Yesterday, a great article came out on Narrative First: Separating Subject Matter from Story Structure which was a handy reminder about using the Source of Conflict method. Those two discussions sent me on a journey yesterday with my own storyform that helped solve a problem I was facing.
You see, I’m in the weeds with my story, almost done with Act 1, and felt the need for particular scenes. However, I didn’t want to change all the stuff I had written over the last month by slotting in a couple of scenes. In full disclosure, scenes were missing anyway (I felt that from the start but couldn’t see what they needed to be). So one or two scenes were bound to slot in naturally.
After writing Act 1, I knew what the subject matter of the scenes had to be, and I needed to write them in a way that was cohesive with the rest of what I had already written.
It worked—with the help of the SOC exercise and the prompt reminder of the NF article.
In fact, now I’m updating my Subtext Treatment to reflect the new scenes.
No doubt as I complete Acts 2,3,4 I will sense other scenes that need to be inserted.
Moral of the story: If you don’t know what all your scenes will be as you embark on your project, don’t fret or stall or procrastinate. It’s possible to slot them in later, and have them be cohesive with what you already wrote, using the SOC method.
Cool!