How to Structure a Fantasy Scene (6 Steps)

are you struggling to structure the scenes in your fantasy novel you're not alone when I work with writers I see a lot of them grapple with the difficulties of scene structure which is a big issue because it's so fundamental to telling a great story but through my experience as an author I found that there is a simple six-step process you can use to consistently write great scenes in your fantasy book and once you understand how all six pieces of this structure work together you'll be able to effortlessly write great scenes that develop your characters progress your plot and make readers fall in love with your story and you'll also start to see this six-part structure absolutely everywhere because so many accomplished fantasy authors know the power of using this system in their own books and the first step is to Define your character's goal defining the goal is very simple you simply write down what does your character want maybe your character is questing for a particular item perhaps they are searching for a particular person maybe they want to feel a specific emotion or they actually want a particular response from another character perhaps they are expressing their love to this other character and they're hoping this other character reciprocates in kind perhaps your character is wanting to stop someone from doing something or or maybe the character wants to make someone else do something instead perhaps they're trying to manipulate them into taking a certain action your character's goal might be to find safety or your character might be attempting to resolve a question so there's lots of different options for your goal in your scene but how do we make sure you're actually picking a good goal for your character to pursue there's a few fundamental principles that I found important for this first of all it's really important that your main character's goal relates to the central premise and the conflict of your story to do that you should be making sure that your goal is relating to your character's Arc in some way it's forming a particular step within the character's Arc for the character to go through and by doing this you create a strong natural sense of progression from scene to scene really when you're writing the scenes in your book you want to create the sense that each scene each moment in your story is naturally and organically leading into the next and you also want to make sure that something significant Has Changed by the end of your scene so if you find in your story that you're failing in those two categories that is it doesn't feel like things are changing in this scene and it also doesn't feel like this is part of the natural chain of cause an effect without the story and I could cut it out without the story really being affected then that's a really good sign that you should cut this scene you also want to avoid repeating the same type of goal too many times in a row so for example if you have a murder mystery story where your character is interviewing different suspects the goal of the first interrogation scene will be I'm going to interrogate this person to see what they know about the murder if your next scene is them interrogating someone else and they got the exact same goal and then the scene after that is them interrogating someone else and they have the exact same goal it might feel a bit repetitive because you're using the exact same scene format for your story however if you change things up a little bit and the first suspect gets interrogated in a police station but then the second suspect is on the run and the detectives actually have to find that suspect first before they can interrogate them then the goal is subtly different and there's a bit of variation in the scene format there which keeps things exciting and it keeps the reader feeling like there's been progression and evolution in the plot now let's show a practical example of how you actually Define a goal from a scene and to do this we'll be looking at Harry Potter and the philosopher stone specifically we're going to be looking at chapter 16 titled through the trapo now in this chapter Harry Ron and amione realized that Snape in their minds is going to go through the trapo into the secret Chambers beneath Hogwarts where they believe the philosopher stone is kept and they think Snape is doing this so that he can get the stone and use it to bring Voldemort back to life and give him immortality now as we go through this example I'm going to be using my scene structure template I've built for myself in notion I'll be linking to this template in the description down below if you want to use it in your own stories and your own writing as well okay so we're here in our scene mapping template in notion which is basically a really easy way to structure your scenes and kind of lay out every scene in your story you can see we've got our different scenes from this story here let's say we want to go ahead and add a new scene for the through the trapdoor sequence so going to call this through the trap door uh point of view for this Harry Potter scene number 16 and in this template things start as an idea basically the idea behind this is you just dump everything into this idea section here then once you like a scene and you think you're going to include it in your actual story go over here click it into outline and it will automatically appear in this section here and basically the idea here is that you can create a good separation between things that you know you want to include in the plot and things that you're just kind of messing around at the idea stage but that's not really important for now so through the trapo let's take a look at this scene here basically our summary for this scene here is that Harry goes into the chambers underneath Hogwarts to prevent Snape from getting the philosop stone and then we come into our scene structure template down here so I just click this and you'll see this basically loads in all the different components of the scene here so you can write a little bit about what the scene is doing at an overall structure here and then we come into the first piece here which is the goal what does your character want so in this scene here the goal is pretty simple Harry wants to get the philosopher stone before Voldemort does so the goal of the scene is very simple Harry wants to get the philosopher stone before Voldemort does so that he can prevent Voldemort from coming back to life and that's really all you need to write down for the goal in your scene keep things simple let yourself know what your character is searching for here and then move on to step number two of scene structure conflict what is stopping your character from getting what they want Perhaps it is a battle with an opponent or a struggle against a system maybe they're facing some kind of inner conflict withs perhaps they are racing against a certain limitation or barrier perhaps the character is fighting against an environment maybe your character's little fishing Village is about to get Swept Away by a tsunami and they have to figure out how to use their magic to stop this your character could also be clashing with a belief competing for a particular Prize or facing them M themselves being confronted by an unfamiliar and strange Force now there's a very common mistake that I see writers make with the conflict portion of their scene and it is creating false conflict or false tension so false conflict occurs when you create a complication you create conflict that actually has nothing to do with the central spine of your story for example let's say that you're writing a fantasy story about a young girl who is mastering the art of dancing and in this particular World dancing is the way that you attract the notice and attention of the Gods and if you dance well enough for them they Grant you wishes they Grant you Booms that you can then use to do different things in the world so you can probably imagine that a lot of these scenes in the story are about this young girl training about practicing her dance routine maybe having rivals or other dancers out there who are trying to distract her from her own progression but if you just randomly insert a scene where a long lost relative suddenly bequeaths a mansion to your main dancer character girl and now the main character has to deal with these lawyers who are trying to take it off her hands and she gets embroiled in this annoying legal battle it's not really going to feel that satisfying to your reader and that's because it's completely and utterly irrelevant to your plot it has nothing to do with the central spine of her learning how to use her dancing abilities to attract the attention of the Gods it doesn't serve to illuminate her character in the context of the primary struggle of the story and it certainly doesn't develop the story's ideas about ambition and personal growth and how you receive attention from others in the world so be really selective when choosing your conflict and make sure it aligns with the premise and the central ideas of your narrative so in our scene from Harry Potter the conflict here is that Harry Ron and herione face various obstacles in the chambers beneath Hogwarts including a giant chess board with living pieces where Ron has to sacrifice himself so that Harry and herione can get past going back to our scene structure template here in notion the conflict for this scene is that Harry Ron and herion face magical obstacles while trying to reach the stone including a giant just game where Ron sacrifices himself also if you download this template you can toggle these little features here to basically see possible conflict ideas and see possible goal ideas and other little bits and pieces throughout your story as well which can be useful for helping you generate ideas and develop your outline and this leads into the third piece of structuring your scene which is the disaster so the disaster is where something goes wrong perhaps your character is betrayed by an ally maybe they lose lose a particular resource perhaps a new threat appears maybe there's some kind of environmental catastrophe that absolutely wrecks things there might be some kind of personal loss that occurs maybe the plan that your characters had initially fails your character might become entrapped or confined in a certain location maybe there's a secret that gets revealed and it totally changes the order of things so right now you're probably wondering Jed why is the disaster so important and I'd say it's very simple it's because stories where things always go right for your main character are boring to read it's only in moments of adversity and challenge that really force a character to grow and it's only in those moments of difficulty that we truly come to understand who a person is at their core the greater the adversity the greater the depth of true character that is revealed now this doesn't always mean that you have to write a 10 out of 10 disaster I think the term disaster makes people think that you always need to create the most dramatic thing possible that's not the case at all sometimes it can just be something really simple maybe your main character is trying to invite a friend out to a particular event and that friend is busy that could be enough of a disaster it's not a 10 out of 10 bad thing it's maybe a two out of 10 or a three out of 10 thing depending on the occasion and the relationship and in fact you actually want to be modulating the intensity of your disasters if you just have five world shaking catastrophic bad things happen in a row it runs the risk of boring your Reader through repetition 10 explosions in a row feels tiring but stories that have some Quiet Moments then moments of big action and then some moments of sort of medium difficulty in between that modulation in tension and that modulation in disaster creates Intrigue it creates a great sense of Rhythm and you feel much more pulled into those stories now another key consideration with your disaster is that if you want to create a cliffhanger ending in your chapter right after the disaster is the perfect point to end your chapter and that's because the disaster raises a bunch of questions within the reader's mind mostly how is the character going to respond to this how are they going to deal with this thing that has just gone wrong in fact this is something that I always keep in mind when I'm writing in particular the first five chapters of my fantasy novels so for example when I was writing across the broken Stars my space fantasy story about a fugitive and a cowardly War deserter trying to find a mythical Safe Haven in this world where people live on cities that float in space I intentionally set out so that the first five or six chapters in this novel all ended right after the disaster portion of my scene structure and the goal here