This blog post is reprinted by permission of the publisher from Chapter 1 of my book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.
What Your Reader Most Desperately Wants
Your reader desperately wants one thing.
You have it in your power to give your reader that one thing.
And what is that one thing?
I could tell you what that one thing is, and you would nod and agree that yes, that one thing is clearly something all readers want.
But telling you that one thing wouldn’t make it stick in your mind forever.
I want it to stick.
I’d rather show you that one thing. Once you’ve seen it, once you’ve lived it, you’ll never forget it. That one thing will be inside you, fueling everything you write.
So let me tell you a quick story about one of our ancestors who lived many thousands of years ago in a small village on this planet we call home.
When I say he’s our ancestor, I mean it literally—he’s your ancestor and he’s my ancestor and he’s every human’s ancestor.
That ancestor of ours was once a thirteen-year-old boy, the newest man in the village, and the smallest.
Imagine you’re that boy on the day when word comes to the village that there’s a killer tiger ravaging the village’s herd of goats.
The Tale of the Tiger
You’re furious. A drought has been burning the land for many months. That herd of goats is all that keeps your village from starvation.
You’re also terrified. There’s only one way to get rid of a killer tiger. The village has to organize a hunt, find the tiger, and kill it. But that won’t be easy, because there’s nothing more dangerous in your world than a killer tiger.
The village headman sends word around to the whole village. All men meet in the village square, and bring your spear.
When the messenger comes to your hut, he shakes his head and frowns. He thinks you’re too young to go.
In your heart, you’re afraid he’s right. You only just became a man in the last month. You’re small. You’re skinny. You’re weak.
But in your head, you know he’s wrong.
If the village doesn’t kill the tiger, it’s going to steal every last goat, and the village is going to die.
To save your people, you and every man in the village have to work together to kill the tiger.
You know very well you might not come back. A thousand times in the village square, you’ve heard the village story-woman tell the Tale of the Tiger. You know that when a tiger is surrounded by men with spears, it always looks for the weakest man—and attacks that man.
Sometimes the man kills the tiger.
Sometimes the tiger kills the man.
You’re terrified, but you know you have to go.
You grab your spear and run to the village square.
When you get there, the village headman smiles at you and shouts courage on you.
All the villagers smile at you and shout courage on you.
And then the men of the village set out to find the tiger.
You don’t have to go far. You can hear the screams of a baby goat being dragged into the jungle. You can hear the roar of the tiger.
Every man of the village knows what he has to do. The Tale of the Tiger is in your blood.
You all fan out, forming a giant circle around the place where you heard the tiger.
The headman shouts the command to move, and you all advance ten paces.
He shouts again, and you advance ten paces.
Over and over and over again.
As you get closer to the tiger, the tightness in your chest squeezes your heart until the pain is unbearable.
The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.
Sweat rains down your face.
The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.
Your knees are shaking so hard, you think you’re going to fall over.
The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.
Finally, a war-shout goes up from all the men.
A hundred fingers point at a streak of orange and black, high up.
The tiger is in a tree, watching you with yellow eyes of rage.
He’s trapped, fifty paces from where you stand. You can see him looking all around the circle, measuring his enemies. It’s exactly like you imagined from every time you’ve ever heard the Tale of the Tiger. Exactly like it—only worse.
The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.
The tiger roars—so loud you can feel the sound shaking your belly.
He’s forty paces away. And he’s looking directly at you.
The weakest and smallest man in the village.
Just like in the Tale of the Tiger.
The fate of the village is on your thin shoulders.
The headman shouts, and you advance ten paces.
The tiger screams with a terrible scream.
He leaps out of the tree.
He races straight at you.
Like you knew he would.
Time almost stops. In the last few instants before the tiger reaches you, you relive the thoughts of the hero of the Tale of the Tiger.
Always face the tiger. If you turn to run, you will die and so will the village. Face the tiger and kill or be killed. But face the tiger. Wait till the last possible moment before you throw. Then kill the tiger, even if the tiger also kills you. Face the tiger.
You want to run, but you face the tiger. You draw back your arm, clutching your spear in a sweaty grip.
The tiger lunges forward, straight at you, faster and faster, roaring in his fury.
Your body desperately wants to turn and run.
You face the tiger and wait for the perfect moment.
The tiger leaps in the air, and his roar is like thunder.
He reaches the peak of his flight.
He’s coming down.
Straight at you.
You wait till the last possible moment.
You throw.
The tiger crashes into you, knocking you senseless.
Your very last thought before darkness falls is I have done this before. I have done this a thousand times before.
When you come back awake, your head throbs and your whole body aches and all you can hear is the sound of drumming and dancing and feasting and shouting.
