The "Scene/Sequel" Writing Approach

THIS WEEK I have been putting my story notes through a writing process originally referred to as the “SCENE / SEQUEL” approach. If you are a writer and are curious about new ways to approach story-making, I recommend just giving it a shot. The instructions are straightforward, the requirements are low.

But! Before you do, only take this into consideration: I find the Scene / Sequel approach is best used as a tool for analysis. It is a process or an approach, not a solution or formula. Use it to investigate the nooks and crannies of your story, not to grow new branches (or—yikes—proceed from start to finish). I'll explain why later.

Here is your introduction to the Scene / Sequel approach:

• I first heard about it in this writeup from Jim Butcher. In separate posts, he describes a “Scene” and he describes a “Sequel.” 
• More recently, I found this good critique. Read it as well. In general, I find advice is best when you know its strengths and weaknesses, when you hear out its proponents and detractors.

Now, since the terms “Scene” and “Sequel” sound too much like other useful writing terms, let’s throw them out. It is a shitty name. Others have recommended “Proactive/Reactive,” or “Heads / Tails.” I like the latter.

I picked up this approach to solve a problem. I had given the 500,000-word second draft of my novel—then called WITCH PROJECT—to trusted readers, and had received the following feedback:

• It is very long.
• It lacked emotional flavour.

I interpreted this feedback like so: it is okay for a book to be long if it doesn’t feel long. If it feels long, it’s because the story is lagging or sleepy or redundant or unclear. As for the emotional element, I knew there were emotions in the story. They drive a lot of our character’s choices. But perhaps I had left them to reader inference to too-great a degree. Maybe I needed to surface them better. I wasn’t articulating them well enough.

I wanted this book to be good. (Goal.) But people were telling me it “wasn’t there yet.” (Conflict.) I needed to get back to work. (Disaster.)

I felt daunted by the prospect of revising 500,000 words, but I was determined to make the book good. (Emotion.) I had spent too much time on it and I liked elements of it too much. I knew it was close. The right elements were there, but they were cluttered or buried. (Review, Reason.) If I just had a new way to look at it, I could probably re-focus the wandering parts of the story and reveal the more intimate, emotional aspect that had driven so much of the story, but which I did not put into words. (Anticipation.) So I chose to dig around and see if there was a method that would give me some support on my next stab at the book. (Choice.)

Knowing that, for some reason, writers use index cards to structure their stories, I searched for “index card story writing technique” or something like that. I probably followed a few links and ended up on Butcher’s Scene/Sequel writeups. I don’t remember exactly what about them spoke to me. Perhaps it was his talk about “cool” and “warm” books—I had a cool book on my hands and wanted it to be warmer. Maybe I liked that this approach felt easy to access. Regardless, I decided to try it.

With my entire story in mind, I went through and re-wrote it on a series of index cards, alternating scene and sequel, or heads and tails. I took all my story beats and re-mapped them as closely as possible to the heads/tails format. This was my approach to the cards:

HEADS

• POV Character: Madeline. (It’s always Madeline, because the book is written from a third-person limited POV, and it’s Madeline’s POV. Elements of the story depend on it. So the answer for this field is always Madeline.)
• GOAL: I figured out what Madeline wanted to achieve in this story beat. We always talk about what our protagonists “want.” This is where I reminded myself what that might be.
• CONFLICT: I wrote down the obstacle(s) in her way. Often, I have a hard time distinguishing this point from the next one, “Disaster.” 
• OUTCOME / SETBACK / DISASTER: Does Madeline achieve what she wanted? Butcher describes the three available options: “yes;” “no;” and “no, and furthermore…” He says never to let this answer be “yes.” As a diehard contrarian, I looked for good spots to get away with a “yes,” but it never made the story more interesting. 

TAILS

• EMOTIONAL REACTION: How does the setback make Madeline feel?
• REVIEW AND REASON: Madeline thinks about this setback. What happened? Why? What sort of shape is she in now? What has changed about other characters, or their relationship with her? This was often a good place to remind myself of the stakes. Stakes are important.
• ANTICIPATION: She reviews options. She looks into the future, thinks about the directions available to her and their outcomes.
• CHOICE: Madeline picks a new direction; she has a new goal. Here is where I reassert the character’s agency, and agency is important.

And then? I re-wrote the entire book. I had planned on simply revising it, but it was easier to start from scratch, copying things over where appropriate.

I found the heads/tails approach very helpful! I eliminated a few redundant chapters and had a much clearer image of the emotional elements. I had neglected to include much “anticipation” on my characters’ part, and introducing more of that made the story more digestible, I think. And I feel like the chapters found natural conclusions (usually either a disaster or Madeline making a choice) and clip along in a more natural fashion.

Heads/Tails was very beneficial to WITCH PROJECT. So I thought I’d give it a shot for DD4, only at an earlier point in the process; I developed my original outline into a storyline made out of Post-It note beats and details. Then, I jammed that story into the Heads/Tails grinder. What did I find?

It was more difficult using the Heads/Tails approach this early on in the writing process.

The biggest problem I had was that this approach—especially when executed on index cards—naturally encouraged me to think of the story in same-sized chunks. I felt like I was pouring my story into an ice-cube tray. I don’t want ice cubes, I want a more natural feel, like a shattered block of ice: there will be big chunks, small chunks, rough chunks, smooth chunks, slivers and nuggets and specks and mounds. I don’t want the story to tick like a metronome. I want it to keep a steady beat, sure, but I also want it to have melodic swells, and quiet passages, and frenetic parts. The Heads/Tails approach did not encourage that.

