off at the end of the scene than she was at the beginning.
So now we understand the theory of how a Proactive Scene works.
But how do we make it work in practice?
We’re going to break it down into parts and look at each part in detail.
In the next chapter, we’ll explain exactly how you create a Goal that will drive your POV Character for a full scene.
Chapter Seven
How to Create a Dynamite Goal
Let’s do a quick review.
Every scene in your story needs to be its own miniature story, complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You begin a Proactive Scene by identifying the POV Character and making clear what his Goal is for the scene. That raises two questions.
When do you identify the POV Character?
How long should you take to establish his Goal?
Normally you should try to identify the POV Character in the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph. Once in a while, you might not do that, but you should have a reason for violating the norm.
There’s no set answer on how long you should take to define the Goal, but try to do it as early as possible. If you can do it in the first sentence, that’s excellent. If it takes a whole paragraph to make that Goal clear to the reader, that’s still very good. The longer it takes to make the Goal clear, the less proactive the POV Character seems.
If it takes a lot longer than one paragraph, ask yourself why it’s taking so much time. What’s the holdup? What would happen if you moved things around so you got that Goal right up in the first paragraph or even the first sentence?
If you can improve your scene by moving the Goal earlier in the scene, that’s a win. Do it.
But there’s a larger question to ask.
How do you know that the Goal for this scene is a good Goal?
How Do You Know When a Goal Is Good?
A Proactive Scene is going to run anywhere from a few hundred words to a few thousand. In that scene, you have to tell a complete, self-contained story. So your Goal has some requirements.
A Goal Must Fit the Scene’s Time Slot
The Goal for your Proactive Scene must be something that could reasonably be achieved in the time you’ve allocated for the scene. And normally a scene runs for a few minutes up to a few hours in story world time.
That’s enough time to run a race. Or rob a bank. Or ask that special someone to marry you.
It’s not enough time to train for the Olympics. Or corner the market on silver. Or organize a wedding. It’ll take a large number of scenes to reach those Goals—maybe a whole novel.
So make sure the Goal fits the time available. If it doesn’t fit, then break it down into a string of smaller steps, and use the first of these as the Goal of your scene.
A Goal Must Be Possible for Your POV Character
The Goal for your Proactive Scene must be something that your POV Character could conceivably do.
If your Character is slow, then it’s silly to give him the Goal of breaking the world record in the marathon. That’s just not physically possible.
If he’s a fussbudget about obeying the law, then giving him the Goal of robbing a bank is going to make a very implausible scene, and you’re going to have to work hard to get your reader to believe it’s possible.
If he’s terminally shy, then does that mean you can’t give him the Goal of asking his secret crush to the prom? No! As long as he’s physically capable of getting the words out, that is actually a fine Goal for a scene. The reason is simple.
A Goal Should Be Difficult
A story is about a Character in a Crucible. The tougher the Crucible, the more compelling the story.
So it’s perfectly fine to make the Goal for your Proactive Scene difficult. In fact, it’s good.
There’s a fine line to draw here. The more difficult the Goal, the more tension, and that’s good. But if the Goal is laughably difficult, then that’s not believable. So give your POV Character a Goal that’s hard, but not ridiculously hard.
And why would your POV Character choose such a difficult Goal? There’s only one reason.
A Goal Must Fit the Character
Your POV Character has a certain set of Values. She has some Ambition that drives her life. And she has some major Story Goal for the larger story you’re telling.
Your Character’s Goal in the scene should fit in with these Values, this Ambition, and this Story Goal.
And what do we mean by Values, Ambiti
on, and Story Goal? I covered those in depth in my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, but the short answer is this:
Values are personal beliefs your Character holds that can be put like this: “Nothing is more important than ________.” Whatever your Character writes in to the blank is a Value. Usually, your Character will have several Values, and they may conflict.
An Ambition is an abstract thing that your Character wants to achieve in life. Miss America famously wants to achieve “world peace.” But that’s abstract. It looks different to different people.
