How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method

by Randy Ingermanson

  Was the Reaction proportional to the Setback? Yes. The Setback was huge—she nearly died of the tracker jacker venom. The Reaction is also long—nearly three full pages.

  Example 2: A Reaction for a Reactive Scene in Outlander

  When we left off Claire in Outlander, she’d just been slugged in the belly by the sadistic Captain Randall. Her escort, Dougal MacKenzie, goes up to the captain’s room and shouts at him while Claire begins to recover.

  At first, Claire is mainly feeling physical pain. That eases while she sips a glass of milk.

  Then she has to face the psychological pain. Captain Randall looks almost exactly like her husband, Frank. So in her heart, it feels like she’s been slugged by a man she’s always trusted. That takes longer to go away.

  But Claire doesn’t yet know how much trouble she’s in. Dougal knows, but he doesn’t tell her yet. He takes her away from the inn, finds a spring, gives her some water, and tells her a story about Captain Randall.

  A few years earlier, Captain Randall ordered two floggings of Claire’s friend Jamie Fraser. The first was vicious and nearly killed him. The second was just as bad and came a week later.

  Claire lives this story through Dougal’s eyes, and it’s a brutal story.

  This is backstory, but it’s essential backstory.

  At the end, Dougal tells Claire that Captain Randall has given orders that Claire Beauchamp is to present herself at Fort William on the following Monday.

  Claire nearly faints. Rightly so, because now at last she knows what she’s up against.

  So what’s going on? Are there two Reactive Scenes here?

  It’s a bit complicated, but here’s my read on it.

  Diana Gabaldon isn’t writing these scenes in an exact Proactive Scene/Reactive Scene pattern. She’s shuffling the ending of the Proactive Scene together with the beginning of the Reactive Scene.

  The Setback from the Proactive Scene is in two parts. The first part of the Setback is the punch, followed by Claire’s Reaction to that. Then there’s the backstory about Jamie, which is not part of the Setback nor part of the Reaction. It’s just backstory. Then comes the second part of the Setback, the order to appear at Fort William, followed by the Reaction to that.

  Notice that there’s no Dilemma here yet, nor any sign of a Decision. Those will come next.

  Once again, we can test these Reactions against our checklist:

  Did the Reactions show Claire’s emotions using the methods of Interior Emotion? Yes, a bit. In the first Reaction, we see Claire’s hands shaking. We feel her nausea. I think it wouldn’t be out of line to show a bit more, but we have several paragraphs. It’s enough. In the second Reaction, we see her nearly fainting. In a few short paragraphs, she recovers.

  Was the Reaction in line with Claire’s personality? Yes. Claire is relatively tough. She grew up with an archaeologist uncle, living in primitive places, dealing with crises. She can roll with the punches.

  Was the Reaction in line with her Values, Ambition, and Story Goal? Not really, but in this case, it’s hard to see how these could play into her Reaction. She’s not really thinking about any of these in her Reaction. They just don’t have much role in this particular scene.

  Was the Reaction proportional to the Setback? Mostly. A real punch to the gut would probably take longer to recover from, and there might be permanent physical damage. But it’s quite plausible that she’d come close to fainting at the news that she has to face Captain Randall again at the fort in a few days.

  Example 3: A Reaction for a Reactive Scene in The Godfather

  In Michael Corleone’s Setback, he has just been punched hard in the face by a corrupt police captain.

  Michael’s Reaction is written in just a few short paragraphs, but it’s extremely powerful.

  There’s a paragraph telling what he feels when he’s punched. It’s worth quoting in full here, because it’s so short and so precise:

  He tried to weave away but the fist caught him high on the cheekbone. A grenade exploded in his skull. His mouth filled with blood and small hard bones that he realized were his teeth. He could feel the side of his head puff up as if it were filling with air. His legs were weightless and he would have fallen if the two policemen had not held him up.

