Death in Every Scene
I don’t know the source of this idea, as I learned it long ago. When I did, though, it immediately made my writing much better. It’s a simple “rule” that enhances scenes or tells you what to do if you’re stuck. It does so by adding contrast and taking conflicts to the extreme.
What’s the rule?
In every scene, there should be a chance of death (literally or metaphorically).
To humans, there’s nothing stronger than death. It means something is permanently lost or destroyed, no way back. If you can threaten death in a scene, you’ve raised the stakes to a level that hooks most readers.
Two lovers try to salvage their relationship. Writing a scene in which they have an argument is fine, but the conflict might be too weak. Instead, write the scene in such a way that the reader feels “if he says one wrong thing, this relationship is dead”.
The hero encounters an enemy with the power to remove abilities. In such a scene, you can threaten death of some ability the hero cherishes and needs. Maybe the hero has the power to fly, and they love doing it and use it to save people’s lives, but here comes an enemy who threatens to kill the ability.
What about “rising action”?
Yes, conflict should still rise and rise over the course of a story. Threatening literal death in every scene just means the reader won’t take it seriously anymore after chapter 5.
You must, however, realize two things.
- There are different levels to it. Not everything that can be killed, is equally valuable or important. Yes, losing a friend is bad, but actually dying is even worse. Yes, losing a career opportunity is bad, but losing a limb is even worse.
- You only execute the death once in a while. Every scene should threaten it, but not all actually go through with it.
Those two lovers from before have two scenes in which they argue. Their relationship is threatened, but survives. But then a third scene comes along, with another conflict, and now the relationship actually dies.
We can do something similar to that hero who can fly. When they meet that enemy, they manage to escape and keep their flying ability. Only the next time they meet, they actually lose that ability.
In fact, as you see, this is the common structure: threaten death of something (once or twice), then actually let it die.
As I mentioned in the Conflict chapter, the threat is greater than the action. Good conflict, the meat of your story, comes from the threat of things going absolutely terribly wrong. It can only actually happen once in a while.
Additionally, this way you automatically provide setup and payoff. The first few times a death is threatened, you promise the reader that this might be something that happens in the future. When it actually happens, it is often both surprising and expected, which makes it very satisfying.
Now write!
Write a story. With every scene, ask yourself the simple question: “what thing has a chance of dying in this scene?”
In general, keep things simple and pick just one thing. Focus the scene entirely on the possibility of that one thing dying.
When it feels good or natural to do so, actually deliver on the death.
And, finally, realize that everything can be killed or “permanently destroyed”. A character trait can be killed, a relationship, an object, a law, an opportunity, a belief. At the start of the story, the things that may die are usually small. Near the end, that’s when you raise the stakes towards the biggest and most important things (at least in the eyes of the hero).
If you do this, you’ll find that every scene feels important and jumps off the page with juicy conflict.
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