Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld Page A

proof of what you tried to quickly summarize.
    If you follow the formula for developing characters set forth in this chapter, your characters will have no choice but to become complex, plot-relevant people who feel vivid and real to the reader.
    Without the human mind and consciousness to give significance to the events that happen to us, life is just a series of events unfolding over time to people everywhere. This randomness is one of the reasons that many people turn to literature—inside the pages of a book you trust that you will be led on a meaningful journey revealing insights and giving your spirits and emotions a jolt. In fiction, this is called a plot.
    Some people confuse plot for story and think it is enough to have a sequence of events lined up one after the other. A story is just a string of information about a cast of characters in a given time and place. Boy meets girl. Stranger comes to town. The doctor is found dead.
    A plot is the method by which that story takes on tension, energy, and momentum, and urges a reader to keep turning pages. Plot transforms "boy meets girl" into Romeo and Juliet —with secret love, wild fighting, and tragic conflicts along the way.
    In short, plot is the related string of consequences that follow from the significant situation (often referred to as inciting incident, but I prefer my term because many narratives begin less with one single incident and more with a type of situation) in your narrative, which darn well better get addressed, complicated, and resolved through engaging, well-crafted scenes by the end. Some people refer to this relationship of events as causality, but that's a sterile-sounding word. Here we'll just call them consequences.
    In chapter two we discussed how any narrative is a series of scenes strung together like beads on a wire. This chapter will look at what element inside each scene is essential to plot. The simplest answer is information.
    Plot is constructed out of crucial bits of information—the consequences of, and explanations for, the significant situation and the characters who must deal with it. Plot is best delivered teasingly to the reader in small bites to keep them hungry for more. In a well-written plot, the reader gets just a little bit smarter, a little bit more clued in, as he reads. Each scene should provide one more clue to the puzzle of your plot.
    PLOT INFORMATION BASICS
    Most writers are as fond of a beautiful sentence as they are a good plot element. It's fun to write lyrical passages, to wax philosophical, and to create images of beauty. Surely there's no harm if a scene digresses from the plot to meander and muse, right?
    Nope!
    Sorry to be the plot police, but here's the cold truth: Every scene in your narrative must pertain to your plot. Every single one. Even if a character muses or meanders, that activity must be plot-related. A character under suspicion of murder may drift off into thought, but those thoughts had better be about why he's been wrongfully accused, how he's going to prove his innocence, or who the true murderer is, not random memories of whale-watching or hiking.
    Scenes exist in order to make the events in your fictional world real to the reader. You want the reader to be knee-deep in your action and emotional drama, to feel for your characters, to hope and dream and want for them.
    Each scene, then, must deliver, at minimum, one piece of new information that speaks to one of the following questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
    Every scene.
    You must be thinking, how can I possibly do that? Simple—don't end a scene and begin another one until new information has been provided. Providing information is one of the most important functions of a scene and is the foundation of a plot.
    New information has three main responsibilities:
    1. It must fill in another piece of the puzzle, so that both the character and the reader get a little bit smarter.
    2. It must change the course of your main