Been There Done That? Similar Problems with Writing Similar Scenes

There are stories that rely on their central concept to shape much of their plot into their favorite kind of sequence, and try to make it our favorite too. It could be:

• a type of action the hero takes, building a book on swordfights or courtroom battles
• or other ways to set up scenes—class after class at Hogwarts learning about the characters over a new spell lesson, or layers of looking deeper into a villain’s horrific past
• or, speaking of villains, how often they take the initiative make the scene about the hero on the defensive. If the hero’s there at all.

But when I read or write, I’m always looking for more variety in those. Yes, I love a story that plays to its strengths, with a clear focus on a hero (and villain) who play to theirs—The High Road and its sequels are meant to keep a reader remembering what it’s like to fly. But I want more.

There are just so many angles to come at the next scene from. All the times our hero needs to try a whole different strategy, or how one plan can not just go sideways but in mid-scene turn a debate into a raid or a research session, or all three. All the other characters, friend and foe, that honestly see this as their story and try to get a jump on their rivals. All the sides that can make a story richer by taking their turns.

I’ve always struggled to make as much time for that as I wanted. On The High Road, I had to go through several rewrites until I was sure I’d explored how much Mark had to deal with besides flying. And now here I am again, firming up my grasp of Book Two (Freefall) and understanding Book Three, and I’m back to square one about drifting into patterns.

And I’m the one who wrote the Tarzan Test!

(The Test is, basically, don’t fight a lion and then another lion. And also to use the variety between those fights, and whatever else the story has, as a measure of how broad the story is and where it needs to dig deeper into what makes its pieces different from each other.)

It’s a humbling moment, to look back at a blog I wrote years ago and see it as proof that it’s a battle I need to keep fighting with myself, not a problem I settled back then. (Plus, the irony of having to revisit the struggle to keep my characters from revisiting theirs! Or, more than irony: repetition is one of the core parts of real life that storytelling wants to streamline.)

So, what’s enough variety?

Well first, enough for what, to add what to the story?

One great virtue is the sense of completeness, of using all the potential in the characters and the situation. The more often a hero tries a different tack, or the more time he takes dealing with other sides of his life and how they all feed back into each other, the more we accept that this guy is dealing with everything and trying all his options to earn his victory. Enemies who know how to blindside him are more menacing; worlds with more detail are more convincing.

And, there’s another advantage, in the dramatic impact those scenes have. By setting out more kinds of scenes, characters, and action, a story is setting out more varied examples of what’s at stake for those scenes. Which means, there’s more room for a scene’s plan to go wrong, or go very right or cross over and affect some other thread of the story, without cutting off or changing the entire flow of the tale.

A hero can only lose so many physical fights before he’s beaten to a pulp (or the reader’s trust is), but what about losing the job he spent whole chapters struggling to get—or winning that job just when he needs new contacts for other struggles? More variety means more stakes, and more chances to turn them into real, dramatic change without breaking the story.

There’s a checklist in this somewhere, and I’m just starting to sort it out. Next week, let’s see how it looks.