We all know how to write a book, yes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You start off with some kind of incomplete and dissatisfying status quo<\/strong>. Then something \u2013 an inciting incident<\/strong> \u2013 comes along to shatter that status quo, and our protagonist is tumbled into motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then \u2013 well, stuff happens. Conflict. Turbulence<\/strong>. Ups and downs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we have a good old crisis<\/strong>. Everything is lost. Bond and Lizzie Bennet have lost. Goldfinger is triumphant. Darcy no longer cares for this foolish girl. Then, goodness gracious me, we have a glorious resolution<\/strong>, Bond defuses the bomb, and Lizzie Bennet gets a good old snog from Darcy, Goldfinger is cursing the gods or being carried off in chains, and various cads, bounders and fools all get the fates they entirely deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While we\u2019re busy setting bold styling here, there and everywhere, let\u2019s also note that these excellent plots are powered by Big Questions<\/strong>. Will Lizzie ever find Mr Right? Will Bond manage to save the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fractal geometry says that all these rules apply to scene construction too. That\u2019s something I spoke about yesterday in my Build A Book webinar on scene-building, but I want to pick up on some of that webinar-goodness right now as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s sort of obvious when you have a big showdown scene \u2013 a No, I Am Your Father<\/em> type showstopper \u2013 you need a properly constructed drama. When you\u2019ve got your protagonist wrestling with the black-cloaked antagonist on a sketchy metal platform above a seemingly bottomless pit, the reader has every right to expect conflict, crisis, resolution \u2013 the whole malarkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u2013 you need to deliver the whole malarkey with almost every scene<\/em> you write<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, by way of example, is a short and basically trivial scene from a Fiona book. Fiona has found a mentally ill woman (Shirley) walking the streets and brings her back to psychiatric care. Here\u2019s what happens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve not been to the Llanrwst Unit before, thank God, so need to be told the way. Shirley accompanies me peacefully enough. Glass doors seal the unit we need access to and we have to be buzzed in by a tough, but friendly looking ward sister, Joan Fredericks. She\u2019s about my age and doesn\u2019t know me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She summons someone to take Shirley off wherever she needs to be. I say good-bye. She starts to mutter a good-bye, some reflex of politeness buried amidst the scatter of her thoughts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, abruptly, \u2018Look after Kath [Shirley\u2019s sister]. You\u2019ll do that, won\u2019t you? Kath. She\u2019s not in the system, you see. But sorry, sorry, I mustn\u2019t . . .\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Her mind tangles up again, lost in its briars. But for that one moment, there was clarity. Blue eyes, unblinking. A steady gaze. Even her hand, I think, lost its micro-tremble.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I say, \u2018Yes, Shirley, I\u2019ll do that. I\u2019ll be happy to.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Off she goes. Thick black shoes on hospital vinyl.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n To Fredericks, I say, \u2018There\u2019s nothing wrong with her sister is there?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Don\u2019t you worry about nobody. We look after everything.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s not quite an answer, but I don\u2019t pursue it. Just nod at Shirley\u2019s retreating back and ask, \u2018What\u2019s the diagnosis?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredericks gives me the kind of stare that\u2019s challenging my right to ask. But I\u2019m a copper and I brought back her patient, so she says, \u2018Schizophreniform condition. Formal thought disorders and all this.\u2019 She shrugs. She\u2019s trying to be obstructive, but she\u2019s given me exactly the information I wanted.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018And she\u2019s in and out, is she? She\u2019s not always cared for here?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer\u2019s yes and no, respectively. Shirley\u2019s on a CTO, a Community Treatment Order, which means she\u2019ll mostly receive care in the community. Sheltered housing. I take a note of her address.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Who\u2019s her case officer?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredericks folds her arms across her bosom in a way that only looks right if you\u2019ve got one of those big, black, Jamaican bosoms, which I definitely don\u2019t and she definitely does.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Thank you for returning Shirley, but I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not able to divulge confidential information about patients in our care.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I like that, actually. Like it a lot. You always worry, as a crazy person, that the people taking care of you are going to neglect your rights and, all too often, you\u2019re right to worry. All the same, I push my warrant card at Fredericks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018If you involve the police, the police are involved,\u2019 I say. A statement which gains its logical force from Leibniz\u2019s Law, the identity of indiscernibles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredericks glowers, as if Leibniz is an old enemy of hers. But she unfolds her arms and gives me a name. Mike Wiggins, a psychiatric nurse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I say, \u2018OK, thanks,\u2019 and leave<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve got no sketchy metal platforms, no bottomless pits, no sword fights, no Lords of Evil. The fate of the universe does not rest on the outcome of this encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is a Big Question<\/strong>, right? Fiona wants some information. Fredericks is reluctant to give it. So the question is: will Fiona get what she wants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The status quo<\/strong> (basically tranquil, but somehow dissatisfying) is there too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shirley accompanies me peacefully enough \u2026 [we are] buzzed in by a tough, but friendly looking ward sister, Joan Fredericks.