Have you scene this?

I think my punny side is beginning to leak based on the title of this blog. In the book I'm following along it tells you to write scenes, not chapters. Which given their explanation that I will not spoil here I highly recommend. It gave me a lot more granular detail in my mind of how to write it because instead of trying to plot out chapters I was planning scenes and this made it a lot easier to digest.

But before I write some scenes, I still need to know what my story is going to be about, what is going to be the problem my protagonist faces, and what happens to them.

Now if you are planning on reading my book which to be honest with you, I hope you are, you are going to experience spoilers in this post, a lot of them. Potentially, I mean who knows, the story might have entirely changed by the time I get to the end of this challenge.

The story I want to tell is this: An Elf falsely accused of murder must evade and escape capture all whilst trying to prove their innocence but in doing so will reveal a threat that is far larger to the Kingdom than they ever could have imagined.

Easy enough right? I don't think a falsely accused of murder and a harrowing journey to prove one’s innocence has ever been written before so I'm truly breaking new ground here...I'm not against using a cliche as you can tell...did I mention there would be magic?

So now we have our one-line summary of the story lets break it down into three parts, the beginning, the middle, and the end.

The Beginning - Sequences: 1 & 2
Svala is falsely accused of murder

The Middle - Sequences: 3,4,5, & 6
...

The End - Sequences: 7 & 8
Svala proves her innocence, exposing the truth and being exonerated.

I intentionally left the middle blank, because this is the thing, when you make a sandwich, you know you need two slices of bread, but you don't inherently know what you're going to put in the sandwich. Will you go ham, cucumber, lettuce, tomato? Or will you go lettuce, tomato, ham, cucumber? Variety is truly the spice of life.

I think, figuring out this middle section is something that will never truly be an easy task. Because there are a lot of variables along the way. But almost in reverse order I'm taking my three key parts and then building on it almost like a reverse pyramid. The book touches upon an 8-sequence structure. We have our set up sorted with the beginning and we have our entering the last act and final confrontation with the ending.

Now we must do the scene planning, and the book says to aim for a magical 35 scenes, with the beginning using about 9, the middle 18, and the end about 8 or fewer. Given that each scene must have a sort of self-contained story, and each scene has its own mini arc with the characters fortune changing as the scene develops either from good to bad, or bad to good.

Don't worry, there's even more to consider as each scene should include a bit of the following. Action - What is happening in the scene. Narrative - Exposition, and reflection from the main character of the scene. Dialogue - illustrates the character dynamics and relationships.

So, with this in mind I have come up with the following template to really help me plan them out.

Scene No:
Sequence:
Short Summary:
Time of Day:
Weather:
Character POV:
Scene:

Now the above is not something the book has recommended or suggested, but I know how I operate and the more I can template the easier it will be below is an example of how I might fill it out. Just to prevent confusion I have chosen a random event that will not happen within this story.

Scene No: 3
Summary: Asha & Seamus survive the vampire attack.
Time of Day: 22:00 to 23:00
Weather: Foggy - Full Moon
Character: Asha
Notes: Near the docks, lots of narrow alley ways but characters walking along main street, slick cobbles from night mist.
Scene: Asha & Seamus are returning from the bar at the docks, as they do, they are attacked by two juvenile vampires. During the fight Ursula (A senior vampire but neither Asha nor Seamus are aware) appears and helps kill the juvenile vampires. Ursula explains about the vampires plaguing the city and requests Asha & Seamus to help her uncover the cause and put an end to it.

Now once I have done this about 35 times, I think it will help me create a somewhat seamless narrative for the journey of my character(s) and how they will grow and develop. But in doing this I have had to think about my theme, I mean my theme is about always having hope and how my character will go from feeling hopeless, like she can never escape her situation in to having hope and how it can make a difference. But the challenge is that how do you write a character who is feeling hopeless yet needs to learn to always have hope and in turn give them a reason even for trying?

I have thought about this, and I don't think making my character hopeless is the right idea, instead they must always have hope, and at one point have their hope crushed, feel somewhat despair. But then something happen that reignites their hope. Because we love cliches what about if a character says something that suddenly makes the main character make a connection and boom hope restored, and a way to fix the situation. Maybe I can work that into the narrative.

Anyway, that concludes this post, I think I'm going to discuss a little bit about other characters in the next.