How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method

by Randy Ingermanson

  Does Claire admit the risks to herself? The risks here aren’t physical. They’re emotional. In her own mind, she’ll be married to two men, even though one of them doesn’t exist yet. So yes, she feels that this is crazy and is going to rip her heart apart. But she also knows it’s necessary.

  Is she committing to this plan? Yes. She’s signing her name on the line. She’s taking vows. She’s getting into that marriage bed. That’s some serious commitment.

  Claire has some challenges ahead of her in the next scene.

  And there’s no possible way the reader is going to put the book down here.

  That’s a good Decision.

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

  When we left Michael, he had just proposed that he meet with Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey and shoot them both.

  But it’s not a Decision yet. This is a Family council, and it can’t be a Decision until the other men agree.

  Michael has explained why somebody needs to do it.

  He’s explained why he’s the only person who can get close enough to do it.

  The other men sit thinking about that for a minute.

  Now comes the Decision. Since it’s a group Decision, it has to come in stages, one by one.

  Michael’s brother Sonny gives him a hug and says he likes the idea.

  The Family consigliori, Tom Hagen, says he likes the idea, but does it have to be Michael?

  They go through all the options again. There is nobody else whom Sollozzo will trust who has the guts to do the job. It really has to be Michael.

  But there are some details to work out. How could it be done? They’ll get a gun, the coldest one they ever owned. A short barrel, plenty of blasting power, and no need for it to be accurate because the range will be point-blank. They’ll tape the barrel and trigger with special tape so it won’t take fingerprints. They tell Michael that as soon as he’s killed the men, he has to drop the gun and walk away, so he won’t be caught with the murder weapon on him. They can deal with witnesses, but not with a smoking gun in his hand. And they warn Michael not to give his girlfriend one hint of what he’s about to do.

  And that’s that.

  The Decision is made.

  Is it a good Decision?

  As we talked about in the last chapter, you don’t have to agree with this Decision. You may well say that this is a Decision you, personally, would never make.

  But you aren’t Michael Corleone.

  This is his Decision to make, not yours.

  You don’t have to agree with it. You just have to understand it.

  So let’s analyze this Decision based on our criteria:

  Is it a forcing move? Yes, this is checkmate—if it succeeds. This decapitates the opposition. This defeats the Tattaglia Family in one shot. There will be no war because the king, Sollozzo, will be dead.

  Will it make a good Goal for the next Proactive Scene? Yes, it’s a dynamite Goal. It’s possible, but very, very difficult. It fits one of Michael’s Values. It is concrete and objective—at the end of the coming Proactive Scene, either Sollozzo and McCluskey will be dead or they won’t be. There’s no middle ground here.

  Does Michael know the risks? Absolutely. He knows he could be killed. He knows his best-case scenario is that he’ll go on the run for a very long time. Michael is no wide-eyed dummy. But he’s dead certain that if he doesn’t do this job, his father will be murdered. Desperate times, desperate measures.

  Is Michael committing? You better believe he’s committing. He’s got to pull the trigger or die trying. There’s no third option if he gets cold feet. He’s all in on this play.

  Michael has a big scene coming up. The biggest he’s ever played.

  If you can put the book down without watching the next scene, you have no soul.

  From the viewpoint of creating a great story, that’s a great Decision.

  Even though it’s a Decision that will cost Michael his soul.

  Then What Happens?

  Once you’ve ended your Reactive Scene, what do you do next?

  Your reader turns the page because she must know how this Decision is going to work out.

  You have two options:

  Switch to a new POV Character in the next scene, moving to a different thread of your story. Your reader is going to go nuts worrying about the Decision that was just made. Why would you do this? Because it leaves an open loop in your reader’s brain to torture her. Of course, you’ll pick up this thread later. But in the meantime, those open loops keep the reader turning pages.

  Have this same POV Character launch into a Proactive Scene, in which the Goal is exactly the Decision she just made in this Reactive Scene.

  We’ve now spent four chapters each on Proactive Scenes and on Reactive Scenes. You are well equipped to design any new scene before you write it. You can have quite a lot of confidence that you’ll write a dynamite scene that will keep your reader reading until the wee hours.

  But what about scenes you’ve already written? What if they’re not quite up to snuff, because you didn’t know how to design them when you first wrote them? Or what if you knew how to design a good scene, but you didn’t actually bother to do the design work up front, and now you’ve got a scene that isn’t your best work?

  Can you turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse?

  Yes.

  No.

  Maybe.

  Read on.

  Part Four

  Wrapping Up

  Chapter Fourteen

  Triage—How to Fix Your Broken Scenes

  Up till now, we’ve been talking about the ninth step in the Snowflake Method, the step where you design each scene before you write it.

  Now we’re going to talk about editing your scene after you write it.

  So now we’re talking about the second draft of your story.

