Scene and Sequel: How to Plot an Epic Novel

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It doesn’t matter whether you’re a plotter or a pantser; any story you write must have a purposeful progression of events that readers follow towards a conclusion. After all, how can you tell a story if there’s no meaningful movement?

Some passages drag on with so much info dumping, while others move forward so fast that readers are unable to understand anything.

So how do you ensure that your pacing is on point while adequately developing characters, building tension, and describing your settings? Author Dwight Swain has developed a technique to help you with this.

What Is a Scene and Sequel?

The majority of books are made up of chapters, which are in turn, made up of narrative units called scenes. These are written passages that involve a continuous sequence of actions, usually seen from one point of view. In his book Techniques of the Selling Writer, Swain further categorizes them into either a Scene or a Sequel.

A Scene is a written passage that propels the story forward toward a goal. A Sequel, on the other hand, gives characters an opportunity to react to the scene, analyze it, and make a decision on what to do next.

Scenes and Sequels can be only a couple of paragraphs or span multiple pages. This depends on how much action is happening, or how much information you’re providing to the reader.

The terms can be confusing due to their other day-to-day meanings. To better differentiate the two, I’ll be capitalizing Scene and Sequel to refer to Swain’s classifications. Any use of the word scene that is uncapitalized will concern the narrative unit.

1. Scene

A Scene is proactive. The characters are doing something to achieve a goal. They may or may not succeed. What matters is that action is moving forward because the characters are doing something.

Scenes have the following pattern:

  • Goal – What the characters want.
  • Conflict – What prevents the characters from getting what they want.
  • Disaster – Where things go wrong. The characters fail, or if they do achieve the goal, something eventually happens that makes things worse.

Unless you’re at the endpoint of your story, never let a Scene be a complete victory. Doing so doesn’t make sense, as the characters no longer have any reason to keep moving forward.

Following the pattern above, you can divide the last chapter of The Hunger Games as such:

  • Katniss and Peeta must win as a pair in this year’s Hunger Games.
  • The Gamemakers change the rules to force them to try to kill each other.
  • Katniss and Peeta prepare to consume poisonous berries and commit suicide together. Realizing this, the Gamemakers declare them both victors.

2. Sequel

A Sequel is reactive. Here, the characters have already achieved their goal, which opens up new goals to reach. Or, they fail and must reassess their actions. They’re not doing anything action-wise, but are thinking about what has already happened.

Sequels have the following pattern:

  • Reaction – the emotional response to the last Scene’s disaster.
  • Dilemma – a situation with no good options.
  • Decision – the characters make a choice, which leads to a new goal.

Keep in mind that the characters must react realistically, but also quickly. Don’t let them struggle so much that the story reaches a full stop. Make them hesitate just enough to relay to your readers that it’s not an easy decision to make.

Continuing with The Hunger Games, the sequel to the scene described above is:

  • Katniss and Peeta are relieved they survived.
  • Haymitch warns Katniss she’s in danger of retaliation from the Capitol. Peeta learns Katniss’s actions were nothing more than a ploy to gain sympathy.
  • Katniss is still unsure about her feelings but decides she needs to keep up the appearance of being in love with Peeta in front of the cameras.

Why It Works

Swain talks about a concept he calls “Motivation-Reaction Units” or MRUs. These are smaller blocks of actions and reactions that happen within a scene. They’re expressed through moment-to-moment interactions, thoughts, and lines of dialogue.

Writers create MRUs by alternating between what the POV character sees (the motivation) and what they do (the reaction). For example, a detective is caught off-guard by a killer, which makes them panic.

The motivation is objective, and presented externally. It’s like watching an action as it is being shown through a screen.

It doesn’t need to be complicated, and can be done in a short sentence:

The killer came out of the shadows, colliding with Kyle.

The reaction is subjective and is presented internally. It’s a bit more complex, as you need to deliver it exactly how the POV character experiences it.

Internal reactions happen in a blink but readers rarely feel it that way. An intense moment can seem to stretch despite only lasting a few seconds. This alteration of the sense of time is needed to make the reaction realistic. 

Pain shoots up his leg and he sees a knife plunged into his left thigh. He scrambles away, pawing at the pistol on his side. "Get away from me you bastard!"

And after the reaction comes another motivation:

The killer kicks at Kyle's legs, making him fall to the ground. Blood gushes out of the wound. The killer smiles, pulling another knife from his coat.

So a scene (the narrative unit) is a sequence of Scenes and Sequels that are in turn, a sequence of MRUs. They’re patterns within patterns. Following them ensures constant progress within your narrative.

Only Half the Battle

The above is a helpful guide for designing your scenes. However, you still need to actually write them. If you don’t present your readers with captivating prose, you risk quickly losing their interest.

Make sure that your scenes start with a Goal, which leads to Conflict and eventually, Disaster. This motivates your audience to read on to see whether the issue is resolved or not. That is when you present them with a character’s Reaction, and the succeeding Dilemma, which finally leads to a Decision.

This repeats until you accomplish a minor goal or the end goal. The important thing is you don’t run out of Scenes and Sequels before then. One of the worst things you can do is have your story dry up before reaching the conclusion.

Also, using Scenes and Sequels helps you create verisimilitude in your story. The stronger the illusion of reality, the better you can draw out emotions from your audience. In the end, your goal is to give your readers the best emotional experience possible.

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