In a new post, September Fawkes says that a three-point foundation of promise, progress, and payoff can help you craft strong scenes and stories. “Without these things in place, your story will always be lacking,” she writes.
While simplistic and not necessary for every scene, these foundational elements can help you build a strong story structure. Each element represents a beginning, middle, and end of your scene or story. “The beginning makes promises to the audience. The middle shows progress toward those promises. And the end illustrates the payoff of the promises and progress,” Fawkes explains.
Promises include genre, tone, plot, character, and change or conflict, all of which establish your story. “You are conveying to the audience where and when the story takes place, who it’s about, what’s going to happen, and why it matters,” Fawkes notes. In the middle section, you show the reader how each of those elements is progressing. Payoff, naturally, is your resolution.
Those structural elements can also be used to create satisfying acts or scenes. Fawkes views smaller units – scenes, chapters, acts – as containing the same elements as the overall novel, simply on a smaller scale. “When you open the scene, and set it up, you make promises about what’s going to happen in the scene,” Fawkes writes. “Then you show the character taking action toward an objective (progress). Then you hit the scene’s peak, where it often becomes clear if the character did or didn’t get their scene-level objective. Promise, progress, payoff.”
