From Tabletop to Paperback – Stealing Scenes

So I accidentally lied a little bit. I said I wasn't going to do anymore From Tabletop to Paperback stuff, but I was told from a couple of different corners that I could expand my thoughts on scenes a bit. Since scenes are the fundamental building blocks of the story, that made sense to me. It also works out because of how much a couple of new-school tabletop RPGs helped me understand the concept of framing scenes around scene questions.

Once again, I'm going to suggest playing both Dogs in the Vineyard and the Smallville RPG if you want help with framing scenes. I'll be using them as examples in this post often.

Setting the Stakes

Dogs in the Vineyard was the first game that told me to consciously set the stakes of any given scene. I'd been doing it instinctively for years (which is to say, sometimes amazingly and sometimes amazingly badly), but always as a natural consequence of having to tell a story. If nothing else, "will they or won't they get their faces eaten off" worked as a default stake.

But Dogs told me to set the stakes on purpose, with specificity, to get everyone at the table to agree on them, then, and only then, roll the dice so you can play to discover the outcome. That's pretty fantastic advice for a writer also with only a little shifting of the language. Set the stakes of the scene, make sure you know what outcome each character in the scene wants, then write the scene.

The Smallville RPG has you set the scene the same way but then you have to justify which Value and Relationship you roll in that scene based on the stakes. If Clark is trying to convince Lois he loves her, then he can use his Lois d10 I think Lois is the One. If Clark is trying to convince Lex he loves him, his d12 I can never trust Lex is harder to justify. Playing Smallville can be a real help to you as a mental tool if you find it difficult to define your written character's motivations in any given scene.

(Failing to) Write Toward An Outcome

Usually as a writer, you know how the scene is going to come out and you write towards that outcome. That's obviously different than the game where you're playing to discover outcomes. But everything up until the moment of rolling dice is great advice.

I say "usually" because there's a danger mixed in there. You might hear writers say "my characters took over." I don't really put a lot of stock in that statement because what it usually means is "I didn't plan my book very well." Sometimes, and this one has happened to me, you discover that one of the characters wants a different outcome than you originally intended or one of the set outcomes much more passionately than you thought. That's exciting stuff, there, and making sure you know what each scene is about helps you tell which is a lack of planning and which is exciting, grown-up writer stuff.

How The Stakes Get Set

This is actually a lot easier than you think. Remember that Story Question that you came up with before you even started prewriting? The one whose answer drives the entire narrative to some kind of resolution? Setting the stakes is just doing the same thing you did for your Story with the Story Question for the Scene with a Scene Question. What question for this scene will drive the narrative for this scene toward some kind of resolution for this scene.

Easy, right? Well, easier than setting a Story Question, anyway. And if you can't do that, you need to take a step back from individual scenes anyway.

Breaking Down The Scene

To make it easy, here are the steps to building a scene.

What is the Scene Question? Does it pit the Antagonist directly against the Protagonist?
Which character is the Antagonist? Which character is the Protagonist?
What outcome does the Antagonist desire from the scene? What outcome does the Protagonist desire from the scene? Be specific!
Figure out what setback the Protagonist will suffer during this scene. In other words, how will the Scene Question be answered "No" or "Yes, but..."?
Write the scene.

That's it! Obviously there are a lot of sub-steps in between each of those, but they're typically figured out through your prewriting. You know the Scene Question because you're driving to a Story Question. You know what outcome each character would want because you've fleshed them all out ahead of time. You know who needs to achieve what because you've mapped out the scene