THE QUESTION IN YOUR SCENES

Every work of fiction has a story question that summerizes the plot. In your stories someone is looking for clues, hunting for someone missing, looking for love, or finding a long-lost relative, for example.

The main character tries to reach a story goal with shorter goals found in scenes. Each scene should build on these questions--meeting each other, obstacles thrown in, love scenes--in a romance all of these scenes build on the question, "Will the guy get the girl or vice versa?" In a mystery, the scenes take on a different feel, but the goal is the same--and they each contain a question.

Scene questions can be answered in three ways. If you say YES all the time, you'll have a happy character but no conflict. Yes answers should only be in the last scenes.

If the answer is NO, the character has to try something else, a new direction, to reach his/her goal at the end of the story.

YES, BUT provides a twist. Maybe a character can get what she/he wants, but with strings attached. Yes, she can have the guy but has to give up her career. Or, yes, he has to leave his beloved ranch behind to take a job to save it. Or the cop attempts to push aside his growing attraction for a suspect because he can't get involved. They each have to choose between things that will make life difficult for a little while before things get better. Or maybe each one has to make a moral choice. Either way, they will face a great source of conflict.

Conflict makes the best scenes. And those scenes create the most rewarding story, one that will draw your readers in, keep them turning those pages and, hopefully, make your work a smash hit--one that will catch the eye of a traditional publisher.

Well, I can dream, can't I?