John Miles Bickham is a professor and an accomplished genre fiction writer having published over 80 novels, including westerns, mysteries, and thrillers. However, his major claims to fame are his instructional books on the craft of writing. The most popular of which is Scene and Structure. This book reads like a textbook for the advanced writer but has lessons that are vital for the beginner. Bickham covers why story structure is important, how to start a story, why cause and effect rule the day, and how to manipulate the elements of a scene. All of this information is vital to the budding fiction writer, so in summarizing the material, I hope to provide a roadmap that will lead others to this fantastic book.
Why is Structure Important?
Scene and Structure opens with this vital question and wastes no time answering it. According to Bickham, “Structure is nothing more than a way of looking at your story material so that it’s organized in a way that’s both logical and dramatic” (1). Structure gives our stories shape and provides clarity. Readers use structure as a guide to a visceral reaction. Writers use structure as a guide to plot. Therefore, learning scene structure is important because scenes are the main component of our novels. Recognizing the components of a scene will lead to understanding plot development. The principles that connect line to line, scene to scene, and chapter to chapter are the same. The bulk of Bickham’s book deals with giving writers the secret logic behind these connections – a logic that begins with five simple steps and ends with the principle of causation.
How to Start and End Your Story
Bickham has a succinct but powerful five-point strategy for starting and ending a story. I’ve boiled it down even further: Start the story in the seconds before a life-altering change occurs. Give the audience a story question to worry about (i.e. a problem to solve or challenge to overcome). Make sure everything flows back to the story question. Resolve the story question at the end so that the audience does not feel cheated.
Elements of a Scene
“What is a scene? It’s a segment of story action, written moment-by-moment, without summary, presented onstage in the story ‘now.’ It is not something that goes on inside a character’s head; it is physical” (23). A basic scene begins with the protagonist or point of view character moving toward a situation with a definitive goal, which on the surface appears achievable and acts as the main question for the scene. Will Jenny reach Goal X? This scene question or goal must also relate to the overall story question and must be immediate enough to answer with a simple “yes” or “no.” According to Bickham, both the scene question and the story question must be relatable to the audience and must be important. In addition, a character’s failure to attain the scene goal must have immediate consequences.
A scene grows out of the author placing obstacles between the character and goal achievement – a/k/a conflict. This can be in the form of situations or another person – a/k/a the antagonist. Bickham notes that conflict reveals character and to some extent creates it based on how a character reacts to adversity. Conflict should align with the scene goal and should not rely on a linear attack. Make the conflict multifaceted by having the viewpoint character and the antagonist altering their tactics, shifting their approaching, revising their logic, and escalating their efforts. The struggle to overcome conflict ultimately leads to disaster so that the POV character must realign his goal for the next scene, thus, preparing (through the reflective process of the sequel, which I’ll describe later) to face a new conflict and disaster.
Disaster, in Bickham’s book, is defined by a failure to achieve the scene question or goal in such a way that the character is left to ponder a result of “no,” “yes, but” or “no, and furthermore.” Therefore, true scene-ending disasters cannot be arbitrary occurrences such as a tornado or a heart attack. Since the disaster must evolve logically from the story question, a simple “yes” will never do. An easily achieved goal ends the story too soon and does not make interesting drama. However, if a character faces a roadblock and must regroup (“no”); or if she is given the greenlight but also must face a dangerous sacrifice or an ethical choice (“yes, but”); or if she has been thwarted and given another burden (“no, and furthermore”), the story becomes intriguing because the consequences of the disaster are clearly defined.
The writer should not fix or undo the disaster in the subsequent scene because the reader develops sympathy for the viewpoint character as she tries and fails. This struggle leads the audience to wonder how the character will possibly answer the overall story question as each disaster brings “newly threatening” circumstances that keep the character in flux and the audience guessing.
In addition to the basic scene, Bickham describes something he calls “sequels.” Sequels are scenes that focus solely on emotion, internalization, and decision-making. Bickham makes this distinction because he believes that to counterbalance the conflict of a standard scene an emotional journey must take place in response to the disaster. Sequels usually follow standard scenes to give the point of view character an opportunity to reflect and regroup before charging toward the next goal. Sequels, however, have their own structure of emotion, thought, decision, and action.
Cause and Effect
In popular fiction, everything must happen for a reason. As Bickham says, “Fiction must make more sense than real life . . .” (12). Luck has no place in fiction. Readers need a reason for disaster and conflict to unfold. The through line of cause and effect must be clear. If a person falls ill, we first need to see him grab the germy handkerchief that gave him the cold. “To restate this differently: in fiction, effects (plot developments) must have causes (background), and vice versa” (13).
On a related note, every stimulus must have a response. Bickham defines stimulus as an external action, reaction, or dialogue. Responses are external as well but may also contain an internal component known as internalization or thought. Internalization must be the result of a stimulus and must not occur untethered. Not every stimulus needs an internalization, but the response (the action/reaction) should immediately follow the stimulus. One cannot exist without the other or the story will fail to make sense. Therefore, to create a cohesive and rational scene, the structure should follow the pattern of stimulus, internalization, and response. Consider this modified example from page 16 of Bickham’s book:
(Stimulus) Joe threw the ball to Sam.
(Internalization and Response) Sam flinched in surprise but leaped in time to catch the ball.
“Sure is a nice day to play catch!”
Notice we did not color code the dialogue. Also, note how impotent the dialogue becomes without the internalization and response. While the dialogue may propel the overall plot (and provide description), the stimulus would be pointless without the color coded elements. Authors often make the mistake of moving forward with the agenda they have for the scene without creating the proper checks and balances regarding stimulus/response and cause/effect. This breeds poorly motivated characters plagued by faulty logic.
According to Bickham, stimulus-response transactions drive the moment-to-moment structure of a scene, just as sequels connect scenes through cause and effect. That is to say, scene-ending disasters lead to the emotional thought process of the sequel where a decision unfolds and action ensues leading to the next goal (i.e. the start of a new scene).
Coming to the End of the Scene
Even though Jack Bickham’s Scene and Structure considers itself a guide toward scene development, I believe the book has a lot more to offer writers because the subtext of each lesson is use structure to heighten the stakes. Often, new authors create stories without considering how the arrangement of ideas affects the reader. By teaching the elements of a scene and showing what portions of a scene are most important, Bickham provides a clear-cut system for developing stories that leave will leave readers on the edge of their seats. That’s the kind of lesson worth keeping for a lifetime.
Work Cited:
Bickham, Jack M. Scene and Structure. Cincinnati, Ohio: F+W Publications, Inc., 1999.