  There’s a short interlude of a few paragraphs when his father’s lawyer arrives with men licensed to carry weapons. The lawyer asks Michael if he wants to press charges against whoever hit him.

  Now comes the second half of Michael’s Reaction, and it shows us exactly who he is. Michael can barely talk, but he refuses to press charges. He claims he slipped and fell. He’s refusing to show pain. He knows the police captain thinks he’s weak. Again, this part is worth quoting in full, because it’s so sharply focused down to a few dozen words:

  He saw the captain give him a triumphant glance and he tried to answer that glance with a smile. At all costs he wanted to hide the delicious icy chilliness that controlled his brain, the surge of wintry cold hatred that pervaded his body. He wanted to give no warning to anyone in this world as to how he felt at this moment. As the Don would not. Then he felt himself carried into the hospital and he lost consciousness.

  The two short snippets I quoted above are the heart of Michael’s Reaction. How do they rate against our checklist?

  Did the Reactions show Michael’s emotions using the methods of Interior Emotion? Yes, absolutely. The reader feels the punch with crystal clarity. And the reader feels Michael’s icy rage.

  Was the Reaction in line with Michael’s personality? Yes. We’ve seen hints earlier that Michael is the toughest of the Godfather’s three sons, the one most like his father. Now we see the proof. Michael’s oldest brother, Sonny, would have fought back in a blind rage, and would have been killed on the spot for attacking a police officer. Michael’s other brother, Fredo, would have collapsed, sobbing in helpless grief. Michael reacts like his father, hiding his rage, biding his time, already planning revenge. This is what his family believes is the correct behavior for a Sicilian.

  Was the Reaction in line with Michael’s Values, Ambition, and Story Goal? Yes. Michael has two Values here. Nothing is more important than survival. So he doesn’t try for instant revenge that would get him killed. And nothing is more important than honor. Michael’s honor has just been violated, and already he’s planning how to avenge himself and restore his honor.

  Was the Reaction proportional to the Setback? Yes. Short as the Reaction was, it’s incredibly intense.

  After the Reaction Comes Dilemma

  We’ve now looked at the Reactions for three example scenes. They’re executed differently, but they all show a Character responding emotively to a serious Setback.

  But there’s got to be more to our scene than just a Reaction. The emotive response is only the beginning of the Reactive scene.

  How will our Character respond proactively?

  We don’t know yet.

  Our Character doesn’t know yet.

  That’s for him or her to figure out, and it’s a serious Dilemma. We’ll tackle that next.

  Chapter Twelve

  How to Create a Dynamite Dilemma

  After writing the Reaction, you’re now well launched. The Reaction was the beginning of the miniature story you’re telling in this scene, and now it’s time for the long middle.

  The middle of a Reactive Scene is a Dilemma. It lays out the current state of the Crucible for your story and begs for a Decision. Not just any Decision. A good Decision. But there apparently aren’t any good Decisions handy.

  Your POV Character’s only task in this scene is to resolve the Dilemma by finding that one good Decision in a haystack of bad ones.

  You need to be careful to keep in mind your Character’s strengths and weaknesses.

  Sherlock Holmes is going to whip through the options flawlessly, rejecting bad idea after bad idea until only one idea remains, the one with the best chance of success.

  Huck Finn, on the other hand, w
on’t be that sharp. He’s likely to reject a perfectly good plan and go with a bad one, just because he doesn’t know any better.

  This is a chance to highlight your POV Character’s reasoning powers, for better or worse. If you need a not-so-sharp POV Character to come up with a really clever solution to his current Dilemma, then give him a sidekick for the scene who’s quicker on the uptake.

  The Pattern for a Dilemma

  The classic pattern for a Dilemma is pretty simple:

  Your POV Character considers some possible plan for the Goal of the next Proactive Scene.

  She looks at the advantages but then sees that there’s a serious hazard in going that way, so she either rejects the idea or puts it on hold.

  Repeat this cycle over and over until you’re ready to choose one option.

  Notice that the POV Character doesn’t actually act on any of these options. Not yet. This is not a time for action. This is a time for a well-considered strategic planning session.

  You can have her consider as many options as you like. Sometimes there will be only two. Sometimes there will be several.

  While there may be an infinite number of possible options, you don’t have an infinite word budget for your scene, so it’s fine to lump them together into just a few general courses of action. Pick the one that seems easiest and then figure out why it’s bad. Then the next, and the next, until you’ve worked through them all.

  So that’s the classic pattern.

  But you don’t always need to use the classic pattern. There are other ways to play a Dilemma. Here are two:

  Sometimes your POV Character doesn’t do the heavy lifting on the Dilemma. You may have some other character in the scene who has already worked through the Dilemma. He can simply tell your POV Character what the Decision must be. Then your POV Character spends the scene arguing against that horrible, awful, stupid Decision. Arguing and failing, because in the end, it’s clear that it really is the best Decision.

  Sometimes, your POV Character will appear to be doing anything but thinking about her Dilemma. But she is. Not all thinking is conscious thinking. When your body works, your subconscious mind works too. In my day job, I’ve worked for many years as a computational physicist. I’ve solved a lot of gnarly problems by going for a walk or mowing the lawn or chopping wood.

  In our examples, we’ll see all three of these in action. We’ll see Katniss work out her Dilemma through physical effort. We’ll see Claire have her solution handed to her so she can rail at its colossal stupidity. And we’ll see Michael work through his Dilemma with ice-cold logic.

  What If Your Dilemma is Weak?

  If your POV Character’s choice of action seems obvious and clear, then you may not even need a Reactive Scene at all. No Dilemma, no need for a Reactive Scene.

  But if you’ve got no Dilemma, then it may be that the Setback in the previous Proactive Scene wasn’t strong enough. Have you shortchanged your reader by not boxing in your POV Character enough? Should you backtrack one scene and make that Setback tougher?

  This is a judgment call, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer I can give you. If you feel that a strong Reactive Scene is called for here, then the only way to strengthen the Dilemma is to strengthen the Setback in the previous Proactive Scene. But you might also decide to skip a Reactive Scene and move straight to the next Proactive Scene with an “obvious” Decision. It’s your call.

  Don’t prolong a weak Dilemma by letting your POV Character be too dumb to see that the choice really is obvious. That’s just a delaying action, and it’s sure to annoy your reader. If the Dilemma is weak and you can’t see how to make it stronger, don’t drag things out. Get on to the Decision quickly.

  When you spend pages and pages on the horns of a Dilemma, it needs to be a Dilemma with some serious horns.

  Why Bother with a Dilemma, Anyway?

  A Dilemma slows down your story. Nothing is happening during a Dilemma. People are just talking about things they could do.

  So why bother with all that?

  One big reason is because Dilemmas show us what your POV Character is. A really good Dilemma is usually really good because it lies on the fault lines of the POV Character—on some deep contradiction in her soul.

  As we live through the Character’s Dilemma, we see what she’s made of. For all her life, maybe she’s held two contradictory Values as equally true, without really thinking about the contradiction. But when all the money’s on the table, which Value does she hold as “more true”?

  Remember what Story does. Story teaches the tribe to survive. Story keeps the tribe alive. Story shows the tribe how to thrive. It does that by forcing Decisions and then watching where those lead.

  A right Decision gives Story a chance to show the tribe why it’s a right Decision.

  A wrong Decision gives Story a chance to show the tribe why it’s a wrong Decision.

  That doesn’t mean right Decisions are easy. They’re hard.

  That’s why we need Story—to give us the emotional muscle memory to do the hard right and not the easy wrong.

  Some Example Dilemmas for Reactive Scenes

  Now let’s look at the Dilemmas posed to our POV Characters in the Reactive Scenes we’ve been following.

