We’ve come a long way in exploring the anatomy of a scene: our character has something they want in this moment, has done something about it, and encountered an obstacle or problem that gets in their way.
This is where we enter the engine room of a scene: where they try to overcome the obstacles with mixed results and more setbacks landing in their way.
If there’s one technique I teach my developmental editing clients, it’s this:
The “yes, but”/“no, and” approach, and its role in the try/fail/try again parts of our story.
Here’s the thing to remember: our character’s goal isn’t just one thing. A big part of writing a novel is taking the protagonist’s goal and breaking it down into ever smaller chunks.
We talked about this right at the start of the series—how to turn one big goal into a whole host of temporary scene goals. But the truth goes even deeper than that. Because a scene is ultimately just a collection of small, moment-by-moment actions as the One Big Thing the character wants dissolves into hundreds of teeny tiny questions:
Can they convince this heavily armed droid they mean it no harm?
Can they dodge its opening shot?
Can they get around the corner before it shoots again?
Any one of these moments might be answered in a simple and straightforward way:
Yes, they duck under the droid’s opening shot.
No, the character fails to get around the corner in time.
But these answers a flat. A full stop at the end of a sentence. They don’t take us anywhere new, or convince the reader to keep going.
This is where the magic of “yes, but”/“no, and” really shines. Suddenly, we have something more like:
Yes, they duck under the droid’s opening shot, but the effort overbalances them. They slip and stumble.
Or:
No, they don’t get around the corner in time. The character is shot in the leg and when they finally get clear, they run straight into the droid’s backup.
Notice how now, the reader is never off the hook?
Every success or failure contains the seed of some new problem, and that’s what keeps them reading. Because it means they’re asking the most vital question in story:
What’s going to happen next?
We don’t need to slavishly follow this technique. It should never become a cage or make our writing lifeless and rote. All we need to do is keep one eye on the ball—introducing some new issue or problem for every one we resolve.
Almost all great modern speculative fiction stories are built on these foundations. If we’re going to keep our readers invested, they have to keep asking, “what’s going to happen now?” until it’s 2AM and they’re questioning their life choices.
Which, of course, is exactly what we want.
The repeating cycles of try/fail/try again are also key to how we control the pace of our story. The bigger the “buts” and especially the more the character fails (then gets hit with an additional “and”), the more everything speeds up. The more we choose quiet, small-stakes setbacks, the slower things move while still making forward progress.
As with our obstacles, it’s often best to start small.
We aren’t done with Evelyn yet, our hypothetical knight-in-training. There are definitely still some ways we can make her life much worse.
That’s bad news for her, but great news for the story.
Having discovered that her father was corrupted—running a group of bandits that massacred innocent civilians during his time as a knight—Evelyn returns to one of her father’s old friends, Serafine. Her scene goal is to convince the woman to help take the bandits down for good. Unfortunately, Serafine is old, jaded, and definitely not inclined to help. She’s been burned too many times.
The scene that follows might play out a little bit like this:
Question: Can Evelyn appeal to Serafine’s sense of justice and convince her to help that way?
Answer: No. Serafine scoffs at her. Justice is for children and fools. She tells Evelyn to stop bothering her and walks away.
Q: Evelyn follows, offering to protect Serafine’s identity. Will she at least give her the location for the bandits’ hideout?
A: Serafine shoves Evelyn down an alleyway and pins her to a wall. It seems like she’s considering it (a soft “yes”), but she’s clearly scared. Doesn’t Evelyn know the bandits have ears everywhere? Is she trying to get them both killed?
Q: Evelyn pushes her advantage. If Serafine wants her to shut up, she should just tell her what she wants to know. Is it enough to convince Serafine?
A: No, Serafine doesn’t want to take that risk and if Evelyn wants to change her mind, she’ll have to give Serafine enough money to disappear. Money that Evelyn has been saving up to help her sick brother.
Q: Reluctantly, Evelyn hands over the money. Will Serafine help now?
A: Yes, she reveals the location of the hideout, then disappears with all of Evelyn’s coin. But when Evelyn goes home, her brother’s condition has worsened. And now she has no way to help him.
This is a useful example of how a slightly quieter scene is still driven by the same engine as our dragon fights and zombie attacks. We start relatively small, and with the most obvious way forward (Evelyn being a Person of Integrity and appealing to Serafine’s better nature), then slowly build things from there—dialling up the intensity as we go.
In this case, we end with a painful, permanent cost that takes something vital from our protagonist and applies pressure to the whole core of her being.
How tightly does she cling onto her morals and integrity? If she has to steal her brother’s medicine, will she do it? Will she be slowly corrupted, just as her father was?
One thing is certain: the reader will keep going to find out.
And the more of our scenes are propelled by this sort of momentum, the more thoroughly we’ll have them in our grip.
How many try/fail cycles should a scene have? Is there a maximum or minimum?
There are no hard rules. It depends on the length of your scene. Remember that longer scenes create a “dragging” effect—slowing the story down—while shorter ones build intensity and encourage faster reading.
To create the satisfying rise and fall of a story (where action builds to a crescendo, followed by a lull, before building things up again) we need to use both.
How long does each cycle need to be? Can a try/fail cycle be just one sentence?
It can definitely be one sentence! A missed punch, a grabbed arm, done.
They can also be as long as they need to be, although again, the more one cycle of “yes, but” or “no, and” stretches out, the more of a lagging effect it’ll have.
Sometimes, we want to use that intentionally to create space. Just make sure you’re not bringing everything to a dead stop.
What if my character succeeds (or fails) on the first try? Is that always bad?
There is no “always” in writing. Sometimes a character succeeds, gets what they want, and surprise! It’s actually awful. Sometimes they fail immediately and we use that to twist the story in a surprising direction.
But mostly, we want to temper each success with a “but” and add an additional “and” to every failure—keeping the reader on the hook, and pushing them onward.
How do you avoid making the cycles repetitive or predictable?
Firstly, trust your own inner sense of when this is happening. If it starts to feel repetitive, then it probably is.
When that happens, return to the rich source material you have for your story: the sum total of who your character is, their skills and flaws, goals and obligations, the obstacles and problems they’re facing. The people and things they care about. The things they’re scared of.
In the example scene above, pulling Evelyn’s sick brother back in at the end helps to keep things interesting. Weaving your most important elements back in, over and over again, will help you develop the story in new and interesting ways.
Have questions I haven’t answered? Drop them in the comments below and let’s fix that.
If you want to experiment with this technique yourself, find a section of struggle in your current manuscript—ideally, a scene where the protagonist (or point of view character) wants something, and a problem’s in their way.
Then ask yourself:
Does the character overcome this issue immediately? Alternatively, are they defeated right away, without any struggle? Or does the scene take multiple tries and attempts?
If they succeeded or failed immediately, could we add a “but” or an “and” to make things more interesting?
Is the character constantly winning every micro-struggle they encounter? If so, try hitting them with a “no, and.” How does this failure set them back, or put them in danger? And what would they do about it?
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