Hi Paul,

You’re right that the scene goal might not emerge during the opening sentences, in a few circumstances. These are examples of opening hooks designed to pull readers into the scene via active curiosity.

In these situations, readers expect that the scene will continue by showing them what that bright light is and why the character is putting on scuba gear. Until then, the story is effectively on pause, waiting for the characters to wake up, gear up, and get back into story-related action. Sleeping, waking up, and putting on gear don’t actually move the story forward—they set up the story, but they’re not the story itself. Readers want to see what happens (action) and why (scene goal).

This sort of opening can create a tantalizing point of curiosity now and then, but don’t dwell too long in the interstitial space. Readers are waiting for the story to begin again.

Another case might be where you want to start a scene with suspense. You may have a protagonist doing something that the reader won’t immediately understand, but stands out as such odd behavior that it will activate intense curiosity in the reader. A mountain climber putting on scuba gear, perhaps?

Thanks for reading! If you have more questions about scenes, do let me know here (or chase me down on social media), so I can tackle them in future articles.

Nothing like tangible strategies to rev up your revision process, right? Thanks for taking the time to let me know it was helpful!

An excellent and clear post. I will now apply this to the scenes in my current WIP. Thank you.

You nailed it: It doesn’t matter whether you apply form and structure before, during, or after the foundation draft, but it does need to get applied at some point!

I’m so glad it helped, Carol. I suspect this info will really come into its own during revision—a true revision strategy at the scene level. Good luck and good writing (and happy holidays, too!).

A funny thing I’ve learned since I first started studying the writing process, is that there are ways to Learn to Write – or at least Learn to Improve at it. In the beginning, I rejected a lot of advice and formulae. I was a Pantser, a natural stream-of-consciousness writer who could create and develop characters and dialogue almost without thinking. I couldn’t see any purpose in the step-by-step processes other writers seemed to enthuse over. Then I began seriously editing…
Almost all the advice I’d previously rejected as unnecessary has turned out to be VERY applicable when I edit. I’m still a Pantser when I begin, but when it’s time to edit, I check everything against those structures: the beats, the outlines, the character arcs and all the concise component lists – like this one – to make my books even better.