  You’ll probably make major changes to many of the scenes in your second draft. There are several reasons why any given scene might need fixing:

  You might not have designed your scene before you wrote it, and therefore it might have no design or a bad design.

  Even if you designed your scene before you wrote it, your design might have been off a bit. Sometimes you can’t tell it’s an off design until you write it.

  Even if your design was terrific, the scene might have evolved while you wrote it, and it might have ended up having a different design than you intended.

  Even if you designed and executed the scene perfectly, you might discover that your main story needs tweaking, and this scene is now going to have to change to fit the main story.

  All writers are human, and most writers find that a lot of their scenes need serious work on the second draft. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Often the only way to get to a perfect final draft is through a really terrible first draft. Most professional writers will tell you they’ve written a lot of bad first drafts. I certainly have. No shame in that.

  So what do you do about it?

  Triage—Choosing Yes, No, or Maybe

  On the battlefield, medics make triage decisions all the time:

  This person is going to live, even if I do nothing for him.

  This person is going to die, no matter how much I do for him.

  This person’s life is in the balance, and I need to treat him right now.

  Triage is important. The medic probably has far too many patients and nowhere near enough time. He may also be under fire from the enemy. It’s critical to not waste time on patients who are definitely going to live or definitely going to die. The medic needs to put all his resources into the “maybe” patients—the ones he can make a difference on right now.

  Triage works the same way when you’re editing scenes in your second draft. There are three decisions you can make:

  Yes, this scene is fine as it is. It may need minor tweaks in the later drafts, but the design is strong and I executed the design well. I’ll mark this scene Yes and move on to the
next one.

  No, this scene is terrible, and there is no possible way to make it better. It won’t help to fix the spelling or to put commas in the right places or even to juice up the action. The scene itself just doesn’t work and never will. I’ll mark this scene No, because I need to junk this scene. Either I’ll design a whole new scene and then write it, or else I won’t replace this scene with anything.

  Maybe this scene can be saved, but it’s going to need a redesign and a rewrite. And I’ll do that right now.

  So those are your three possible decisions. How do you know which is right?

  How to Decide on a Yes

  I have two requirements to give a scene a passing grade. The scene usually has to pass both of these tests:

  The scene works as a miniature story in its own right. When I get to the end of the scene, it has given me a powerful emotional experience.

  I can identify the Crucible for this scene. For a Proactive Scene, the Crucible is whatever is causing the Conflict. For a Reactive Scene, the Crucible is the specific Dilemma.

  If a scene passes both of the above requirements, then it gets a Yes.

  If it doesn’t, I have to come up with a very strong and compelling reason why this scene should get a pass. That can happen. Writing fiction is not about following a mindless set of rules. There can be a reason to accept a scene that doesn’t pass my tests.

  I want to know that reason.

  In every second draft, a few scenes actually pass.

  But a few also fail.

  How to Decide on a No

  I don’t like to fail a scene, because it took some hard work to write it in the first place, and I’d like to salvage that if I can. But here are some reasons why I’ll fail a scene:

  The scene no longer fits the larger story that I’m telling. If the scene doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. Junk it.

  The scene doesn’t give me a powerful emotional experience, and I can’t see how I ever imagined it could. Really, the whole scene is terribly misconceived. I must have been under the influence of some very bad chemicals when I wrote it, because it has no oomph and it never will.

  The scene has no identifiable Crucible, and I can’t see any reason to think that a Crucible can now be welded onto it.

  The scene is not a story and never will be a story, no matter what I do to it.

  Every scene has to pull its own weight. Every scene must be a story. Every scene must give the reader a powerful emotional experience. If a scene is doing nothing more than “setting the stage,” then it’s a failure. If a scene is doing nothing more than “filling in the backstory,” then it’s a failure. If a scene is doing nothing more than “showing character motivation,” then it’s a failure.

  All of those are good things. Many scenes will set the stage and fill in backstory and show character motivation. But they need to be doing more. They need to be telling a story. They need to be showing the reader a movie in her head.

  If your scene is not pulling its weight and can’t ever pull its weight, then slit its throat, because it’s sucking the life out of your story. Show no mercy. Throw its body to the sharks. Walk away.

  But kill it the right way.

  You might still be able to sell it for parts.

  When I decide to kill a scene, I don’t actually delete it.

  I might change my mind. Or I might want to salvage some of the dialogue. Or a lot of things.

  I mark it for future deletion and move on.

  Then in the next draft, I’ll delete all scenes that I marked for deletion in this draft. (When I start a new draft, the first thing I do is make a fresh copy of the manuscript document and rename it with “Draft 2” or “Draft 3,” etc., as part of the name. Then I work on the new draft, and I never change the previous draft again.)

  That way, if there’s one good sentence or phrase or bit of dialogue that I might want in a future draft, I’ll always have it.

