Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure (18 page)

Most often, the best way to create an unforgettable scene is to intensify the
clash
. Two characters oppose each other. They have the strongest possible reasons to do so.

Scenes do four things. I call these the
four chords of fiction
.

The two major chords are: (1) action and (2) reaction.

The two minor chords are: (1) setup and (2) deepening.

These chords are often played together. Action and reaction tend to dominate, with the minor chords dropping in.

But these four chords will enable you to write any scene to serve any purpose in your plot.

Let's also distinguish between a
scene
and a
beat
(both of these terms come from the theater). A scene is the longer unit. Much of the time a scene takes place in a single location, and almost always is played out in real time. If you change location or jump ahead in time, you may jar the reader — but a scene can also be designed to do just that.

A beat is a smaller unit within a scene.

In
The Wizard of Oz
, there is the scene where Dorothy is confronted by the Cowardly Lion. The scene begins with threat and ends with the lion's agreement to join the group on the way to Oz. There is obviously action and conflict. But there is also an emotional beat after Dorothy slaps the lion's nose. And it deepens the character of the lion.

Let's take a closer look at the chords:

Action happens when a character does something in order to attain his main objective. In a given scene, he has a
scene purpose
.

A scene purpose may be anything that is a step toward achieving the story goal.

A lawyer wants to prove his client's innocence. He goes to the home of a witness for an interview. His purpose in that scene is to get information that may help his client.

That's action.

But a scene needs conflict, or it will be dull.

So the witness doesn't want to talk to the lawyer. Now we have confrontation (an essential element of the LOCK system), and we can write an action scene.

Commercial fiction will feel like it is mostly action scenes.

Here is a straight action scene from a novel of mine called
Final Witness
(it was easier to grant myself permission to reprint than jump through financial and legal hoops to get access to another novel. I beg the reader's indulgence). The point-of-view character in this scene is a Russian immigrant who has built up a nice little life for himself in America with a bit of trafficking in drugs:

Now, sitting in stocking feet in the living room of his own stylish home, he could pop in a little platter and watch virtually anything he wanted.

Tonight it was
Independence Day
.

Sarah was out at her weekly social gathering. Dimitri was proud of her accomplishments, too. … She had become a fixture in the upscale community where they both lived. Best of all, she didn't ask detailed questions about his enterprises. They were a perfect fit.

With a vodka in hand Dimitri clicked the remote and started the movie. …

[A simple objective to start. A man wants to watch a movie. He's having a quiet night at home.]

He thought he heard a sound from the garage just after the credits finished. It was a thump of some kind, as if someone had dropped a soft bag on the floor. But no one could be in the garage, fixed as it was with a double security system. No one except Sarah could get inside without tripping the alarm.

Maybe she was home early. No, it was too early. She hadn't been gone more than half an hour. …

Something told him he wasn't alone. It was instinct, born of the Soviet system where someone was always looking over your shoulder.

Dimitri Chekhov hadn't felt that in a long time, but he felt it now.

[An obstacle arises to his objective. A feeling that he is not alone.]

“Sarah?” he called.

No answer.

He got up from his easy chair and turned toward the front of his house. There was only darkness and shadow. Again, his mind told him no one could be inside. He had the finest security system money could buy. He needed it. The business he was in was not free from cutthroat competition — literally. … But his house was secure. He decided to sweep through the house once, put his fears behind him, and get back to the talking toys.

He had a .38 in the antique desk in his study. He went for it just in case. As he walked through the hallway he flicked on the lights. No sudden image of an intruder. Nothing but cold emptiness. …

Feeling more confident than fearful, he strode toward the kitchen.

[Action taken to overcome the obstacle, which is his fear.]

He turned on the lights and, as he expected, saw only the glistening tile and pine of his wife's newly remodeled kitchen. …

A hand covered his face and pulled his head back. A searing pain shot through his neck. Dimitri felt another hand grab the gun from him, twisting his wrists until he thought they might break. He was pulled backward, off his feet, dragged across the kitchen floor. …

[The confrontation now is physical.]

Dimitri pumped his arms, trying to hit his assailant with an elbow. He made contact with the body, but with hardly any force. He tried to twist out of the grasp but the man snapped his head back again, causing incredible pain. In the next instant Dimitri felt himself being shoved in a chair, and rope being thrown around him.

The hand on his face released him for an instant. But before Dimitri could turn his head a heavy cloth was snapped over his eyes and pulled tight. Dimitri tried to move his arms, but the rope restrained him. It took only a few seconds more before he was completely incapacitated and blind to the world. …

One of the men turned his chair around. He heard activity on the other side of the garage, as if the other man were moving something.

“You can have it all,” Dimitri said. “Both of you. I'll leave. I'll take my wife and go back to New York. I won't come back.”

The only sound he heard was the tinny knock of a large can of some kind. And then he knew, suddenly, the whole thing. As he cried out, “Don't do this!”he felt the gasoline being poured on his head, smelled the sickening smell. …

Then Dimitri felt the sodden blindfold being lifted from his head. He blinked, his eyes burning from the gas. He coughed as the fumes assaulted his lungs. Shaking his head, he tried to focus. The lights were on, blindingly bright. Sensing his assailants behind him, he turned his head, but couldn't see them.

He looked forward, finally able to make out images, and saw someone sitting across from him. Perhaps one of the men, ready to talk, to negotiate. Perhaps they were not unreasonable men after all.

And then Dimitri Chekhov screamed. It came through muffled, the thick rope in his mouth muffling his sound.

