A scene is the most basic building block of a novel. String enough of them together in the correct way and you’ve got a page turner. Do it incorrectly and you’re almost guaranteed to have a flop. Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my time as a writer, this is the most fundamentally important in my view.

The average novel contains anywhere from twenty to sixty scenes. Go ahead; count them and see. There is a particular flow to a good scene and it is important to understand this flow before you can start messing around with it to suit your own style. This flow consists of six standard parts:

Goal

Conflict

Disaster

Reaction

Dilemma

Decision

In any particular scene, your character has a goal he wants to accomplish. While pursuing that goal he encounters a conflict. That conflict ends in disaster, which prevents him from reaching that goal. The character reacts to the disaster, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally, which forces him into a dilemma. Does he do X or does he do Y to continue trying to reach his goal? He decides on a course of action and a new goal. Then the process starts all over again.

Look at some of your favorite scenes. Think about them with respect to the six aspects mentioned above. Can you see where each section comes into play?

One of my favorite scenes can be found in Robert McCammon’s SWAN SONG. Two of the main characters, a boy named Roland and a former soldier named Colonel Macklin, are trapped in the cave-in of a survivalist’s refuge. Macklin is the only one who knows the way out of the complex. But his hand is buried beneath a ton of debris. Roland must gather his courage and chop Macklin’s hand off at the wrist in order to free the colonel, and ultimately, free himself.

The goal would be their mutual desire to get out of the complex. The conflict is that neither of them trusts the other. The disaster is, of course, Macklin’s trapped limb. They react to it individually and then as a team. A decision is made, an action taken, and a new goal is then assumed.

A series of good scenes built in this fashion soon turn into a good novel.

So what do you do to make your scenes stand-out and assume a life of their own? Let us know in the comments.