How to Craft a Scene: Scene & Sequel

You can’t write a great story without writing great scenes. Like the larger plot, scenes have their own structure and beats that must be hit in order to deliver the emotional payoffs and rising tension and stakes that make your reader want to keep turning the pages.

Just as there are many ways to tackle story structure, there are also multiple ways to look at scene structure. Today, we’ll examine a popular method of dissecting scenes known as Scene and Sequel.

What Is a Scene?

Defining scene is an oddly challenging task. In writing, we tend to think of scenes as the chunks of text that exist between scene breaks. But often, scene breaks—especially chapter breaks—occur in the middle of the action, which would indicate they can happen in the middle of scenes.

So, maybe scenes are defined by movement. Once the setting changes, the scene ends, right? But what if your characters are moving through multiple settings as the scene begins? Then what defines the end of that scene?

The fact is there are multiple ways to define “scene” in the general sense. What we are going to look at today is “Scene” with a capital “S.” And it’s accomplice “Sequel.”

The Scene and Sequel Method

Scene and Sequel is one way of looking at scene structure to ensure every chunk of text you write contains all the pieces it needs to be engaging. The “Scene” is the action part and the “Sequel” is the reaction part that follows.

Scenes and Sequels have their own beats that must be included to satisfy reader expectations. These beats also serve to ensure emotional and plot stakes continue to escalate throughout each chapter and throughout the book as a whole.

Scene Beats

Every Scene in your book should include three distinct beats: Goal, Conflict, and Disaster.

Goal

What defines the beginning of a capital “S” Scene is the development of a specific Goal. This Goal needs to be actionable, meaning your character can act to attain it. (Happiness—not an actionable goal. Get the job that will make him happy—actionable goal.)

Scene Goals are different from story goals. They tend to be smaller and more attainable, though they often act as increments that lead the character to their story goal in the end.

Examples of good Scene Goals:

• Break into the museum
• Talk to the pretty girl
• Finish the homework assignment
• Make it to the city alive

Examples of Scene Goals that don’t work:

• Defeat the bad guy (too lofty—break this down into actionable steps to create Scenes)
• Find happiness (not actionable—what specifically do they need to do to be happy?)

In addition to being actionable and attainable, Scene Goals should come with increasingly higher stakes the deeper into the story you get. Getting a cup of coffee is a fine Scene goal for page one, but it would not work well in chapter 23.

Conflict

The Conflict of the Scene is the thing that stands between your character and their Goal. This is the beat that creates tension, both on a plot and an emotional level.

If your character doesn’t achieve their Goal, it complicates the plot. The Conflict also naturally creates a pivot point that changes the emotional tone of the Scene. Your character is excited about their Goal, but that excitement turns to fear when they realize something is standing in their way. Or maybe they enter the Scene feeling ennui about they’re chances of success and the Conflict forces them into passionate action.

Examples of good Conflicts:

• The MC tries to break into the museum only to find it’s hosting a police banquet.
• The MC tries to talk to the pretty girl only to realize she’s talking to her boyfriend.
• The MC tries to finish the homework assignment but gets interrupted by an earthquake.
• The MC tries to make it to the city alive but gets kidnapped just as the buildings come into view.

At the beginning of your book, the Conflicts might be relatively small, but they should still force your character to change their approach while causing an emotional pivot. As the story goes on, the Conflicts should get bigger and harder to overcome.

Disaster

The Disaster is the outcome of the Conflict. Did your character overcome and achieve their Goal anyway? Or did they fail to achieve their Goal?

As you can guess by the name of this beat, not achieving the goal is the preferred outcome. Why? Because the more things go wrong, the more your character must act, which makes for an engaging story. The more often you can make your character fail, the better.

Regardless of if they fail to achieve their Goal or not, the Disaster must drive the character into the Sequel, which will then drive them into the next Scene.

So how do you do this? If your character fails to overcome the Conflict and therefore doesn’t achieve their Goal, then things need to get worse for them. We call this a “No, And” outcome, meaning NO they didn’t achieve their Goal AND now things are worse because of XYZ.

Examples of “No, And” outcomes:

• The MC tries to break into the museum only to find it’s hosting a police banquet AND now she is stuck in a closet surrounded by cops.
• The MC tries to talk to the pretty girl only to realize she’s talking to her boyfriend AND that boyfriend is his bully.
• The MC tries to finish the homework assignment but gets interrupted by an earthquake AND she falls into a crevice that opens in the earth.
• The MC tries to make it to the city alive but gets kidnapped just as the buildings come into view AND he gets taken to a secret location far from the city.

Of course, sometimes your character will achieve their Goal despite the Conflict. When this happens, something they do while attaining their Goal needs to cause another problem that must then be solved. We call this a “Yes, But” outcome.

