Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)

by Lisa Cron

Here’s the secret: although your blueprint (not to mention your novel itself) will be made up of individual scenes, in truth those scenes are not individual at all, but part of this escalating cause-and-effect trajectory. Each scene will be triggered by the one that came before it and will trigger the one that follows. That’s why even though you’ll work on each scene and each plot point separately, you must always be keenly aware of the part it plays in the overall trajectory. Otherwise even the most brilliantly executed scene will not only stop your story in its tracks but also be incapable of doing what it must do: make the scene that follows it inevitable.