here's the thing. Everything I have shared with you about seen structure also applies to all of these levels of story. You can find the six elements of story in the story as a whole. In every act. And in every sequence. And you can find a value shift in this story as a whole. In every act and in every sequence. That means that if the master scene level writing and editing, you have a transferable skill. That will prepare you to write and edit your story as a whole as well.
Welcome to your next draft. This is a special episode because it's our first ever listener mail episode. I've spent the last month talking about scenes, what they are, how they work and how to edit them. And I know from experience from working with writers to edit their scenes for years, that this material is really, really helpful. But it's also a little confusing, especially when it's new to you.
So I invited you to send me your questions, the things where you're confused or stuck when it comes to writing and editing your scenes. And I received so many great questions. I got thoughtful and insightful questions from dozens of writers. Many more than I could answer in one episode, because spike talked too long to answer more than two or three questions at a time.
So I chosen a few questions to answer in this episode and I've saved the rest in a question bank that I'll continue to use to inform future podcast episodes. And if you have a question about scenes or editing a novel or anything you hear on the podcast, feel free to share it with me. Send me an email@aliceatalicesettler.com. With the subject line podcast question. And I'll save your question for a future episode. All right. Let's get into today's questions.
Our first question was asked in a few different ways by Evan and Sam, Rob. I love this question because it gets it how to plan a great story before you write it. And I'm an editor, not an author. But if I were to write a book, I know that I would be a hardcore planner. That's just how I think. So if you're a planner and you've been wondering how all this scene theory applies to the writing process and not just the editing process. This is for you. Here's the question.
How much of the scene work can be done in the planning phase of writing. For someone who plots out each chapter and seen in their novel, do you think it would be a good idea to go through and answer the questions and outline everything you're discussing for each scene? Do you have any tips or recommendations on what to keep in mind while I'm planning or writing a scene. That will help make my own editing easier or more effective after I get my first draft down. I love this question.
I have so many thoughts about it and you can approach this in so many different ways. So here are a few options for you. First. I want you to keep in mind that the tools that I'm sharing are editing tools and you can use them for writing too, but they're designed to help you identify and fix problems during your editing process. They're not designed for the purpose of helping you write a first draft. What I mean by that is there is a danger of getting lost in the weeds of analysis here.
You can get stuck and paralyzed by just trying to answer all these questions and finding your creative space of writing kind of sapped away. So I do not recommend using all 18 questions from the how to edit a scene of a novel episodes to plan your writing. If you listen to those episodes, you know that those are the questions that I use to analyze. What's working in a scene and recommend actionable edits to writers for their next draft. That's too much for the planning process.
You don't need that much analysis during the writing stage. That said it is absolutely possible to use the principles of seen structure to make your planning process more efficient, your writing process, more focused and your editing process easier. Here's a quick reminder of the fundamental principles of scene structure. Every scene needs to include a change. That's a value shift. Something is one way at the beginning of the scene and at the end of the scene, it's another way.
And in order for that change to happen, every scene includes six elements. The inciting incident. Progressive complications. Turning points crisis. Climax and resolution. And here. You have options. You might find that you love listing out every single one of those things. You want to identify the change before you write the starting and ending value, and you want to identify everything that will happen during each of the six elements. If you really, really love planning.
Maybe that's exciting or helpful to you. So yes, you can do that. Identify the change and then identify the six elements and then write the scene. I still think there is a potential to fall into too much analysis and get stuck there though. So here's what I recommend to simplify it. Focus on the crisis. When you sit down to write a scene, think about what's happening in your story. Where are your characters? What are they doing? What has just happened and where are they going next?
Now you have the context for your scene. Who, what, where. And then ask in the scene, what choice will my character be challenged to make? That's your clue into your scene? Now you can start writing with a direction somehow. You're going to build to the point where your character has to make that choice. Now I will add here. If you are a hardcore planner, you can go deeper than this. You can explore and see whether it's helpful to you to plan out all six elements before you write the scene.
If you choose to do that, I recommend that first you plan the overall structure for the novel as a whole don't focus at first on the details of what happens in each scene, but the overall arc of the story. And then as you write your first draft, every time that you write a new scene, begin the writing process by planning out that scenes six elements. This reminds me a bit of the snowflake method in which you create an outline.
