Just like a novel’s plot, the scenes of your story too must have a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Though this is on a significantly smaller scale, something about your characters and their circumstances must change before the end of a scene. If it does not, the scene falls flat and feels out of place.
This change is what editors like to call the turn in a scene. It typically takes place at the climax of the scene, but, as we all know, those things don’t necessarily have to happen in order. Scene turns are a natural part of writing, but at least one has snuck by the author on every novel I have done a big-picture edit. Here’s how you can catch them during your self-editing process:
Scene Turn Values
Scene turn values basically refer to the types of outcomes from previous scenes possible, and the outcome of your current scene. Each scene beginning or ending can be neutral, good, better, best, bad, worse, or worst, but the key is you always want to start your scene in a different place than you end it.
The way editors typically map these changes is with + and - signs with a / between to indicate a change was made. So, scene mapping will have these types of combinations listed in the margins or a dedicated spreadsheet for your manuscript:
-/+ when a scene starts in a bad place, but our hero makes progress.
+/- when a scene starts in a good place, but a complication arises.
+/++ when a scene starts in a good place, and it gets better.
-/-- when a scene starts in a bad place, and our hero runs into more troubles.
And so on. I’m sure you can imagine more scenarios. If you can’t come up with an applicable + or - for the end of your scene, it likely doesn’t move one of your plot lines meaningfully and should either be reworked or else cut. I’ve lost a good few of my favorite moments this way, but they’ll never be good prose if they lose your audience.
Turns in Big Scenes
Many writers believe that turns must get bigger as they climb the rising action mountain. While some of that may happen, what’s more likely is that your biggest turns will happen at traditional cruxes in your story structure:
The Inciting Incident – likely your second largest shift in circumstances in your novel
The First Act Break
The Midpoint
The Second Act Break
The Climax – should be the biggest swing
Though it may make sense in your narrative for these scenes to be quietly devastating or elative, the biggest changes to your character’s circumstances are likely to come in these scenes and it is okay to juxtapose the two, though uncommon. These bigger changes should be accompanied by larger gaps in the scene mapping:
+/--
-/++
--/++
++/--
These heightened shifts come naturally in a novel, but using these scene mapping techniques can help you if you’ve missed a changeover scene. I find this most commonly happens at the midpoint or first act break, though the second act break isn’t unheard of either. By altering these structurally important scenes, you’ll keep your readers on track.
The Importance of Alternating Outcomes
In addition to scenes that make a change, readers need alternating positive and negative outcomes in their stories. Seeing an increasingly more dismal possibility of success slowly over the course of a novel bores readers because it gives them consistent expectations.
If you find your scene mapping with several turns back to back in the same direction (i.e. -/--/---/--- or +/++/+++/++++), it’s a good indicator that you need to interweave either other scenes from your plot in different places or else a write a subplot to shake things up.
You should really only expect to see high-value scenes (---- or ++++) at the climax. Seeing such a large shift elsewhere will likely feel disingenuous to the stakes at that point in your story. So, it’s a good rule of thumb to expect the mapping to change directions every third scene at least.
Scene mapping and discovering better ways to turn scenes are something you will typically cover with a developmental editor during your editorial process, but this is part of the quantitative process that you can start yourself as well. The more headway you make on the finer details of self-editing your novel, the more an editor can focus their attentions on the more complex changes we all love to think about: character, themes, and reader experience.
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