Examples of “Yes, But” outcomes:

• The MC dresses as a cop to break into the museum BUT is seen by her new boyfriend who is catering the event.
• The MC humiliates the pretty girl’s boyfriend and gains her attention BUT alienates his best friend in the process.
• The MC finishes the homework assignment by hiding in her stepdad’s bomb shelter during the earthquake BUT accidentally locks herself inside.
• The MC escapes the kidnappers and reaches the city BUT is bleeding out from a gunshot wound.

As you can see, whether your character achieves their goal or not, the scene should still end in disaster, in one degree or another.

Sequel Beats

The sequel is the bridge that connects one Scene to the next. This reactionary phase includes three beats: Reaction, Dilemma, and Decision.

Reaction

This beat serves as a moment for your character to catch their breath and reflect on what just happened. It may be extended over a couple of pages if the disaster was large or it may be just a single sentence if the disaster was less weighty or if there is simply no time to reflect.

The Reaction beat is an important factor for controlling the pacing of your story. Scenes are often fast-paced because your character is acting to get things done. This beat allows you to slow the pace if needed to give both your character and your reader a moment to reflect on the stakes associated with what just went wrong.

Here are some examples of how to handle the Reaction beat following different Scenes:

• The MC tries to break into the museum only to find it’s hosting a police banquet and now she is stuck in a closet surrounded by cops. She uses the moment of isolation to reflect on how meeting her absent father has led her to a life of crime.
• The MC tries to talk to the pretty girl only to realize she’s talking to her boyfriend AND that boyfriend is his bully. He feels a flash of fear.
• The MC finishes the homework assignment by hiding in her stepdad’s bomb shelter during the earthquake BUT accidentally locks herself inside. She freezes with panic and spends pages spiraling on how this is all her crazy stepdad’s fault.
• The MC escapes the kidnappers and reaches the city BUT is bleeding out from a gunshot wound. He stares at the blood on his hands and remembers the daughter he must get home to.

Dilemma

The Dilemma is the new decision your character must make in light of all that went wrong in the Scene.

Great Dilemmas offer only less-than-desirable paths forward for your character. That is, there should be no easy choice.

Like the Reaction, the Dilemma may take up a lot of space on the page or it may be over rather quickly. This depends on what choices they have to consider and what you need to accomplish in terms of pacing.

Here are some examples of Dilemma beats:

• The MC tries to break into the museum only to find it’s hosting a police banquet and now she is stuck in a closet surrounded by cops. She uses the moment of isolation to reflect on how meeting her absent father has led her to a life of crime. She can either break out of the closet and risk being caught or wait for the banquet to end and miss her daughter’s play.
• The MC tries to talk to the pretty girl only to realize she’s talking to her boyfriend AND that boyfriend is his bully. He feels a flash of fear. He can either forget the love of his life or face his bully.
• The MC finishes the homework assignment by hiding in her stepdad’s bomb shelter during the earthquake BUT accidentally locks herself inside. She freezes with panic and spends pages spiraling on how this is all her crazy stepdad’s fault. She can either try to break down the door and risk her stepdad’s wrath or call her ex-boyfriend who knows the door code.
• The MC escapes the kidnappers and reaches the city BUT is bleeding out from a gunshot wound. He stares at the blood on his hands and remembers the daughter he must get home to. He can go to the hospital and risk being detained or seek help from the mob boss doctor he betrayed.

Decision

This is the moment your character makes their choice. Which of the two impossible options do they choose?

This beat doesn’t typically take up much space on the page, but it should be clear why they choose this path over the others. Much of this deliberating will be done during the Dilemma beat, so your only obligation here is to make it clear what they will do next.

And what they will do next, of course, becomes the Goal for the Scene that follows.

As you can see, the use of Scene and Sequel helps stitch your story together so each Goal feeds into the next. This gives the entire plot the feeling of dominoes falling over. Each Goal and Conflict leads to a Decision that leads to a more important Goal with a bigger Conflict. Most importantly, this approach ensures the plot is driven by your character’s actions and choices rather than by outside or unrelated forces.

A Note on Beat Order

All the above beats need to occur in order. However, each Scene or Sequel may be broken up by other Scenes or Sequels that interrupt the beats. This is very often the case in multi-POV or multi-timeline stories when the action experienced by one person (or timeline) is interrupted by a chapter break that transports the reader to another character (or timeline).

In terms of conventional scene (a chunk of text separated by scene breaks) vs. Scene, know that the two aren’t the same. You may have multiple Scenes and Sequels in a continuous chunk of text. You may also have instances where a Scene extends over multiple scenes or chapter breaks. The key to good pacing is to vary the length of your Scenes and Sequels throughout your story.

The one exception to the rule that these beats need to occur in order is the first Scene of your book. Often, opening in the action requires you to open in the middle of a Scene (usually in the Conflict). But even when this is the case, creative exposition should be used to help catch your readers up on the beats they missed. What you want to avoid is opening a book before the Scene starts (before they have a Goal) or in the middle of a Sequel (when the reader will have trouble grasping the stakes).