hey guys it's Ellen Brock freelance editor this week we've been talking about scenes so far I've talked about proactive scenes in the first four videos but today I'm going to talk about reactive scenes which are more emotional and more about planning and reacting to things that happen during the proactive scenes so there are three parts to reactive scenes the first part is pretty easy it's the emotional reaction it's how the character feels about what happened in the proactive scene the character might experience distress or they might experience excitement or happiness it's just a depiction of
the character's reaction on an emotional level and this is usually the part that writers get really well it's usually not too difficult to execute it's sort of it's sort of an intuitive way to deal with the reaction the second element of the reaction is more likely to be omitted and it's really where the reactive scenes can start to run into trouble was feeling irrelevant or unimportant the second element is that you need to introduce the dilemma or the problem in other words what is the character trying to fix what problem are they trying to solve
what situation do they need to address this means that there cannot be an easy solution because if there's an easy solution there's no dilemma the reactive scene doesn't necessarily need to take a long time but there should be some issue with moving forward so it's it shouldn't just be a simple identification of here's a problem here's a solution there should be some debate or some consideration of different factors to add more tension and more interest to the scene when the character is trying to make that decision of how they're going to move forward the third
element of the reactive scene is that there needs to be some decision about how the character is going to move forward if the character does not decide how to solve the problem or doesn't decide what they're going to do in response to the proactive scene then it lacks a sense of momentum and it's easy for the reactive scene to start to feel more like filler or just irrelevant so the objective that the character assesses at the end of the scene so they make their decision about how they're going to move forward and that creates a
new goal or new objective that leads you very nicely into the next scene the next proactive scene where the character is going to move forward in some way to try to get towards this new goal or to move in this new direction so that's where you can create a really nice streamlined novel with very smooth transitions from one problem assessing thinking about it solving the problem creating a new goal and then moving into the next problem the most common problem writers have with reactive scenes is creating scenes that focus entirely on emotions if this happens
and the character is only focusing on how they feel and they're not debating how to solve the problem and they're not coming up with a solution the result will be that you'll create scenes that just feel like the character is moping about or feeling sorry for themselves and it will not move the plot forward so if that's the only purpose you have behind a reactive scene it's usually better to just tack that emotion on to the end of the previous scene because it should be pretty easy to add that reaction in at the end of
the proactive scene rather than sending it apart as its own scene if once you set it apart of its own scene the reader will expect there to be more meat to the scene more consequences and it can also tempt you to drag out the reaction the emotional reaction longer than is necessary and it usually does not take very much to demonstrate the emotional reaction of the protagonist you just need a sentence or two sometimes a paragraph or two but it's rare that you need to focus on emotions for long periods of time one of the
main concerns that writers have about reactive scenes is whether they need to use them after every proactive scene or just as they seem needed and you absolutely don't have to use a reactive scene after every proactive scene there will be times especially where the novel is really exciting and the character is probably going to move from obstacle to obstacle and you may have a number of scenes before the character has a chance to fully and completely rest and react to what's happening this doesn't mean your character won't react within the proactive scenes it just means
that you won't need a full scene just for reaction however if you wait too long between reactive scenes it can make it difficult for the character to have their needs and their desires feel real take and relevant and the the reader can lose touch with character and lose touch with what the character is trying to achieve and the pacing can also feel a bit too fast or too frantic so working in some reactive scenes can really help with the pacing but you definitely don't need to have a reactive scene in response to every proactive scene
reactive scenes are very useful for showing the emotions of your character and your characters thought process and how they address problems and what types of things they think about when they're dealing with consequences and they're dealing with these issues and these problems in the novel it's also a great time to highlight your side characters because during the reactive scene the side character is often helped to plan or to think about the situation or to help the main character talk through what's bothering them or talk through what occurred in the pro and the previous proactive scene
so if you think about all the great planning scenes between like Harry Ron and Hermione or any group of characters in a novel that's really the time when those characters shine is in the scenes where they are reacting to a problem talking about solutions talking about their feelings it's a really great time to highlight characterization so hopefully this video gave you a better idea of how to write reactive scenes next week I'm going to be doing request videos Monday through Thursday and then on Friday I'm going to be doing a long Q&A session so if
you have any questions or any video requests please post them in the comments as always I really appreciate you guys watching liking and subscribing it really means a lot to me and it really helps me out so I hope you guys have a great weekend