  I have killed many scenes in my life, always with a clear conscience.

  But the great majority of scenes don’t need killing.

  They need healing.

  What to Do with the “Maybe” Scenes

  Most of my scenes get marked Maybe. If they aren’t a definite Yes and they aren’t a definite No, then they get a Maybe.

  And that means I’m going to do everything I can to make them healthy.

  There’s a process for doing that. Here it is:

  Decide what kind of scene this should be. Is it a Proactive Scene or a Reactive Scene? You may have intended it originally to be one or the other. Is that decision still good? Or did you never decide in the first place? Did you just write the scene without designing it? It’s okay if you did a bad design or no design on the first draft. It’s not a crime. But now is the time to decide what this scene should be. If you really can’t decide, then mark it for deletion, because this scene can’t be saved.

  If you decide it’s a Proactive Scene, write down what the Goal is, what the Conflict is, and what the Setback or Victory is. I strongly recommend spelling out what the Crucible is.

  If you decide it’s a Reactive Scene, ask yourself whether you can skip this scene altogether. The trend in modern fiction is to have fewer Reactive Scenes. Can you just replace this scene with a few paragraphs of narrative summary? Can you skip even those and go straight to the next Proactive Scene? Or do you definitely need a Reactive Scene here, if only to give your reader a chance to catch her breath?

  If it’s a Reactive Scene and you intend to keep it, write down what the Reaction is, what the Dilemma is, and what the Decision is. Again, I recommend spelling out the Crucible.

  If possible, write down the powerful emotional experience you expect the reader to have in this scene.

  Rewrite the scene.

  You will need to triage the scene again after rewriting it. You can do that right away, or you can mark it to be done later, but you can’t assume that the scene now gets a pass just because you rewrote it once. The scene still has to be tested to make sure it works as a story. So triage it again, either now or later.

  A lot of work, no?

  Of course it’s a lot of work. Editing is hard work. Professional writers edit their work, and they edit it hard. Be a professional.

  An Example of Scene Triage

  I don’t have the original drafts of The Hunger Games or Outlander or The Godfather. I’d bet the authors did some serious triage on most of their scenes, but I have no way to know what they did. All I can see is the end results.

  The only scenes I’ve seen triaged are my own.

  So the only examples of scene triage I can show you are triages I’ve done on my own books.

  The example I’ll show you is from my novel Oxygen, which I coauthored with my friend John Olson.

  Oxygen is a science fiction suspense novel about the first human mission to Mars, set a few years in the future. John and I published the book in 2001, and we set it in a year that was then the future—2014. We worked out the planetary orbits and planned the mission based on the actual positions that Earth and Mars would have in 2014. Liftoff was scheduled for the day before the Super Bowl, with a landing planned for July 4. (In this novel, TV ratings were important to NASA because of funding problems, so they chose dates that would get maximum ad revenue for a US audience.)

  The Crucible for Oxygen is quite simple. Two months into the mission, an explosion on the Ares 10 leaves the four astronauts with only enough oxygen for one of them to reach the Red Planet alive. Who decides who will live and who will die? And who enforces that decision?

  A technical note: On a spacecraft, oxygen is made by breaking apart water or carbon dioxide using electricity. Our explosion doesn’t actually destroy any oxygen. It destroys most of the solar panels that supply electricity. As the ship gets farther from Earth, there is less sunlight and therefore less electricity. We calculated that by April 10, there would not be enough juice to keep the four astronauts alive.

  More on the Crucible: Of the fou
r astronauts, two are men and two are women. Bob has a serious crush on Valkerie, but she doesn’t know it.

  After the explosion, the middle of the novel tells how NASA cooks up an impossible plan to save all four astronauts. To make it work, everything has to go just right:

  The ship doctor, Valkerie, will put the other three astronauts into a temporary coma to conserve oxygen.

  Valkerie will stay conscious and tend to them for several weeks.

  NASA will redirect a robot ship that is also on the way to Mars to do a deep-space rendezvous with the astronauts’ ship around May 16. The robot ship was launched a month earlier than the astronauts, so it’s on a somewhat different trajectory.

  Just before the rendezvous, Valkerie will bring Bob out of his coma to walk her through the docking procedure with the robot ship.

  They will cannibalize the robot ship’s solar panels. That should give their ship enough electrical power to start making oxygen again.

  John and I are geeks, and we actually worked out the orbital mechanics, the oxygen requirements, the electrical power supply equations, the dates, everything. We worked really hard. We did a ton of research. And we were extremely proud of ourselves for figuring out a way to save our crew.

  But you’re probably already laughing at us for being stupid.

  Because if our plan worked, the crew would be saved on May 16. Giving them seven more weeks of happy, happy, happy—all the way to Mars.

  That’s great for the crew.

  Terrible for the story.