Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

I’ve been quiet on the blog lately because I’ve been working frenetically on my next software product, “Snowflake Pro,” which will make it fun and easy to work through the steps of the Snowflake method. “Snowflake Pro” also creates the skeleton of a book proposal, after you’ve completed the first 6 steps of the Snowflake method.

[Note added on Tuesday, June 30:] I posted the above yesterday and asked for volunteer alpha testers. I received a flood of emails and have selected a team of alpha testers that is small enough for me to be able to manage all the comments. I have put a number of people on the waiting list. I believe I have enough alpha testers for now. Thanks to all of you who volunteered!

Last week I asked the advice of my loyal blog readers on how best to rename those pesky Motivation-Reaction Units. Thank you for all the suggestions!

A few of you expressed concern that my forthcoming book, WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, might be too theoretical, or too focused on this or that, or too something else. All I can say is that the few comments I’ve made so far have dealt with small parts of only two of the 22 chapters. The book will cover everything that I’ve learned and taught over the last 21 years of writing, all in one handy reference. And there are some new ideas in it.

It sounds like the terminology “Objective Beats” and “Subjective Beats” is none too popular. A number of you prefer “Cause” and “Effect”. Others like “Stimulus” and “Response”. Still others prefer “Action” and “Reaction.” The issue I have with all of these is the same problem that I see with “Motivation” and “Reaction.”

That problem is that sometimes the POV character provides the Cause/Stimulus/Action/Motivation/whatever you call it. In those cases, typically a non-POV character provides the Effect/Response/Reaction/whatever.

However, just as often the situation is reversed and some other character is doing the Cause/Stimulus/Action/Motivation and the POV character is providing the Effect/Response/Reaction.

For example, consider these two beats, in which Harry is the POV character.

Harry threw a dung-bomb at Malfoy’s face, hoping he’d swallow it.

Malfoy leaped back, tripped over his own feet, and fell in a bucket of flobberworms.

In the above example, Harry provides the Cause/Stimulus/Action/Motivation and Malfoy provides the Effect/Response/Reaction.

Now consider the following two beats, in which Harry is still the POV character:

Malfoy threw a dung-bomb at Harry’s face. “Eat this!”

Harry leaped back, tripped over his own feet, and fell in a bucket of flobberworms. He desperately hoped Cho wasn’t watching.

In the above example, Malfoy provides the Cause/Stimulus/Action/Motivation and Harry provides the Effect/Response/Reaction.

A number of you like the terms “Internal Beat” (for the POV character) and “External Beat” for all other characters. And I can see your point. I haven’t written the chapter on all this yet (still finishing up the chapter on Theme), but at the moment I’m leaning to Internal and External. Thanks for all your discussion on these points! One thing is clear — it’s impossible to take everybody’s advice.

On another note, I’ve been working furiously hard on a software project, “Snowflake Pro,” which will automate all the repetitive parts of working through the Snowflake method. My current plan is to have this ready for sale by the end of the month. My daughter and I are working on four example Snowflakes that will be included with “Snowflake Pro” when it goes on sale.

“Snowflake Pro” will walk you through all the steps of analyzing your novel. At the end, the program automatically generates a skeleton of your book proposal! It fills in all parts of the proposal that you do as part of the Snowflake method, and it leaves slots for you to fill in all the other parts.

I showed an early version of “Snowflake Pro” to one of my writing friends awhile back, and the first thing she said was, “Wow, this is fun!”

More details soon . . .

I am about to start writing the chapter on those pesky Motivation-Reaction Units for my WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES book. (For those who’ve never heard of MRUs, you can get up to speed almost instantly in my page on “Writing the Perfect Scene.”) MRUs are, in my opinion, one of the most important concepts you need to learn to write good fiction. If you get them right, then your scenes just flow nicely. If you don’t, then your scenes drive about like that ancient Dodge Colt I used to have.

The main problem I’ve always had with “Motivation Reaction Units” (Dwight Swain’s terminology) is that they sound like something cooked up by a robotics engineer. Robotics is wonderful, but fiction is about people, mostly. Powerful Emotional Experiences and all that.

The two main parts of the “Motivation Reaction Unit” are the “Motivation” and the “Reaction.” And I have huge problems with both of those terms:

1) “Motivation” is a word we already use elsewhere in fiction to describe the inner workings of our characters. Now we are using it here for something which is objective and external to our Point-of-View character. What sort of sense does this make? It just confuses my students. On a bad day, it even confuses me.

2) “Reaction” is a word we ALSO already use elsewhere in fiction to describe one of the primary parts of what Dwight Swain calls a “Sequel” and which I now prefer to call a “Reactive Scene.” So again, we have a word doing double duty and it again confuses people. Even worse, it makes it seem that our POV characters are purely reactive. In fact, our POV characters are as often as not proactive.