A Story Goal is the concrete, objective thing your Character wants to achieve in this story. It should ideally be something that could be photographed or videotaped. It is the thing that your Character believes would fulfill her Ambition. She might believe that eliminating all nuclear weapons would mean world peace has arrived. (Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn’t, but that’s what she believes. You can’t photograph world peace, but you can photograph the elimination of the last nuclear weapon on earth.)
In each scene, your Character needs to set up a Goal that she believes is a stepping-stone on the way to achieving her Story Goal. It needs to be in line with her Ambition and her Values. Otherwise, the reader isn’t going to buy in on the scene. Your reader will say, “That’s crazy! That Character just wouldn’t do that.”
A Goal Should Be Concrete and Objective
The reader wants to know what it means to win. The reader wants to know what she’s rooting for. A Goal that’s concrete and objective is something you could photograph or videotape. Like winning a big race. Or blowing up that bridge before the enemy crosses it. Or popping the question.
Some Example Goals for Proactive Scenes
Now you know the theory of how to define a Goal. Let’s look at some examples from the novels we looked at earlier.
Example 1: A Goal for a Proactive Scene in The Hunger Games
Chapter 14 of The Hunger Games begins with a scene in which Katniss has climbed a tree to escape several of the vicious Career Tributes who want to knock her out of the competition. Katniss has only a knife, while the Careers are well armed with spears, swords, and a bow and arrows. Her situation looks hopeless.
As the scene begins, Katniss spots a nest of tracker jackers.
But what’s a tracker jacker? That’s not something the reader could know.
A tracker jacker is a mutated form of wasp, and it’s part of the Scene Crucible. So Suzanne Collins takes several paragraphs to explain how vicious and deadly tracker jackers are. A few stings will give you terrible hallucinations. A few more will kill you.
You need that information to make sense of Katniss’s Goal for this scene.
That Goal is simple. Katniss is going to climb up to the branch holding the nest of tracker jackers and try to saw it off. Carefully, so as not to upset them. Then she’ll drop the nest straight down on the Careers and drive them away.
Let’s see how good this Goal is:
Does it fit the time slot for the scene? Yes. It should take only a few minutes to saw off the branch.
Is it possible for Katniss? Yes. She has a large knife with a serrated edge.
Is it difficult? Yes. If she vibrates the branch while sawing, the tracker jackers will come out before she can drop the nest—and they’ll attack her. And she needs to do it during the anthem, when the Careers down below aren’t watching her.
Does it fit Katniss? Yes. Katniss has a Value that nothing is more important than survival. Her Ambition is to stay alive. And her Story Goal is to win the Hunger Games. Attacking the Careers with a nest of hyperpowerful wasps is exactly in line with her Values, her Ambition, and her Story Goal.
Is it concrete and objective? Yes. Either the wasp nest drops on the Careers or it doesn’t.
Example 2: A Goal for a Proactive Scene in Outlander
In chapter 12 of Outlander, Claire is traveling with a number of Scotsmen to collect rents for the laird. They still have no idea she’s a time traveler, but they know she’s an Englishwoman and so they don’t really trust her. Claire knows they’re getting close to the stone circle time portal that brought her to the past, and her Story Goal is to reach that time portal and go home. But she can’t get there safely on her own. She’s going to need help. In a village named Brockton, Claire and her Scottish friends learn that the English garrison commander from nearby Fort William is in the local inn.
As the scene begins, the leader of the Scots, a man named Dougal MacKenzie, tells Claire that they are going to visit this garrison commander.
Claire immediately forms the Goal for this scene—she wants to persuade the garrison commander, whoever he is, to send her with an armed escort to the stone circle.
Is this a good Goal? Let’s check:
Does it fit the time slot for the scene? Yes. It should take Claire an hour to meet the garrison commander and make her case to him.
