Free Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld Page B

there is no other character in the scene, your protagonist will interact only with himself, or with forces of nature or the world around him, in which case you get contemplative scenes (see chapter fifteen).
    2. In every scene your protagonist should be motivated by two things:
    • The protagonist's intention for the scene. Whatever you decide is the intention for your protagonist in a given scene will fuel his motivation. A scene intention (discussed at length in chapter eleven) must be related to the significant situation of your narrative, but each scene may have different intentions for your protagonist. In one scene the protagonist's intention might be to go into an agency to try to track down his biological mother, for instance, and in another it might be to confront the adoptive mother who withheld that information all his life. We'll discuss how to make sure that a character's intentions add up to a good storyline in chapter twenty-three.
    • The protagonist's personal history. One other factor will motivate your character in every scene: his backstory. You can show insight into your protagonist's nature or history through reflective flashback scenes or dialogue. You can also use it just as personal background information that helps you decide how your protagonist will behave next.
    3. Each situation or interaction should make your plot and its consequences for the protagonist either:
    • More complicated. When the consequences become more complicated, as described in chapter three, you build dramatic tension, create character conflict, and heighten the energy of the scene. Lean toward building more complications in every scene of the first two parts of your narrative.
    • Or less complicated. There are a few good cases for making situations less complicated for your protagonist: In the final part of your narrative, when you want to resolve plot threads and lead toward resolution; when you want to pull back on the intensity of a scene; and when you want to lull the reader into a false sense of complacency in order to spring a plot surprise on him.
    4. Through these complications, your protagonist should change. They can change beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, allegiances or loyalties, appearances, and motivations.
    By narrative's end, your protagonist, thanks to the many opportunities you gave him to develop and change in scenes, will not be in exactly the same place emotionally, or even spiritually, as when you began. He will have changed (see chapter twenty-three).
    Now, using that formula from above, let's walk through a scene example from Ann Patchett's novel Bel Canto. At a lavish birthday party for a Japanese businessman in South America, at which are present many important diplomats and a famous opera singer, guerilla terrorists have taken the entire assemblage hostage. Over the time of their captivity, the terrorists and the hostages begin to form bonds and become civil. In the snippet of a scene that follows, a select few hostages have been granted the aid of the female terrorists to help them cut food with forbidden knives. It could almost be a domestic scene, except that Patchett ups the ante on the characters, and provides all the ingredients for developing character that are described above. I have labeled the ingredients in italics within the text.
    [The intention of all the hostages in this scene is to prepare a decent meal, since they're all desperately hungry.] Ishmael stopped, examined his work, then he held out the butchered vegetable and the knife. He held the blade out to Thibault. [An interaction between two characters that affects the plot.] What did he know about kitchen manners? Then Thibault had them both, the knife and the eggplant, one in each hand. Deftly, quickly, he began to peel back the skin. [Thibault brings a gourmet's knowledge of food to the scene—that is his motivation for taking the knife from Ishmael. But this is also a plot situation — Thibault is now using the