So how should we rename things so that we don’t use words that overlap with other contexts and that actually have something to do what’s going on?

Here is my thinking at the moment. According to Dwight Swain, the MRU is a unit with two distinct parts. Let’s call each of these parts a “Beat” which coincides more or less with a word that other people already use for a very small unit of action. Then each MRU has two Beats:

* Dwight Swain calls the first of these Beats the “Motivation,” which is always objective and external to our POV character. So let’s call it the Objective Beat.

* Dwight calls the second of the two Beats the “Reaction,” which is always subjective and internal to our POV character. So let’s call it the Subjective Beat.

Now things are pretty simple, especially in scenes in which you have several characters. In a case like that, it’s common to show several characters doing something before you show the POV character. In Dwight’s language, you have a Motivation that may run for several paragraphs and jump across multiple characters, and then a Reaction that covers just the POV character. In my proposed new language, you’d just have several Objective Beats, followed by one Subjective Beat. This is perfectly OK, but now the language is a bit clearer.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. We’ll have a scene with five characters, Malfoy, Hermione, Ron, Snape, and Harry, with Harry as the POV character. I’ll mark each beat as Objective or Subjective.

Malfoy sneered at Harry. “Think you’re really something, Potter? You’re nothing, and you’ll end up like your Mum!” [Objective Beat.]

Rage pulsed in Harry’s throat and he suddenly found that he couldn’t breathe. He flicked his wand out and jabbed it at Malfoy’s face. [Subjective beat.]

Malfoy’s face turned as white as his hair. [Objective Beat.]

“NO, HARRY!” Hermione screamed. “He’s not worth it!” [Objective Beat.]

Ron stepped up beside Harry and gently wrapped his hand around Harry’s fist. “She’s right, mate,” he said regretfully. “Malfoy’s just a stupid git. Wipe him off your shoes and just walk away.” [Objective Beat.]

Somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind, a high, cold voice laughed. A bolt of pain shot through his scar. He pulled his wand away from Malfoy’s sweating face. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. [Subjective Beat.]

Professor Snape walked around the corner and his sallow face scowled. “Is there some reason for four young students to be indoors on a fine spring day like today?” [Objective Beat.]

OK, I’d like to hear the opinion of my loyal blog readers. What do you think? Does it make sense to use the terms “Objective Beat” and “Subjective Beat”? Or are there better terms? I’m still grappling with these things. If there’s one thing I learned as a physicist, it’s that things are simplest when you choose the right notation and they’re complicated when you choose the wrong one. Likewise, in trying to describe what happens in fiction, things are simplest when you choose the right terminology and they get needlessly complicated when you use ambiguous terms.

I’m working on my e-zine today, which should go out tonight at midnight.

In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to note that my latest “Sam the Plumber” humor column is now available. Sam is now on Twitter! The title of this month’s column is “All A-Twitter.” Read all about it here.

And by the way, Sam really does have a Twitter account! Not sure how that happened, but his user name is “SamThePlumber”. Are you following Sam?

There were a number of very perceptive comments in response to my last blog posting. I’d like to respond to Cherie’s question:

Something I’ve been pondering as I read through the recent blogs: do you feel that the type of novel being written would or should affect the use of Reaction Scenes? I was thinking that in a romance novel, for example, it would make sense to go a little heavier on Reaction Scenes because a romance focuses more on emotion, and the thought processes and reasoning of the characters would be of more interest. Whereas in an action story, long and frequent Reaction Scenes would slow down the pace too much and only detract from the action. Would you agree with this, or do you feel that the books genre shouldn’t really influence the use of Reaction Scenes?

Yes, absolutely it makes a lot of sense in romance novels and women’s fiction to put in more word count on Reaction Scenes. In a typical thriller or action-adventure novel, on the other hand, you’d minimize the Reaction Scene length and put your word count in Action Scenes.

In chapter 10 of WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, which I just turned in to my editor yesterday, I analyzed one Action Scene and one Reaction Scene from the following two novels: GONE WITH THE WIND, by Margaret Mitchell, and PATRIOT GAMES, by Tom Clancy.

In GONE WITH THE WIND, the Action Scene and the Reaction Scene were about the same lengths. In the Action Scene, Scarlett confronts Ashley in the library and basically throws herself at him. In the Reaction Scene, she tries to figure out how to deal with her disaster, and after quite a lot of pages, she decides to marry Charlie Hamilton. Lots of emotive stuff and interpersonal stuff for Scarlett to work through.