Is it possible for Claire? Yes. She’s an Englishwoman. The garrison commander is an Englishman. She just has to cook up some reason why he should give her a few soldiers to take her half a day’s journey to the stone circle.
Is it difficult? Yes. She is not a good liar, and she really has no good reason for being in Scotland. She’s tried to lie before and been caught out.
Does it fit Claire? Yes. She has two Values here. Nothing is more important than staying alive. Nothing is more important than her husband, Frank. Her Ambition is to return home to Frank. Her Story Goal is to find the time portal and pass through it. So asking the garrison commander for an escort to the stone circle is perfectly aligned with her Values, Ambition, and Story Goal.
Is it concrete and objective? Yes. Either Claire gets a few soldiers and a horse from the garrison commander, or she doesn’t.
Example 3: A Goal for a Proactive Scene in The Godfather
Chapter 10 of The Godfather begins with Michael Corleone looking out the window of the hospital room where his father lies helpless and unguarded. Michael knows that a team of Mafia hit men are on the way to kill his father. Michael has no gun and no allies, but he knows that help will arrive in fifteen minutes, if he can hold off the killers that long.
So Michael’s Goal is simple: stall the hit men until help arrives. This Goal is not explicit in the scene, but the reader can easily guess what Michael has in mind, based on what he’s thinking and doing. It’s obvious that he’ll have to out-think his opponents, because he sure can’t out-gun them. The reader doesn’t know how Michael is going to do that. But Michael doesn’t know either. The enormous tension in the scene comes from the fact that Michael is walking into danger unarmed.
Let’s check how good Michael’s Goal is:
Does it fit the time slot for the scene? Yes. Michael’s brother has told him help will be there in fifteen minutes. That’s a fine length for a high-action scene.
Is it possible for Michael to stall? Yes. We know Michael has seen combat in the Pacific. He’s killed people. He won’t freak out when he sees a gun. And we know his father and brothers think he’s extremely tough.
Is it difficult? Yes. The enemy will send a driver with three or four armed men. Michael is alone and unarmed. Those are long odds. Michael is a very bright guy, and he’s tough. But guns don’t care how smart or tough you are.
Does it fit Michael? Yes. Michael is a Sicilian, and so one of his Values is that nothing is more important than blood relatives. Michael will sacrifice himself to save his father. Of course, this goes against two of his other Values—that nothing is more important than survival, and nothing is more important than being a law-abiding citizen. So Michael’s Values are in conflict, and he’s consciously making a decision on which one is truly the most important. Michael’s Ambition in this novel is going to change. So is his Story Goal. They’ll change because his Values were in essential conflict, and very soon he’s going to have to choose between them. This scene is his first step on a new path to a new Ambition and a new Story Goal.
Is Michael’s Goal
concrete and objective? Yes. Michael’s father will be either alive or dead at the end of this scene.
After the Goal Comes Conflict
We’ve now looked at the Goals for three example scenes and have found them each to be strong. The Goals have been laid out as quickly as possible, and now the authors will move on to the main body of the scene.
Let’s remember that these are Proactive Scenes. Which means they’re Goal oriented. The whole purpose of the POV Character in a Proactive Scene is to achieve the Goal in that scene. During the Proactive Scene, your POV Character must never lose sight of that Goal. Everything else in life temporarily has a lower priority than reaching that Goal.
You, the author, should try to set the Goal in your Proactive Scene as quickly as possible and then move directly into Conflict. If you can set the Goal in a sentence, do so. If it takes a paragraph, do so. If it takes more than a few paragraphs, think hard about why you are taking so long to make clear the most important thing in your POV Character’s life at this moment. Why dither? Get to the point of the scene.
Now that we’ve learned everything we need to know about Goals, we won’t dither either. Let’s get to the fun stuff, which is Conflict.
Chapter Eight
How to Create a Dynamite Conflict
As we’ve said several times, every scene needs to be its own miniature story, complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the last chapter, we saw how the beginning of a Proactive Scene sets the Goal for that scene.
How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method Page 5