How Rowling Created Key Scenes (Rowling’s Outline and the Book Architecture Method, Pt III)

Remember that a series is the repetition of any narrative element within a story (like a person, an object, or even a place or phrase). Here are some of the series Rowling outlined for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Hall of Prophecy; Harry’s feelings for Cho and Ginny; organizing Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix; Harry’s Occlumency lessons with Snape, and the mystery of Hagrid’s half-brother, Grawp. Notice in Rowling’s outline that each series has its own column, and for each chapter she jots down how each series is developing. She also has a column that’s simply labeled “plot” where she keeps track of which series is stepping into the spotlight when.

I ended my last post on series with a question: How did Rowling know that each of the six series she listed was worth keeping?

A series worth keeping not only evolves in its own right but also has the power to change the direction of the entire story. In Rowling’s outline, all of her series intersect and interact with each other in such a way that if one were taken out, the story would be off-kilter. The individual scenes in her “plot” column illustrate especially well how her different series come together and play off one another. And that is the definition of a key scene: When several series collide and send the story spinning in new directions.

Not having these very important interactions between series in a key scene is what readers are describing when they say a book is “slow” or “nothing happens.” Here’s what Stuart Horwitz has to say about it in Blueprint your Bestseller:

When series interact, anything can happen. They can conflict and send one another spinning. One series can slow another down or stop it all together . . . [But] if you don’t have key scenes, if your series don’t intersect that often, you may have found the root of the problem with your manuscript. This often comes about in the middle of the narrative, where the length of time a reader has invested in your work is not being repaid – the payoff lies in being able to make the connections that key scenes produce when series intersect.

All scenes should be good scenes, but not all good scenes are key scenes. So how to differentiate between a good scene and a key scene? Here’s Horwitz again:

A good scene may be an important scene, a memorable scene, but it is not necessarily a key scene unless it contains the maximum interaction of series.

Where is a good scene and where is a key scene in Rowling’s outline?

The “Hagrid + Grawp” column is full of examples of good scenes. Rowling obviously changed a number of things between the time when she wrote this outline and when she finished writing the book, but you can still see that many of her good scenes for the “Hagrid +Grawp” series made it into the final cut. For example, Chapter 30 is titled “Grawp” and that’s what the majority of the chapter is about: It focuses on the “Hagrid + Grawp” series with pretty much no interaction with any of the other series. That’s a good scene, but it’s not a key scene.

Now take a look at the scene that deals with the aftermath of Harry dreaming about Mr. Weasley being bitten by a snake. It starts in Chapter 22, “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.” In this scene, we’re dealing with multiple series interacting with each other: the Hall of Prophecy (because that’s where Mr. Weasley was attacked); Ginny (because Harry watches her reaction when she’s told about her father’s injuries); Dumbledore’s Army (because the Weasley kids make up a sizable chunk of the D.A.), and the Order of the Phoenix (because Mr. Weasley was injured while standing guard for the Order). That’s already four of the six series on Rowling’s outline. It’s a key scene.

(I’d also like to point out that this scene is the midpoint of the story. This is when everything changes. Until then, Harry’s dreams appear to be just dreams, but this dream is real. Mr. Weasley’s attack is the catalyst that forces Harry to become a warrior and start taking action. Plot points, such as the midpoint, usually involve the collision of multiple series because that’s when everything starts coming together. For more on story structure, click here.)

One of Rowling’s biggest strengths as a writer is that she is so adept at tightly intertwining her series so that everything in the story feels like it has a purpose (even if we don’t know why at first).

Stay tuned for the next post where we’ll discuss how to determine your main series and how you can use series to create suspense, surprise and shock.

More posts on The Book Architecture Method: 

How Rowling Turned a Story Idea into a Best-Selling Series (Rowling’s Outline and the Book Architecture Method, Pt I)

How Rowling Formed Her Narrative Arc (Rowling’s Outline and the Book Architecture Method, Pt II)

How Rowling Developed Suspense, Surprise, and Shock (Rowling’s Outline and the Book Architecture Method, Pt IV)

*Photo by Gabrielle Courchesne Delisle @ 500px / CC BY-ND