You’re back in the village.
It’s late at night.
The village is having a party.
The tiger is dead.
And you saved the village.
The whole village sees you’re awake.
The village headman calls for silence.
All the village gathers around.
The village story-woman tells the Tale of the Tiger.
And you’re the hero.
As the village story-woman tells the tale, you feel like you’re living it all again. The great circle. The steady advances. The rush of the tiger. The blinding fear. The final leap. The desperate throw. The rage of the dying tiger.
And you’re right. You are living it again.
But this is not the second time you’re living the Tale of the Tiger.
It’s the thousandth time you’re living the Tale of the Tiger.
You lived it many times before, in story.
You lived it once today, in real life.
You’re living it again now, in story.
And there’s only a small difference between the story of the hunt and the real hunt. The real-life Tale of the Tiger was scarier, but not much scarier.
You were prepared for the real-life hunt by the thousand times you heard the Tale of the Tiger.
When the village story-woman finishes the Tale of the Tiger, a great shout goes up from all the village.
The village headman brings out the skin of the tiger you killed.
He carries it to you.
He drapes it around your shoulders.
And all the people of the village take turns lifting you high in the air and shouting their thanks to you for killing the tiger.
And you realize that this is not the first skin you’ve worn today.
Every time you ever heard the Tale of the Tiger, you walked inside the skin of the hero of the Tale. You felt his fears. You faced his tiger. You killed his kill.
And today when you faced the tiger, you walked in that hero’s skin again.
Yes, you killed the tiger.
But you had help.
The hero of the Tale of the Tiger also killed the tiger.
The village story-woman killed the tiger.
The Tale of the Tiger killed the tiger.
Why Story Matters
Our ancestors told stories about the things they feared most. Why? Because Story changes you. Story makes you strong. Story makes you brave. Story gives you hope. Story keeps you alive through the darkest night.
When you hear the Tale of the Tiger, it’s almost as if you live in the hero’s skin and face down his fears and kill the tiger.
Story builds emotional muscle memory.
When a real-life tiger comes your way, you have the emotional reserves to draw on.
Story teaches the tribe how to survive.
Story teaches the tribe how to thrive.
Story has been doing that for many thousand years.
Every human alive desperately needs Story.
Every human alive desperately wants Story.
Story is not a luxury item.
Story is not optional.
Story keeps the tribe alive.
What Story Is
Story is what happens when you walk through great danger in somebody else’s skin.
And don’t think that “great danger” always means a tiger.
There are other kinds of dangers, and other kinds of stories.
Romance is the best-selling category of story in modern fiction.
What is a romance novel? It’s a story about a relationship going through great danger.
Danger so great, the relationship may very well be killed.
A romance novel builds in you the emotional muscle memory to keep your relationships alive.
Every kind of story builds a different kind of emotional muscle memory.
Story teaches the tribe how to survive, how to thrive.
Every kind of fiction you write will put your reader in the skin of some person going through great danger.
A Powerful Emotional Experience
Facing danger is fun. There’s probably some deep neurological reason why.
Certainly, facing danger makes you strong. Facing danger makes you bold.
But let’s be honest here. Facing danger in real life is dangerous. You only get to make one mistake on a tiger hunt, ever.
Story is a safe way to face danger. Story teaches you how to face your fears, how to persist, how to hope when there is no hope. When you’ve got nothing else, Story will get you through. Story teaches you how to live.
And Story does all that by going deep into your neurons. Story teaches you how to live by letting you live someone else’s life. You see what they see. You feel what they feel. You do what they do.
The reason Story goes deep is because it gives you a powerful emotional experience.
That powerful emotional experience is what creates in you the emotional muscle memory you need to survive and to thrive. In the heat of the hunt, when the tiger is racing at you, you’ll forget everything you were ever told.
But you won’t forget the things you already lived.
Story is like chocolate broccoli. It tastes incredibly great and it’s amazingly good for you.
That’s why you desperately need Story.
That’s why your reader desperately needs Story.
That’s why your main goal as a fiction writer is to give your reader the one thing she most desperately needs.
Story.
What This Book Is About
The Advanced Fiction Writing series of books is all about how to write stories that give your reader a powerful emotional experience.
This book teaches you one important tool for doing that—writing a dynamite scene. Every scene in your story needs to move your reader’s emotions. You can’t afford to have any scenes that don’t.
But before we focus on scenes, we have to ask a very important question.
How does Story create a powerful emotional experience? How exactly does it work?
The answer is simple. Story has two essential parts. Only two.
Turn the page to find out what they are.
Excerpted from Chapter 1 of How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.
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