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a very status-quo-y sort of introduction. It\u2019s peaceful, but there\u2019s a force (the tough Joan Fredericks) which is going to prevent things flowing the way Fiona may want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That status quo holds for a while, but Shirley\u2019s rambling nudges Fiona to make demands of that immovable object. The nudge is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Look after Kath [Shirley\u2019s sister]. You\u2019ll do that, won\u2019t you? Kath. She\u2019s not in the system, you see. But sorry, sorry, I mustn\u2019t . . .\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Her mind tangles up again, lost in its briars. But for that one moment, there was clarity. Blue eyes, unblinking. A steady gaze. Even her hand, I think, lost its micro-tremble.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I say, \u2018Yes, Shirley, I\u2019ll do that. I\u2019ll be happy to.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That is: Shirley asks Fiona to make her a promise and her muddled mind finds a brief but real clarity in the moment she asks. Fiona says yes and she\u2019s now committed to what follows \u2013 this is our inciting incident<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What follows entails conflict and turbulence<\/strong>. This is very low level, of course. This is an early stage of the book. The only drama is a conversation between a police officer (pushy) and a nurse (resistant) where no one is even impolite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiona asks for a diagnosis. Fredericks gives her something, but aims to be as unhelpful as possible. Fiona then asks for a minor follow-up and gets what she wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, the conflict is exceedingly minor \u2013 barely detectable, in fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But soon enough, that conflict escalates from resistance to outright refusal, in the form of a \u2018big, black Jamaican bosom\u2019 and:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Thank you for returning Shirley, but I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not able to divulge confidential information about patients in our care.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Woah! In the context of our scene, that\u2019s a crisis<\/strong>. Remember that the Big Question propelling this scene is whether Fiona will get the information she wants, and the answer here seems to be no. That\u2019s the Tiny Scene equivalent of Bond being lasered by Goldfinger, Lizzie being ditched by Darcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u2013 this is a perfect little story, remember, so for every crisis, we have a resolution<\/strong>. Which, in our case, involves the tactical deployment of a seventeenth century mathematician, who got into fights with Newton:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018If you involve the police, the police are involved,\u2019 I say. A statement which gains its logical force from Leibniz\u2019s Law, the identity of indiscernibles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredericks glowers, as if Leibniz is an old enemy of hers. But she unfolds her arms and gives me a name.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, as it happens, the resolution here is a happy one, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. In Tiny Scene land, it doesn\u2019t matter too much if the resolution is or is not happy: your book will have plenty of both outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are other differences too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The inciting incident isn\u2019t fully delivered until 160 words into a 460-word scene: that\u2019s far too slow if you were to stretch things out to novel-length.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, the tone here is gently comedic: Jamaican boobs and long-dead Germans. Those things are more or less the opposite of the swordfight-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice type scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s OK too. You can have a tone that\u2019s perfectly Tiny Scene appropriate but which wouldn\u2019t be Whole Novel appropriate. As a matter of fact, if you tell a dark crime story (like this one), then including scenes with a gentle comedy adds a light and diversity that\u2019s probably helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But really, what I want to talk about here is the fractal geometry. How all scenes \u2013 not just the Skywalker Meets Darth Vader type ones \u2013 follow the basic architecture of story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re re-reading your book and finding that something doesn\u2019t quite feel right \u2013 that the pace feels sludgy, the book seems to be treading water \u2013 it\u2019s possible that your Tiny Scene architecture has just collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s always astonishing to me is that readers are fantastically sensitive to these failures. If you have even one scene that fails to deliver on this basic architecture, the reader will feel it. If you have a section of the book that has two or three such failures, you\u2019ll permanently injure the reader\u2019s relationship with the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So check your scenes. Do they obey (in miniature) the rules of story? If they do, they\u2019re good to go. If not, then fix them. I honestly doubt if I can find a single coherent scene in one of my Fiona books that doesn\u2019t basically follow the rules I\u2019ve sketched out here. That\u2019s how much it matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n