How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method
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John and I didn’t figure this out until we got to the rendezvous scene.
Then we panicked.
We still had more than a hundred pages of story.
And not much conflict for the rest of the novel. (There was some conflict planned in the synopsis, but when we came to write this scene, we decided it was dorky and contrived, and we didn’t think it was enough to carry the story.)
That was a disaster for us.
We had already sold the book.
We had already received the advance.
We had told all our writer friends we were getting our novel published.
And now we had a story that was doomed to fail.
On a long Sunday afternoon, we had a panic meeting by phone. We talked for hours. And we triaged the rendezvous scene.
The original plan was that the scene would be a Proactive Scene, like this:
Goal: Rendezvous with the robot ship.
Conflict: The robot ship is coming in a bit fast. Bob has just come out of a coma and is too tired to help much. Valkerie is not a pilot, but with some advice from Bob, she slows down the robot ship just enough.
Victory: They execute the rendezvous with the robot ship.
When we wrote the proposal, we were absolutely convinced that our crew had to make that rendezvous. Because if they missed, there was just no possible way to keep them alive even a few days longer. Our crew would die if they missed the rendezvous.
We didn’t want them to die.
But the rendezvous was ruining the story.
We finally decided that they had to miss the rendezvous.
A technical note: A rendezvous requires that the ships must have almost zero relative velocity. You can’t slam two ships together at high speed. You gently nudge them together. But in space, you don’t have brakes. So you slow down the same way you speed up—by firing your engines. But rocket fuel is heavy, and you only have so much.
So we revised the plan for our scene to this:
Goal: Rendezvous with the robot ship.
Conflict: The robot ship is coming in quite fast, more than two hundred meters per second. It fires its burners to slow down, but it doesn’t have enough fuel, and it flames out.
Setback: The robot ship goes whizzing past our crew and rapidly disappears into the blackness of space. Our heroes have missed the rendezvous, and now they’re going to die.
That’s a much healthier story, right?
Of course, now we had to think really hard. How in the world were we going to save our crew? We didn’t want them to die, but there was nothing left on their ship to cannibalize for oxygen, too little electricity to keep making enough oxygen, and no more robot ships to take solar panels from.
But there was one small source of oxygen we hadn’t thought of, because it was way too weird. And anyway, it was way too little. And also it was way too risky.
But when you’re about to die, nothing is too weird, too little, or too risky.
So our astronauts gave it a shot, and that crazy gambit gave us another hundred pages of story, with all sorts of Goals, Conflicts, Setbacks, Reactions, Dilemmas, and Decisions along the way. We finished the book and our editor was happy, even though we didn’t follow the synopsis we had sold him. Because the new story was better.
Mission accomplished.
So That’s Triage
Test every scene.
Accept the strong.
Fix the weak.
Kill those that are doomed to die.
No exceptions.
Chapter Fifteen
Checklist: How to Write a Dynamite Scene
This chapter summarizes the high points of every chapter in this book. If you’ve read this far, you’ve learned all the details, so these notes are just reminders of what you’ve learned.
What Your Reader Most Desperately Wants
The one thing your reader most desperately wants is Story. Story is what happens when you walk through great danger in somebody else’s skin. Story builds emotional muscle memory. Story works itself deep inside you because it teaches you how to survive while giving you a powerful emotional experience.
A Story Is a Character in a Crucible
A Character is a person who desperately wants something she can’t have. A Crucible is the reason she can’t have it. Story delivers a powerful emotional experience to your reader by giving her the illusion that she is the Character in the Crucible you create.
Every Scene Is a Miniature Story
Your story is made up of many scenes. And each scene needs to be a miniature story in its own right, delivering its own powerful emotional experience. Therefore, every scene needs to feature one or more Characters in a miniature Scene Crucible. At the end of the scene, the Scene Crucible is going to break and you won’t use it again. But the larger Story Crucible remains to the end of the story.
Every Scene Needs a Point-of-View Character
In each scene, you choose one POV Character to be the lead character for that scene. The emotions of that scene are measured by how they affect the POV Character and how they affect the protagonist of your story. You have six options for how to show the POV Character. Choose one:
First person
Second person
Third person
Third-person objective
Head-hopping
Omniscient
You have three choices for how to show the timing of the scene:
Past tense
Present tense
Future tense
Every Scene Needs a Crucible
Every scene needs a Scene Crucible, which will last for exactly that one scene and then will be broken. If you need to explain backstory or your story world to make your Scene Crucible intelligible, then explain it just when you need it. There are two standard shapes for a scene, the Proactive Scene and the Reactive Scene.
A Proactive Scene looks like this:
Goal
Conflict
Setback (or sometimes Victory)
A Reactive Scene looks like this:
Reaction
Dilemma
Decision
The Scene Crucible for a Proactive Scene is whatever might cause your POV Character to fail to achieve her Goal in the scene.
The Scene Crucible for a Reactive Scene is whatever might cause your POV Character to quit the story.
A Scene is broken when you can’t say what the Scene Crucible is.