And then you add a little more detail and a little more detail and a little more detail on each pass through until finally you have a full draft of your novel. And that's a great way to write a first draft of your novel that combines your creative inspiration and your intentional story structure. Now. Our next question comes from bill who asks. I'm looking over the entire global story and looking at the six elements in the big picture.
To see if there is a way to make good use of the value shifts. As I seem to understand their benefit. There is so much emphasis given to seen building that. I feel that the value shifts are not often discussed as they pertain to the global story. Our value shifts important on the level of the whole story. And what I love about this question is that bill is on exactly the right track. And he's actually even getting a little ahead of me here.
This is a topic that you'll be hearing a lot about on the podcast at some point in the future. Because bill is exactly right. The value shifts that I've been talking about on the scene level. Also applies on the level of the story as a whole. You can think of story as a series of nesting dolls. There's the whole entire story from the first page to the last. Within that. There are apps. You might be familiar with three act structure. Personally, I like to divide books into quadrants.
Within acts, there are sequences a set of a few scenes where characters are working towards a particular goal. And within sequences, there are scenes. The individual units of story that you'll work with most often in the writing and editing process. And here's the thing. Everything I have shared with you about seen structure also applies to all of these levels of story. You can find the six elements of story in the story as a whole. In every act. And in every sequence.
And you can find a value shift in this story as a whole. In every act and in every sequence. That means that if the master scene level writing and editing, you have a transferable skill. That will prepare you to write and edit your story as a whole as well. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that I began this whole podcast series with scenes because scenes are the basic units of novels.
And they're also the perfect short form training ground to practice all these principles of story structure that will apply at every level of story. Now there is also a whole, whole lot to say about how all this story theory applies to other levels of story and especially to the novel as a whole, much, too much for me to get into and fully in this episode. So I'm sure that I'll have several episodes about this later. But for now, I do want to say this.
Every novel has one major value shift for the story as a whole, that's connected to the genre of the story. For instance, a performance story where a character is entering a competition to demonstrate their skill might start at failure and arrive at success. An action story. Where a hero is trying to save a victim's life might start at life in danger and to arrive at life saved. Think of pride and prejudice, which is a love story. There the value at stake is love versus hate.
At the beginning, Elizabeth and Darcy dislike each other. And by the end, they're married. And all the scenes in pride and prejudice get us incrementally closer, or incremently farther away from Elizabeth and Darcy falling in love. They're all the little value shifts that mark the slow development of their love story. So, yes, bill, to answer your question from the beginning, value shifts are absolutely important on the level of the whole story.
In fact, they're the very first thing that I look for when I have a new book on my desk to edit, there are major clues, the genre of the book, which is your blueprint for the entire structure of the book. And when you practice incorporating value shifts into your scene level writing. You'll have a transferable skill that will apply to your whole story level writing as well. And that's it for this listener mail episode of your next draft. Thank you.
Evan, Sam, Rob, and bill for asking excellent questions. I hope my answers gave you helpful pointers to work with. And thank you to everyone who wrote in with questions. I received so many great questions on scenes and I'm sorry, I couldn't answer them all in this episode. I will be answering another question next week. And I'm also keeping all the questions I receive in a list to inform future podcast episodes.
So if you haven't heard the answer to your question yet on the podcast, keep listening. And if you have more questions about scenes or about editing a novel in general, I would love to hear from you. You can send me an email@aliceatalicesedler.com. With the subject line podcast question, and I'll keep it in mind for future podcast episodes as well. Now, before we wrap up. I do want to leave you with an assignment for your editing today. Here it is.
I want you to figure out the value that changes in your story as a whole. What is the most important change if you zoom out and think about the overall arc of your story, what are the stakes in your story? Here's some options to get you started. Life or death. Success or failure. Love or hate. Justice or injustice. Wisdom or a naivete. There are more as well. Those are just a few to inspire you.
See, if you can figure out what the most important change is in your story, that's going to be a huge clue for the structure of your story and the stakes that you'll be working with all the way through. Thank you as always for listening to your next draft and for sharing such thoughtful and insightful questions with me. Until next time. Happy editing.