Goal-Conflict-Resolution-Cliffhanger: The Elements of a Scene

This is how you keep readers turning pages.

This post is part of the Write With Me series. For more like this, check out the writing your novel page.

Over the course of a week or month or year, each of us lives through countless real-life “scenes,” some more memorable than others.

Even if we know this as people, as writers we can all too easily fall into the trap of showing our characters sharing ordinary, commonplace experiences like partaking in a meal. Like us, our characters need to eat, right? Characters need to drink and to sleep!

Unless you're writing a survival story in which those three basic needs are the hardest thing to come by for your protagonist, though, realistically our readers don't need to know when your characters eat, sleep, and drink.

Think again about the statement above—that there are some "scenes" in our own lives that are more memorable than others (which, surely for all of us, might include sharing a meal with the other “characters” in our lives).

What makes some meals more memorable than others? When reflecting on your day, what is it about the things you remember most that keeps them so readily accessible to you?

Would you say it's normally because of some conflict, an unexpected event, or a revelation that caused a change in perspective?

You would? Great!

Thanks for letting me put words in your mouth.

This is why I believe strongly that a good scene will have all of the above elements written into it.

But how does one achieve that, you ask? The answer is simple.

In my case, before I begin to write any chapter, I map it out using the below set-up.

SCENE:

GOAL:

CONFLICT:

RESOLUTION:

CLIFFHANGER:

For every change in scene within a chapter, I repeat this exercise until I've outlined the chapter in its entirety. Let's take a look at how to use each of the above to create a memorable scene, one line at a time.