The Psychology of a Proactive Scene
A Proactive Scene punches a number of emotive buttons in your reader. The Goal for a likable POV Character makes you admire her and hope she’ll reach her Goal. The Goal for an unlikable POV Character makes you dislike her and hope she won’t reach her Goal. The Conflict makes you worry about what’s going to happen and keeps you turning pages. The Setback causes you to feel bad for your story’s lead Character and forces you to turn the page to see how she’ll get out of her troubles. If there’s a Victory, you feel good and may decide to close the book at a good stopping place, so it’s always good to try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
How to Create a Dynamite Goal
A Goal is good when
It fits the time available for the scene.
It’s possible.
It’s difficult.
It fits your POV Character.
It’s both concrete and objective.
How to Create a Dynamite Conflict
Conflict can be high tension or low tension; you get to decide what the right mix is for your category of book. Conflict is just a series of attempts by your POV Character to achieve her Goal. Each attempt meets an obstacle, and the tension in the scene rises through the scene. When you run out of obstacles, it’s time to end the scene.
How to Create a Dynamite Setback
A Setback is a defeat for the protagonist of your story, not necessarily a defeat for the POV Character in the scene you’re writing. If your POV Character is the villain of the story, then when he wins, that’s
a Setback for your protagonist. You can’t always end a scene on a Setback, because sometimes things are so awful that they can’t get worse without your POV Character dying. So you sometimes need to end a Proactive Scene with a Victory, but you should try to make it a mixed Victory if you can.
The Psychology of a Reactive Scene
A Reactive Scene needs to start with a Reaction, which is mostly emotional. This is your chance to give your reader a powerful emotional experience via empathy with your hurting Character. The Dilemma that follows is not emotional—it’s intellectual. This gives your reader a chance to learn how to face a crisis in new ways. The Decision gives your reader the chance to experience decisiveness, which is something we all admire because it’s rare.
The trend in modern fiction is to write fewer Reactive Scenes, so it’s okay to trim down a Reactive Scene, to tell it in narrative summary, or to skip it altogether.
How to Create a Dynamite Reaction
A Reaction is good when
It shows the POV Character’s emotions and lets the reader experience those fully.
It’s in line with the POV Character’s personality.
It’s in line with the POV Character’s Values, Ambition, and Story Goal.
It’s proportional to the Setback.
How to Create a Dynamite Dilemma
A Dilemma shows your POV Character considering several possible plans of action, but not yet taking them. The problem is that all options are bad, and your POV Character must figure out which is the least bad option. A Dilemma will sometimes show the POV Character being told what she should do, and then she has to convince herself that she agrees. And sometimes a Dilemma will show a POV Character filling up her time with physical actions while her subconscious mind works out the solution to her problem.
How to Create a Dynamite Decision
A Decision is the resolution of the Dilemma. It will not be a good option, but it will be the least bad one. A Decision is strong when
It’s a forcing move—the POV Character decides to do something that will limit her opponent’s options.
It will make a good Goal for some future Proactive Scene.
If the Decision is risky, then the POV Character admits the risk, which lets the reader continue respecting her.
It’s a firm commitment—the POV Character needs to go all in on this new plan.
Triage—How to Fix Your Broken Scenes
After you’ve written your story, you still need to edit it. Part of the editing job is to look at each scene and make a triage decision—yes, no, or maybe.
A few scenes will be so right, you can immediately mark them Yes. Usually, a scene gets a Yes if all of the following are true:
It’s clearly a story in its own right and gives you a powerful emotional experience.
You can easily say what the Scene Crucible is.
A few scenes will be so wrong, you can immediately mark them No. Usually, a scene gets a No if at least one of the following is true:
The larger story has changed, and the scene no longer fits it.
The scene fails to give a powerful emotional experience, and it’s obvious that it never will.
The scene has no identifiable Scene Crucible, and there is no way to cobble one together.
The scene is not a story and can’t be made into a story.
Most scenes will get a Maybe, and then you need to try to redesign them using this procedure:
Decide whether the scene should be a Proactive Scene or a Reactive Scene. If neither makes sense, mark the scene No for deletion.
For a Proactive Scene, write down the Goal, Conflict, and Setback (or Victory).
For a Reactive Scene, ask yourself whether you even need the scene at all. Can you summarize it or delete it without harming the story? Will you improve the pacing of the story by deleting it?
If you decide to keep the Reactive Scene, write down the Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision.
Write down the powerful emotional experience you want this scene to give your reader.
Rewrite the scene.
Triage the scene again to be sure that it now passes, or else mark the scene to be triaged again later.
When every scene in your story has been triaged and you have only scenes that have passed your test, you’re ready to move on to editing your story at a finer level of detail. Every scene in your story is now structured to be a dynamite scene.
Want to Continue Learning?
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About the Author
Randy Ingermanson is the author of six award-winning novels and two best-selling books on how to write fiction. He has taught at many writing conferences over the years and is well known around the world as “the Snowflake Guy.” He runs the Advanced Fiction Writing website, and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, a wildly popular e-mail newsletter on fiction writing. He also blogs when the spirit moves him, and he’s the creator of Snowflake Pro, a software tool that makes the Snowflake Method fast, easy, and fun.
You can read all the unfortunate details about Randy and sign up for his e-zine and blog here:
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Also by Randy Ingermanson
Advanced Fiction Writing Series
1. How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method
2. How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method
Writing Fiction for Dummies
Copyright © 2018, Randall Ingermanson
All rights reserved.
First edition, Ingermanson Communications, Inc., 2018, AdvancedFictionWriting.com
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ISBN: 978-1-937031-17-6
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