is to make sure that readers get kind of hooked into the story that you don't give them the ability to put the story down in those first couple of chapters and then when you eventually give them a bit of a reprieve and you give them a sense of closure after they've gotten through that initial Rush hopefully by that stage they've grown attached enough to the characters and the story that they just want to keep continuing and of course it's important here that you don't end every single chapter right after the disaster particularly if you're writing a big Epic Fantasy novel that's going to get really exhausting for readers real quick you do actually want some moments where the reader feels like they have completed a sequence in your story and they can go and sleep and eat or do whatever else they have to do in their life and there's actually another part of scene structure where you can insert a chapter break to make sure this happens which we'll get to later in this video so going back to our Harry Potter example the design F in the through the trapdoor sequence happens when Harry gets to the final room where the philosopher stone is kept and he thinks this is where he's going to uncover Snape attempting to steal the stone for Voldemort but he doesn't find Snape there instead he finds quirrel and it's revealed that quirrel is the one who's been trying to steal the philosopher stone all this time so next we have our disaster and here Harry reaches the final chamber alone and finds that it's actually not Snape who's been trying to steal the philosopher stone but rather it is Professor quirrel who is working for Voldemort and he's trying to find the stone to make Voldemort Immortal okay great so we've got the first three pieces out of our six scene structure components here we've got our goal we've got our conflict and we've got our disaster now these first three pieces form the action half of a scene the next three steps I'm about to explain with you form the response half of the scene and they're just as important and many writers neglect these also I should mention that if you would like my personal help to develop the scenes in your fantasy novel then you should apply for the next cohort of my fantasy outlining boot camp after over a decade of writing and having published four books and a video game I can tell you right now outlining is the most valuable skill I've learned in that entire process and in this 7we program you'll work with myself and a small group of other fantasy writers to develop the outline of your story and along the way you'll learn how to effectively structure your plot develop your character's Arc build interesting World interesting settings and bring it all together into a cohesive hole so that you can then write your story with confidence we recently finished the first cohort of the boot camp and here is what one of the students said hello my name is Josiah vber and I recently finished jet hearn's outlining boot camp and it's hard to express how valuable this experience has been for me jet has been wonderful to learn from insightful and encouraging he's given us great ideas for outlining like learning the seven-point plot structure which has been perfect for my story it's also given us good practices and methods for brainstorming and how to take ideas and a few Concepts and really turn it into a story how to take theme setting plot and characters and weave them together I highly recommend taking this course and I hope you get as much valuable out of it as I have this program for me has been completely gamechanging and now we get to step four in our six-part scene structure that is the reaction so something just went wrong for your protagonist how does that make them feel that's what the reaction phase is all about the character's emotional response to the disaster that just occurred maybe your character feels shock or grief or anger or fear determination doubt despair relief or perhaps acceptance and this is the step that really creates emotional bonding between your reader and your characters so it's very important that you do this right what you're doing here with the reaction component is you're bringing us into the internal emotional life and emotional experience of your character by showing the vulnerability of your characters and really just bringing the reader in to their internal emotional life and their emotional experience you create a tremendous sense of sympathy and connection and bonding with them this is where readers begin to identify with your characters because your readers have always had things that go wrong in their life as well and so seeing a character go through the same process creates a tremendous sense of connection and identification with them and another key thing to realize here is that the reaction phase along with every single part of this six-part structure I'm sharing with you here it is flexible in length your reaction could be as short as one sentence or even a couple of words or the reaction might span the course of several chapters or you know even a whole part in your story if it's a major sequence of emotional Fallout that a character might have from another character's death or from some major world shaking event all the pieces of scene structure that I'm sharing with you here are fractal in nature basically what I mean by fractal is that if you zoom in and you zoom out it looks the same kind of like if you have a look at coastlines from Google Maps or something it looks kind of the same pattern if you're looking at a coastline on a close scale or if you're looking at a coastline on a large scale story structure is a bit like that once you understand this sort of six-part framework you'll see it repeat at every individual unit of a story you might even look at a chapter like the Harry Potter chapter we're going through and you might think to yourself that it actually has this kind of action and reaction scene structure repeated Maybe five or six times throughout it with every minor obstacle that Harry and Haron and amione encounter or you might be looking at the overall scope of things and just saying that's one action reaction component So speaking of our Harry Potter example here the reaction phase of this scene where Harry realizes that it's quirl not Snape is that he is shocked this wasn't what he expected at all and it's made him totally re-evaluate his assumptions about Snape and quirrel so for Harry's reaction when