Scene Goals

Hi everyone,

Another day doing my micro-tension draft. Three more pages identified so it’s 80 pages in total that need to be revised.

I am blithely ignoring the number of words I’m adding and the number that I’ll have to delete to make room for these additions. That’s a problem for another day and another draft.

So I’ll talk about other issues I had before I started this blog.

One of them is scene goals.

When I wrote my first draft I hadn’t really planned very well and I didn’t have a scene goal. Later, I learned that it’s important for the focus and tightness of a scene to have one. So I read each scene in my novel, trying to figure out does this scene further my story goal and if yes, what is the scene goal and how do I center the action around it.

I should clarify, that by scene goal I mean, the character’s scene goal. I, the author, always had a scene goal. I was always try to achieve something with each scene.

Also, when evaluating a scene before working out its goal, I always had to ask: does this scene further the story goal? If not, then sadly the scene had to go or have a major rewrite.

I had a lovely tight scene where my main character did a language exam. My goal was to show her brilliance and to show her interacting with another character so the reader could learn about this secondary character and her backstory. My main character had a goal: pass her exam. It was very interesting and tense and people loved it. But did it further my story goal?

Nope.

Is it in my book now?

Nope.

It’s in a folder marked deleted scenes.

Is my story better for deleting it? Definitely.

Okay, while I’m writing this post, I realize that what I said isn’t 100% true. The above scene did forward my story goal somewhat, but not in a significant way, not in a way that could justify the words and also, not in a UNIQUE way.

What I mean is that other scenes were doing the same job. So I should say, was it furthering the scene in a new and different way to other scenes that were doing more heavy lifting?

Nope. It wasn’t.

I suppose, in writing, nothing is clear cut. All scenes can be justified. At this stage of revision, I believe it’s important to be hyper critical.

When I was looking at each scene in my novel in order to determine if I should keep it or delete it, I asked myself: If I lift out this scene will my story be affected?

For my language exam, the answer to that question was no, not if I take out this one important thing, and add it to a different scene. If I do this, my story will be unaffected if I remove the scene. Which I did.

I guess, it’s unlikely for a novel to have a scene that’s completely useless and it’s more likely that elements from one scene can be added to a better but similar scene to make that hybrid scene stronger. Allowing the original, weaker scene to be deleted.

Anyway, regardless, after determining that yes, this scene is worthy of my story, I worked out what my POV character was trying to achieve and once I knew this goal, I was able to delete everything that wasn’t in service of it.

It made the scene tighter and more focused. And allowed me to cut lots of words.

So my advice is if you want to cut words, ask yourself two questions:

1.     Does this scene further my story goal in a significant and different way or can I remove one or two elements and place them elsewhere and delete the scene?

2.     What is my POV character’s goal?

 Another note on goals. I also find it useful to ask myself the following questions for each scene:

1.     Is my POV character successful or does she fail?

2.     How does she feel about this?

3.     How has this changed her?

4.     What are her thoughts about this?

A few things I learned about scene goals.

1.     They don’t have to be big.

2.     There should be at least one obstacle to the goal. Two is better.

3.     The character should try harder, DIFFERENT solutions and use more energy to overcome each obstacle.

4.     It should be clear at the end of the scene if the character achieved this goal or not.

Another note I should add is about story goals. All stories have a story goal. If you aren’t sure what yours is, then look at your climax. What does the main POV character achieve or fail to achieve in this scene? That is your story goal.

Well, that’s all from me tonight.

Talk to you tomorrow,

Joanne.

Micro-tension draft: 80 pages