Dimitri screamed again.

In a chair, secured with ropes, was the lifeless body of his wife. Her head hung limply to one side. …

He jerked himself violently in his chair, tipping himself over, falling hard on the concrete. His head hit with sudden force. He almost blacked out. He wished then for death. He cried out once more.

Then he closed his eyes and began to cry. When the flames came, instantly covering his entire body, it was almost a relief. Dimitri Chekhov did not scream again.

[The prompt at the end: Who was behind this grisly death?]

A reaction scene is how a Lead character feels emotionally when something (usually bad) happens to him.

The lawyer doesn't get anything helpful from the witness. In fact, the witness says she saw his client pull the trigger at point blank range.

Now the lawyer is going to have to mull that one over. How does he feel about it? What's he going to do about it?

When he finally decides what he's going to do, you can write another action scene.

A literary novel may feel like a lot of reaction scenes because they are generally more about the interior life of a character.

Reaction is often done in beats. Here is a short reaction beat from my novel,
Final Witness
. Rachel Ybarra is a paralegal who is helping on a big case at the United States Attorney's Office. A reporter named Stefanos has made her acquaintance and told her she must meet with him. We get a peak into Rachel's thought process here:

Rachel arrived at the marina at half past six. She parked on the street near the Red Lobster, grabbed her briefcase and checked it. She had a legal notepad and a hand-held tape recorder inside.

Stefanos had told her they would meet at his office, but had to connect first by the seafood restaurant. Wind was whipping off the ocean as the sun set in the west, casting an orange wake across Marina del Rey and the entire southern California coast. Rachel thought momentarily how nice it would be to live near the beach. The glory of creation, the cleansing of the sea breeze, the purity of it — what a lovely contrast it would be to the cold lines and dark corners of downtown.

The thought of peace brought on a sudden urge to jump in her car and drive away. What was she doing here? She had no business getting involved at the investigatory level on a case as big as Supevsky.

[Internal questioning.]

But she gave herself two reasons for staying. The first was to find out why she was in danger. The second was to see if there was really something Stefanos had to help the Supevsky case. In her mind, the latter reason was the most important. She wanted to help Lakewood get his case back. She wanted another chance.

[Her justifications.]

Her chance came walking up from the side of the restaurant a few moments later. Stefanos wore a dark red windbreaker and blue jeans, looking more like a weekend sailor than anything else. He smiled and waved, then indicated to Rachel to walk his way.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, shaking her hand.

You can put a
reaction beat
in the middle of an action scene so we know how the character is feeling. Dean Koontz's
Intensity
is pretty much a nonstop cat-and-mouse game with a killer. Chyna, the Lead, is in a store, trying to avoid being seen:

She could not at first see the killer, who was at one with the night in his black raincoat. But then he moved, wading through the darkness toward the motor home.

Even if he glanced back, he wouldn't be able to see her in the dimly lighted store. Her heart thundered anyway as she stepped into the open area between the heads of the three aisles and the cashiers' counter.

The photograph of Ariel was no longer on the floor. She wished that she could believe it had never existed.

The last line is a reaction beat, a moment of reflection in the midst of intense action (thus the title of the novel).

These major chords, action and reaction, were called
scene
and
sequel
by writing teachers Dwight Swain and Jack M. Bickham. They allow the narrative to unfold in a logical fashion.

Character takes action, is frustrated by conflict, and usually ends up with a setback. He reacts to this development, thinks things over, and decides on another action.

It is not necessary to ping pong between these two chords every time. As shown above, you can place reaction (or sequel) as a beat within action. There are other variations (see Bickham's
Scene & Structure
). But if you handle action and reaction well, your plot will move along smartly.

Setup scenes, or beats, are those units that must occur in order for subsequent scenes to make sense.

All novels need a certain amount of setup.

We have to know who the Lead character is, what he does, and why he does it. We have to see how he gets into whatever predicament is going to dominate the book.

Further, there may need to be some setup beats in the course of the story.

How, then, do you do this without writing dull exposition?

You simply build in a problem, however slight, to the setup scene. It can be anything from the character feeling anxious, to an argument, to a problem that must be dealt with immediately.

Setup scenes are minor chords, and should be kept to an absolute minimum. Usually they occur early in the book.

The opening pages of
Gone With the Wind
are for setup. They give us Scarlett O'Hara and reveal her character. How? She is having a coquettish
argument
with the Tarleton twins. We get some setting and the flavor of the book to come.

Then Stuart Tarleton declares that Ashley Wilkes is going to marry Melanie Hamilton, producing the following reaction beat:

Scarlett's face did not change but her lips went white — like a person who has received a stunning blow without warning and who, in the first moments of shock, does not realize what has happened.

Deepening is to the novel as spice is to food. This chord of fiction is generally not a full scene. It is, instead, what you add to the mix to deepen the reader's understanding of character or setting. Make it fresh, drop it in strategically, and the flavor will be exquisite.

But like spice, deepening must not be overdone or it will ruin the taste.

In his novella,
The Body
, Stephen King takes a short, spicy break from the narrative to have Gordie tell one of his famous stories to his friends. It concerns a certain large boy named Hogan, some castor oil, a number of pies he eats at a contest and the “revenge” he exacts on the town as a result. (One might pick a better metaphor than
spice
for this particular deepening episode.) Why did King take this digression? Because it is just the kind of story these boys would like. It deepens their relationship as they continue their journey. It adds something to the story that straight narrative would not.