In PATRIOT GAMES, the Action Scene is much longer than the Reaction Scene. The Action Scene shows hero Jack Ryan breaking up a terrorist attack on the Prince of Wales and his family (setting–early 1980s, when Diana was still in the picture). It’s a good exciting scene and ends with Ryan taking out one terrorist with his bare hands, then shooting the other one and getting shot simultaneously. (That’s a disaster–taking a 9 mm bullet in the shoulder!) The Reaction Scene is just a few paragraphs. Ryan sees the Palace Guards coming with rifles and realizes that he looks a mite suspicious–he’s the lone man standing at the scene of a terrorist attack, and he’s holding a loaded gun. No long dilemma here. Ryan just pops the clip out of the gun, then drops them both on the ground, and then collapses on the ground as his wound starts to put him into shock.

It would be instructive to go through a few published novels and mark the Action and Reaction Scenes and compare their relative lengths.

Yesterday, I talked about how you set up Scenes and Sequels (which we have now agreed to call Action Scenes and Reaction Scenes) when writing with multiple points of view.

Today, JD asked:

In the multi-POV situation, isn’t there often a cliff hanger of some sort that encourages you to read through the other POV characters to get back to find out what happened to Character A?

How does that fit in? Is the cliff hanger really a division of the setback? Then when you return to Character A, you finish the “Action Scene”, have your “Reaction Scene” and move into your next “Action Scene”? Or, is the cliff hanger just the end of the scene and how he gets out of it is part of the reaction and I’m just having trouble breaking it in my head?

I guess my question is, What is a cliff hanger and how does that fit into the A-Scene, R-Scene structure?

Randy sez: A cliffhanger is just a Setback in an Action Scene. The pattern of an Action Scene is that the POV character has a Goal coming into the scene. He experiences Conflict throughout most of the scene. Then at the very end, he hits a major Setback.

Please notice that the preferred way to end the Action Scene is by showing the Setback without showing the POV character’s response to it. The reader can see clearly that the POV character is in trouble, but then the scene ends abruptly. That’s a cliffhanger. It’s a great way to end an Action Scene.

Bonnie asked, regarding multi-POV novels:

In some cases, wouldn’t you have John’s Action Scene, then Mary’s Action Scene, then John’s Reaction Scene and then Mary’s Reaction Scene? In other words, all the scenes are still there, just interspersed between the other character’s scenes. Perhaps that depends on the scene, and how important the information in the Reaction Scene is — whether or not it needs to be its own scene or can be conveyed in Mary’s Action scene. I agree with JD about the cliffhangers.

Randy sez: Yes, you can do it that way. When writing a multi-POV novel, you just have more options than when you’re writing a single-POV novel. I’ve written both kinds, and there are sometimes reasons to go with single-POV. (For example, when you want to keep secrets from the reader, such as in a mystery novel or certain kinds of thrillers. Then, if the POV character isn’t privy to some secret, the reader can hardly blame you for not telling that secret.)

Keep in mind that in modern fiction, the Reaction Scene doesn’t get as much play as it used to. Modern readers like more action, less introspection. So it’s probably possible to have a novel in which there are NO Reaction Scenes at all. (I can’t think of any like this, but I think it’s theoretically possible.) But as I noted yesterday, even if you don’t write the Reaction Scene, you need to know what happened there.

Yesterday, I asked for the opinions of my loyal blog readers on what to call those pesky Scenes and Sequels. Thanks to all of you for responding! I’ve read through all your answers and I like “Action Scenes” and “Reaction Scenes.” As one of you pointed out, James Scott Bell uses these terms.

I looked back at Dwight Swain’s book and discovered to my horror that he never said that a Sequel is a full-fledged scene. He called it a transition between scenes. So I’ve been misreading Swain for about 20 years now.

I also like the idea of calling the parts of Motivation-Reaction Units “Action Beats” and “Reaction Beats”. This solves a couple of problems with terminology very nicely.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and ideas! I appreciate you.

Today, I had an email from a loyal reader asking how Scenes and Sequels tie together when you have multiple POV characters. This is a good question and it’s one I’ve heard many times. I just wrote the answer to it yesterday when I was drafting my chapter on Scenes, so it’s fresh in my mind.

In keeping with my new naming scheme, I’m going to refer to Scenes from here on as “Action Scenes” and I’ll refer to Sequels as “Reaction Scenes.”

When you have a single POV story, you typically write an Action Scene (containing a Goal, a Conflict, and a Setback). Then it’s quite natural to follow that up with a Reaction Scene (containing a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision). Then you use that Decision to give you the Goal for a new Action Scene. This gives you a simple alternation between Action Scenes and Reaction Scenes, on and on, until the story ends.