This approach initially did not seem suited to the opening sequence I currently like. In it, DD and her parents are aboard a ship, heading “home” to England, where she will celebrate her thirteenth birthday. She’s looking forward to learning to be an English Lady, which she assumes will involve a lot of proper swordsmanship and she’ll be taught how to ride the big horses. But there are fears of pirates on the water, and her father has his own secret reasons for wanting to be cautious. So he insists they seek safe harbour until they can join a larger sailing convoy.

It’s not hard to identify what DD wants (she wants to go to England, she wants to learn what she thinks being an English lady involves). We can identify some conflicts, too (she is mistaken about what being an English lady involves, and there are pirates, and her father would rather play things safe than hurry home). So perhaps her disaster is that dad demands they pause their voyage when a mysterious ship appears on the horizon (maybe it’s pirates). But then, what does she do in response to this disaster? From her POV, she has little agency.

Her father does have agency—he sees a potential pirate, he chooses to seek safe harbour. So what do I do with DD, who will be our POV character for most of the story?

This is what I like about this approach and what I dislike about this approach.

On the positive side, looking at the story this way forced me to come up with something different to do with DD. She can’t control the sailing of the ship, but she can gain agency in other ways. Perhaps she climbs to the crow’s nest, where she meets a midshipman who’s about the same age as her. She reveals her excitement about returning to England, she reveals her mistaken assumptions. Conflict: the midshipman knows otherwise re: being an English Lady, and reveals she’s mistaken. DD processes this new information, and weighs her options. Perhaps she chooses to ignore the midshipman. Perhaps she chooses to confront her parents about what she can expect at home. Either way, she has agency with regard to her goals while her father’s goals and choices are operating on her story in other ways.

On the downside, this sort of interconnected business (balancing DD's POV with her dad's) is hard to record in the Heads/Tails format.

This approach is also challenging when we get to a story beat like, “hey, DD is put in a dungeon (a disaster), and she is let out by a benevolent stranger (serendipity, which has no place in the Heads/Tails structure).” At first glance, it might be impossible to fit this turn of events into the Heads/Tails approach. Worse, it might encourage us to do some questionable writing: right now, my solution to that scene is to make DD choose to languish in the dungeon. She gives up on her other goals and makes her new goal to become one with the bricks and mortar of her enclosure. The disaster that interrupts that goal is that a benevolent stranger helps her escape. I dislike this because I’ve seen that sort of character choice in stories before, and it is lame. “Oh, woe is me, I will resign myself to my fate.” Bullshit. That’s only happening so that the structure-drunk writer can challenge your resignation.

On the other hand, perhaps I just need to think about the Heads/Tails structure differently. Perhaps DD accepts the stranger’s help and escapes, but is now indebted to someone she hates. Or perhaps in an earlier sequence, DD made a choice that earned this stranger’s admiration, without DD’s knowledge; DD’s earlier choice pays dividends. The stranger’s help is now less serendipitous. DD’s earlier agency caused it to happen.

It can be difficult to shape certain story turns to fit the requirements of the Head/Tails approach. But that’s also it’s strength: in the process of shaping the story to fit into its requirements, it’s possible to generate creative new solutions or approaches to the story. And so I recommend it as a tool for analyzing a story, rather than blocks with which to build one. Using it as a tool, you might be required to think of your story in new ways. Using it as building blocks, I worry will lead to a story that’s too “even” in its construction, too repetitive in its movements.

Some assorted notes and thoughts on the Heads/Tails approach:

• It’s good for helping me remember to include things audiences need, like review and anticipation. However, too much open-ended verbalization of review and/or anticipation is—I think—what leads us to the Dan Brown effect, where we already know exactly what will happen (Dan will get the puzzle box open) but pages and pages of words are wasted on the way there (the puzzle box is from such-and-such place, and the code is arranged in this way, and if I do this it’ll blah blah blah and if I do that it’ll blah blah blah). THE DAVINCI CODE is the book that taught me it was okay to quit a book.
• Related to above, regarding explicit review and anticipation: it’s good for our characters to think out loud, visualize, show what bad things will happen if they don’t achieve their goals. Gives the readers something to fear, and makes the STAKES explicit.
• The Heads/Tails approach does have a “natural” feel to it, like Butcher describes, and it generates natural suspense and connection between scenes, but you have to work hard to obscure the formula, or else the patterns are too easy to spot.
• I like how it encourages the writer to fill in necessary blanks, addressing perhaps unconsidered aspects, whether or not you want to make those aspects explicit to the reader or not. It’s a good “research” tool in this way, in the Stephen King sense (in ON WRITING, king refers to research not just as taking in outside material, but doing your own development. Maybe you might call this “world building” or “design” or “brainstorming.”)
• Bad for denouements (I like LORD OF THE RINGS’ eleven endings, sorry-not-sorry).
• I often don’t know how to fill in the “Conflict” entry, because it seems redundant to “disaster.”
• This approach creates scenes that don’t “nest” well. It can be difficult to track ongoing, overarching goals and conflicts.
• Naturally prohibits spontaneous or serendipitous things from happening. This can be good. I remember a Pixar story team idea that coincidence or spontaneity should only ever be used to make things worse for your characters. And deus ex machina is right out. UNLESS it’s funny. If a story beat makes you laugh in a genuine way, I believe that beats all principles.
• This method seems to encourage simplicity—it’s hard to include a lot of colourful detail, texture, and character in those little Heads/Tails fields—but I guess that’s the job for later. That’s where the “writing” part comes in.

I like the Heads/Tails approach for all the reasons Butcher explains in his posts. It has a lot to recommend it, as long as we don't lean too heavily on it.