Five Scenes That Make or Break Your Novel

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Bookflow, a 2023 NaNo sponsor, is a cloud-based writing tool that helps writers stay motivated and organized. Today, Bookflow shares five important scenes to consider when writing or editing your novel:

At Bookflow, we’re all about helping writers start writing and keep writing. What stops writers from writing? Overwhelm, fatigue, perfectionism, fear, life events—there are an infinite number of reasons why we take a pause and then, sometimes, fail to get started again. At Bookflow, we’re all about focusing on how to make writing feel doable, so that you can get in the flow and stay there…all the way to “The End”.

Promoting the positive energy of experiences like Camp NaNoWriMo is what we’re all about. After all, writing isn’t just something we do when we’re putting words on the page: it’s a way of life, a way of seeing the world through a creative lens. Bookflow makes it easy to capture and organize the thoughts that make up a novel’s raw material, and then turn that material into a finished draft.

Writers often get stuck in their plots or struggle to see the big picture behind their manuscript’s events. But the basic structure that underlies most stories in the Western tradition is actually fairly simple. (Simple, of course, does not necessarily mean easy!)

According to playwright David Mamet, plots have five foundational moments. Here, we explain what each of these moments means.

1. Once Upon a Time

We can’t understand why something changes if we never understand what things were like before that change. Consider what an ordinary day was like for your protagonist before their main conflict arrived. Were they happy? Dissatisfied? Frightened? Content?

2. And Then One Day

This is the moment that things change for your protagonist. And then one day…Gandalf handed me a magic ring. And then one day… I woke up and was a cockroach. And then one day… the prince invited everyone to a ball. Usually, this scene will appear at or near the start of your novel, and will set things in motion as your character makes a plan to get what they want.

3. And Just When Things Were Going So Well

This is a major reversal that happens approximately midway through your novel. After initial setbacks, your protagonist seems to be on the verge of success…only to fail in a way that seems catastrophic. This causes the character to contemplate giving up entirely. But after they deal with the emotional fallout of their failure, they reassess their actions and what they are willing to do to get what they want or need.

4. When All of A Sudden

The character’s new plan has worked, and they seem to be on the brink of success. But near the end, they face an enormous, final setback that looks as if it will end in disaster. However, the character’s earlier challenges have helped the character grow. They put everything on the line (emotionally or physically) in a final bid to achieve the outcome they want.

5. And They All Lived Happily Ever After

Sometimes they all live happily ever after (Cinderella). Sometimes they don’t (Macbeth). But there’s always a decisive moment in which the protagonist achieves their goal, fails in their goal, or a mixture of both. Either way, once the outcome is decided, your story is effectively over. Tie up any loose ends and write The End—you did it!

Bookflow is a comprehensive (but easy to use!) tool to help you build out characters and scenes that work and organize your writing into a successful novel. If you’d like a copy of our free outlining guide, click here!

Bookflow is the cloud-based writing tool that helps writers stay motivated and organized. Track streaks and goals, organize and re-order your manuscript, and find daily inspiration and writing prompts with the tool that gets you all the way to “The End”.  Camp NaNoWriMo writers get 30% off an annual subscription when you sign up with code NANOWRITER. Offer expires August 1, 2023.

Top photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash.