Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld

knife, which he is not authorized to hold.]
    "Drop it!" Beatriz shouted. On calling out she dropped her own knife, the blade slick with onions. ... She pulled her gun from her belt and raised it up to the Ambassador. [Things have just gotten more complicated for Thibault and the others in the kitchen.] "Jesus," Ruben said.
    Thibault did not understand what he had done. .
    "Keep your voice down," Carmen said to Beatriz in Quechua. "You're going to get us all in trouble." [Worsening consequences—if they've been heard, the male terrorists might storm into the kitchen in a violent fury.]
    "He took the knife."
    Thibault raised up his empty hands, showed his smooth palms to the gun.
    "I handed him the knife," Ishmael said. "I gave it to him."
    "He was only going to peel," Gen said. [Gen's motivation is to defend Thibault because he has a firm belief in right and wrong.] He could not recognize a word of this language they spoke to one another.
    "He isn't supposed to hold the knife," Beatriz said in Spanish. "The general told us this.".
    "What about this?" Thibault began quietly, keeping his hands up. "Everyone can stand away from me and I can show Ishmael how to peel an eggplant. You keep your gun right on me and if it looks like I'm about to do something funny you may shoot me. You may shoot Gen, too, if I do something terrible." [Thibault responds to the situation by changing, by becoming brave. Earlier he was afraid of these people, now he just wants peace.]
    "I don't think—" Gen started, but no one was paying attention to him. He felt a small, cold hardness in his chest, like the pit of a cherry had slipped into his heart. He did not want to be shot and he did not want to be offered up to be shot. [Despite his belief in justice, suddenly Gen displays fear in response to the same situation that turned Thibault brave—two different characters are motivated by different things — Thibault by hunger and pride, Gen by fear. Patchett magnificently develops two different characters in two different ways in response to the same situation.]
    Though the scene ends without anyone getting shot, the sense of peace and camaraderie that developed before the knife incident is gone, and a climate of mistrust has returned between hostages and terrorists. This scene sets the stage for further character changes down the road. Will Gen dissolve
    into a fearful mess? Will Thibault maintain his brave facade? It is necessary to read further scenes to find out.

CHARACTER AND PLOT
    Hopefully the illustration above made it clear that plot and character are married to one another. Your protagonist ought to be indelibly caught up in the plot situation and information of every scene, and should bear or participate in the consequences that follow. Similarly, your plot should not be able to advance or get more complicated without the active participation of your protagonist.
    With that in mind, when developing your characters you should always be thinking about how the plot situation of a given scene will affect the character, and what it will cause him to do, think, or feel.
    In every scene you should ask: What is plot-relevant? What is character-relevant? How are the two related? Your plot should be unable to carry on without your protagonist.
    A Note on Character Behavior
    If you've ever turned up in the aftermath of an exciting incident like a fight or a police chase, you will probably agree that a bystander's account is never as dramatic as witnessing it for yourself. The same is true of character behavior in scenes; inevitably you'll take shortcuts, hoping the reader will take your word for it that "Charles didn't want to live any longer," or "Frederika had a magnetic personality." Well, okay, both details might be true, but unless the reader gets to witness the plot situation of Charles standing at the edge of the bridge ready to leap off, or, through character interactions, sees multiple characters fall in love with Frederika, the reader has no