  Example 1: A Dilemma for a Reactive Scene in The Hunger Games

  Katniss has finally come awake after surviving three tracker jacker stings. She’s just realized that she has a fighting chance to win, now that she has a bow and arrows. But a fighting chance is not a plan. Katniss needs a plan. What’s her plan?

  She’s not in good condition to make a plan. The tracker jacker venom has sapped her energy, and she’s not thinking clearly. She’s shuffling along, just surviving.

  But her subconscious is thinking. We can’t see it, but we can see her slowly coming back from being nearly dead.

  She goes looking for water and purifies some and washes herself off. She treats her burns. She shoots a wild bird and starts cooking it over a low fire.

  When she hears a sound, she whirls and discovers she’s not alone. The very smallest tribute, a twelve-year-old girl named Rue, is watching her. Katniss could easily kill Rue, but instead she offers an alliance.

  Rue is thunderstruck. Everybody else thinks she’s worthless. But Katniss sees value in her. Katniss thinks Rue can be a helpful ally against the Careers.

  Rue has some herbs that heal tracker jacker venom. She puts some on Katniss’s stings, and Katniss instantly feels better. Katniss has ointment, and she uses it to treat Rue’s burns. Already, the alliance is paying off.

  Katniss has fresh meat and Rue has edible roots and berries, and they make a meal together. They talk.

  Rue tells Katniss that the “sunglasses” she found in her pack are night-vision goggles. And she tells Katniss that Peeta isn’t just pretending to be in love with her. Peeta is for real.

  Then Rue says the crucial thing that Katniss needs to make a Decision. She tells Katniss that the Careers have a camp by the lake with a huge stash of food. They need that stash because, unlike Katniss and Rue, they can’t live off the land. If the Careers run out of food, they can’t last long.

  And in a rush of insight, Katniss finds the Decision she’s been looking for. The chapter ends without the reader knowing the plan. But the reader knows Katniss has a plan.

  So let’s analyze this Dilemma. What happens to bridge the gap between the Reaction and the Decision?

  What happens is that Katniss teams up with somebody who has knowledge she doesn’t. The two girls ally themselves against the Careers. They pool their medicine. They pool their food. They pool their knowledge.

  And they violate the entire spirit of the Hunger Games.

  The point of the Hunger Games is to always keep the districts at each other’s throats. To destroy trust. To keep them from banding together against the Capitol.

  Sure, the Career Tributes make alliances so they can thin the herd a bit. But the Careers never make friends with other Care
ers. They’re always temporary allies.

  Katniss and Rue are not just allies. They’re friends.

  Katniss has been wrestling the entire novel with two Values. Nothing is more important than family. Nothing is more important than survival.

  Rue is not part of Katniss’s family, but she reminds Katniss of her sister, Prim. Rue is human and she’s good, and Katniss effectively makes her family.

  Katniss knows that she and Rue can’t both survive.

  But she puts that out of her head and does the decent thing.

  The human thing.

  The thing that’s kept humanity alive for many ten thousand years.

  She forms a community with a stranger.

  And by doing that, she comes to a plan that she could not have formed on her own. She needed Rue to reach it. She needed what Rue had and what Rue knew.

  At the very end of the chapter, Katniss has a plan. She’s made a Decision. We don’t know what it is, but we’ll find out when we turn the page.

  Example 2: A Dilemma for a Reactive Scene in Outlander

  Claire has just suffered through a double Setback—getting punched in the belly by Captain Randall and then learning that he wants her to report to him at Fort William on Monday. What’s she going to do?

  Claire is well and truly boxed in. If she reports to the captain on Monday, she could end up in an English prison where she’ll rot forever. If she tries to run, her Scottish escort Dougal and his men will chase her down. If she tries to persuade them to help her run away, she’s asking them to flout the English for her, an outlander.

  And there’s the beginning of the solution to Claire’s problem.