Plotting in Scenes
Outlining your story at the scene level (plotting) is where you move from the abstract level of characters and their problems to the specific events you’ll draft your story from.
Before diving into plotting in detail, we should define a few terms.
Let’s start with plot. The definition we like is borrowed from science fiction writer Jack Williamson, who defines plot as a patterned sequence of events, related by cause and effect, which portrays the whole response of a set of characters to a situation.
Each separate event is a Scene story element. A scene takes place at one location and time, and has a specific cast of characters interacting with each other. Stage plays and movie scripts are necessarily written almost exclusively in scenes. Other story forms, such as novels and short stories, can contain foreshortened prose, but these days even those forms are mainly written in scenes, perhaps due to the influence of movies and television.
Certain events usually happen at fixed places in a story, a pattern called story structure. A plot has a beginning, middle, and end. Aristotle described it as consisting of three movements, or acts. The first act, or setup, introduces us with characters with problems that must be solved. The second act, or rising action, presents obstacles as the characters try to solve their problems. The third act contains the logical outcome of the events in the first two acts. Most stories’ plots follow Aristotle’s idea of story structure.
The things that happen at a certain place in the plot (introduce the protagonist, present the problem to be solved, introduce an obstacle, solve the story problem (the climax), and so forth) are often called plot points, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘a particularly significant part of a work of fiction.’ Another term for a plot point is a story beat.