he finds that it's quirrel and not Snape he is really shocked and scared but he stands his ground and he basically kind of wraps his head around the fact that it's actually querel that's been behind all the bad goings on and that Snape has been a red herring this whole time and this leads into the fifth step of our scene structure here which is the Dilemma a disaster has just occurred for your character they've reacted to it in an emotional way and now they're presented with a choice and this is really pivotal because again true character is revealed in the choices a person makes Under Pressure the greater the pressure you apply to them the greater the depth of true character that is revealed so in this dilemma portion your character might be forced to sacrifice for a greater good maybe they're choosing between two desires and bonus points here if both of these outcomes seem equally bad maybe they're facing some kind of moral quandry perhaps they're having to decide between revenge or forgiveness perhaps they're deciding whether to abandon their plan or continue with it maybe they're trying to evaluate whether they should prioritize an individual's need or the collective good and of course there's many other decisions you can create for your characters to struggle with in Harry Potter and the philosopher stone Harry is basically presented with The Dilemma of how to stop quirrel from getting the Stone from the mirror of ariser because he knows that once quirrel gets the Stone Voldemort will have the ability to achieve immortality so the Dilemma Harry faces is how can he prevent quirrel from getting the stone and also equally importantly how can Harry survive this encounter and this brings us to the sixth and final step in structuring your scene which is the decision here your character picks a new goal to pursue and decide actually comes from the Latin word deid I hope I'm pronouncing that right I really have no idea how to pronounce Latin but it basically is a combination of two words the first word is D which means off and the second word is cadere which means cut so cut off when you decide you are cutting off a possibility so that you can pursue a different possibility in other words cutting off something means you're making a decision so to decide literally means to cut off everything but that which is important so when your character makes a decision they are literally cutting off part of their identity so they can assume a new identity or so they can take a new course of action and this process of cut ing off through the decisions a character makes is what creates a sense of a character evolving and changing and progressing throughout the course of your narrative so in this phase of your scene your character might decide to undertake a mission or form a partnership maybe they will decide to reveal a truth or tell a lie instead maybe they'll change the course of Direction with the plan that they're taking perhaps they have to accept reality as their decision or maybe they need to confront someone adopt a new role or challenge fate now earlier on this video I mentioned how ending your chapter at different points in this scene structure will create a different kind of feeling for readers and is very pivotal for controlling the pacing and tension in your story if you decide to end a chapter after the decision phase here it creates a sense of completeness to the chapter because you've gone through this whole cycle and this whole Loop of action and reaction readers will kind of feel like they have gone on a bit of a journey and so it's often a good way to cut your chapters off after the decision to create a sense of arrest but also to set readers up with the knowledge that a character is about to embark on a new plan at the start of the next chapter this is very typical before the climactic sequence of most novels as we approach the climax in most novels they usually end with the main character making a decision to engage directly against the antagonist for instance they might decide to finally duel this antagonist tomorrow and then we'll have our chapter break and then the next chapter begins that dueling sequence or Begins the climactic sequence and usually each chapter from that point onwards will always end right after the disaster which creates this kind of avalanche sensation of propelling The Reader through the story not giving them any moments to rest because you're constantly hitting them with cliff for the last 10 to 20% of your novel so that they really feel a tremendous sense of tension and engagement in the climax sequence of your book now there's one very important thing to understand with scene structure before this video finishes and it is that this process I've shared with you of action and reaction which is divided up into goal conflict disaster reaction dilemma and decision is actually circular in nature once you've gone through all of those six steps and the character has made their decision at the end that then Loops into a new goal the decision gives your character a new goal to and so your story is really made up of a sequence of these looping scene structures all throughout the course of your narrative and this Loop repeats over and over again so to close out our Harry Potter example the decision Harry makes is to directly engage with quirrel and he decides to do whatever it takes to stop him and stop Baltimore getting the stone even though he thinks this may cost him his life so in now seen here Harry decides to fight querel even at the risk of dying and he's willing to sacrifice himself if it stops Voldemort from coming back to life and once again this whole template here uh including the sort of section before where you can map out all your different scenes like this there's a link in the description if you want to download it and use it in your own writing now having great scene structure is just one part of the plotting puzzle but you also need to make sure you're avoiding the common plot mistakes that I see new fantasy Riders make all the time so if you want to learn more about how to avoid these nine rookie mistakes I've identified then go ahead and watch this video over [Music] here

Channel: Jed Herne

Views: 27,982

Keywords: writing, writing advice, writing craft, story, fantasy, author, jed herne, authortube, booktube, wizards warriors words, self-publish, indie, publishing

Id: 3XxhIGd5R4o

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2024