However, there are two common cases where you often want to break this chain:

1) In a multi-POV book, you often write an Action Scene in the POV of John and then follow it with an Action Scene in the POV of Mary. Then you might do an Action Scene in the POV of Santa. Then you come back to John and do another Action Scene. When do you work in the Reaction Scenes? Answer: you can often avoid ever writing any Reaction Scenes, if you can let the reader know what went on in the Reaction Scenes somehow or other. You can do this using dialogue. John tells Mary, “Since Harvard didn’t accept me, I decided to join the Navy.” There’s the Decision, and we don’t have to wallow through John’s pesky Reaction and Dilemma. This is pretty common in modern fiction.

2) You can let the reader figure out what happened in the Reaction Scene without bothering to show it. Often, you can do this by just showing the next Action Scene in which the new Goal tells us immediately what the Decision had to be from the missing Reaction Scene. This is also pretty common in modern fiction.

I recommend that whether you show the Reaction Scene or not, you should still figure out what happened in it. You are the God of your story, and you get to know everything that goes on. In fact, you HAVE to know everything that goes on. Omniscience is a burden, and you have to bear it.

A loyal blog reader has asked me how Scenes and Sequels relate to chapters. For those who need a refresher course in what Scenes and Sequels are (or for those who have never heard of them) you can find a nice summary in my article on Writing the Perfect Scene. So far as I know, the terms Scenes and Sequels were invented by Dwight Swain in his book Techniques of the Selling Writer.

So let’s say you have your story all broken out into Scenes and Sequels. Is each of these its own chapter? If not, then how do you fit them together into chapters?

The answer is quite simple. Scenes and Sequels are typically anywhere from 1 to 12 pages long. Mine average about 4 pages each. It’s rare to be less than 2 pages or more than 10. So I just string them together in chapters of roughly 10 to 12 pages long. That is, I just keep throwing in Scenes and Sequels until a chapter is “full.” Then I make a new chapter and start filling that. There’s no reason to sweat too much about the structure of chapters. Chapters really aren’t that important. The basic unit of fiction is the scene, and there are two flavors of scene: the Scene and the Sequel.

Incidentally, is anyone else tired of this ambiguity which we inherited from Dwight Swain? Scenes and Sequels are BOTH scenes (in the ordinary sense of the word). Swain chose to create the technical terms “Scene” and “Sequel” but I personally have always found it hard to explain that they are technical terms.

I’ve just finished writing up the chapter in my new book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES on this topic, and here’s the solution I’ve tentatively come up with:

Dwight Swain’s “Scene” has three parts, a Goal, a Conflict, and a Setback. So I’ve taken to calling this a “Goal-Conflict-Setback Scene” and I abbreviate this a “GCS Scene.”

Dwight Swain’s “Sequel” has three parts, a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision. I’ve started calling this a “Reaction-Dilemma-Decision Scene” and the abbreviation is “RDD Scene.”

In my view, this makes it a little simpler. Both of these are scenes. So why not make the names clear?

What do my loyal blog readers think? I have plenty of time to change this. I’d like to hear your opinion.

I have been Xtremely busy lately working on my WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES book. It’s coming along nicely and I’m getting a chance to rethink everything I’ve ever taught and figure out how to say it better.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend asking me a question about writing and inviting me to answer it here on my blog. Good idea! Here’s her question:

I’ve been working on the scene/sequel rhythm to my story and I have a question about pacing. Do scenes tend to be longer than sequels? It seems like if they’re the same length, my characters are going to spend a lot of time wallowing in self-reflection. Can you address the length of scenes vs. sequels some time?

Randy sez: That’s an excellent question. For those not familiar with Scenes and Sequels, you can get a lightning introduction to them in this article on my site: Writing the Perfect Scene.

Now to answer the question. In modern fiction, the Sequel has suffered at the expense of the Scene. It’s common to drastically shorten Sequels. It’s even fairly common to skip the Sequel entirely and go straight to the next Scene.

I don’t favor letting those pesky characters wallow in self-reflection. Better to let them wallow in more car chases and exploding helicopters. That is the reason God invented fiction — to let us safely enjoy car chases and exploding helicopters, without the usual problems.

Gotta question for me on fiction writing? Just click through to my Contact page and email it to me. I’ll answer all questions in the answer I receive them. I’ll try to do one quick answer every day.

A quick note to say that my latest humor column starring Sam the Plumber has been posted. Sam decides this month to help me out with an overzealous endorsement seeker. Unfortunately . . .

No, I can’t say any more. I leave it to you to read the column.

I’m behind in everything, but hope to get my e-zine sent out tonight, so I need to finish that up.