How John Green Turns an Ordinary Moment Into an Exciting Scene

One of the best ways to learn how to edit your book is to study other excellent books.

The best-sellers. The award winners. The ones your readers are reading and loving.

So in this episode, that’s what we’re going to do.

I’m breaking down the first scene of Looking for Alaska by John Green to show you how it works.

Looking for Alaska was best-selling author John Green’s debut novel. It won the 2006 Printz award, the highest award in young adult literature. And in 2019, it was adapted into an eight-episode show on Hulu.

All that to say: this book works really, really well.

And in this episode, I’ll show you how John Green opens the story with an excellent opening scene.

You’ll learn:

• How John Green turns an ordinary, everyday moment into an interesting scene
• What changes in this scene—and why that matters
• Why the first and last lines of this scene are so powerful
• How to answer all the scene analysis questions from episodes 8 and 9 for this scene (and use them to think like an editor)
• And more!

If you’re writing a YA novel or a novel set in the regular world, this scene is a perfect example of how to do that well.

And no matter what genre you’re writing, you’ll learn how to think like an editor so you can make your scenes even better.

Before you listen, be sure to read the opening scene of Looking for Alaska so you can follow along. (Don’t worry—it’s short!) Read the scene for free here.

And be sure to download the free guide to this analysis. Get the guide at alicesudlow.com/lfa.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Analysis of Looking for Alaska: alicesudlow.com/lfa
• Read the first scene: Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Ep. 8: What Is a Scene? The Ultimate Guide to Write and Edit Amazing Scenes
• Ep. 9: 5 Essential Questions to Fix Boring Scenes

Transcript

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Alice Sudlow 0:00

Stories are about change, and this is the structure in which that change happens. And when you can master the structure, when you can master writing a scene in which something changes, you can tell any story you like and you can tell it really, really well in a way that hooks readers from beginning to end. Welcome to your next draft. Today I'm going to break down a scene of a novel and show you how it works because scenes are the building blocks of story. In fact, they're tiny, complete stories all on their own. And so one of the most important skills that you can develop as a writer is the skill of writing and editing great scenes. That's what the last couple episodes of the podcast have been all about. In episode eight, I shared the definition that I use for a scene, and I outlined what every scene must include, and in episode nine I shared a series of questions that you can use to analyze what's happening in your scenes and whether they're working or not. But I hear from writers all the time that just hearing these concepts once or twice is not enough to fully master them. Plus, it's a lot easier to grasp the theory of how scenes work when you look at examples from actual scenes. So in this episode, I'm going to do a scene analysis of a scene that works from a published book. I'm going to analyze the first scene of looking for Alaska by John Green, which is one of my favorite young adult novels. I'm going to apply everything that I talked about in episodes eight and nine. So if you haven't listened to those yet, be sure to check them out after this episode for even more exploration of the concepts that I'm going to talk about. And if you enjoy this analysis and you find it helpful, let me know. I'm probably going to make this a series where I periodically select a new book to analyze and I break down the first scene so that you can see how it works. This kind of analysis is really fun for me, and I hope that it's really helpful to you as well. So here's how this is going to work. First, I'll give you a quick synopsis of the scene. Then I'll look at some basic information about the scene, the word count, the characters, the location, the time span, and the markers that indicate to me where the scene begins and ends. Then I'll apply five scene analysis questions to determine the story event, or put another way, the purpose of the scene. Next, I'll break the scene down according to the six elements of story, the six moments that every scene must have, so that you can see how this scene is plotted. And finally, I'll give a little high level overview of why the scene works and how it plays into the larger story of the novel. Before we get started, I want to give you two things so you can follow along with this episode. First before I analyze this scene, you can go read it for yourself. If you go find the book on Amazon, you can use the look Inside feature to read the first few pages for free. That actually includes the first four or five scenes. They're quite short. I've included the link to the book on Amazon in the show notes, so you can head there now and read the scene. And second, I've also compiled the analysis that I'm about to share with you into a guide that you can download. If you listened to episode eight or nine, you've seen the scene analysis worksheet. I completed that worksheet for the scene, so you can download it and follow along with my analysis in this episode. You can get that download by going to alice sudlow.com/lfa. And of course that link is also in the show. All right, ready for this analysis. I'm excited for this. Let's dive in. Let's start off with the synopsis of the scene. Of course, this episode will make the most sense. If you head over to the link in the show notes and you give the scene a quick read. It's short, I promise, but if you're driving or you're away from your phone, don't worry. I've got you covered. The title of this chapter is 136 Days Before. That's sort of a cross between a chapter title and a chapter number, and it's how John Green marks all the chapters in this book. They start at before and they count down to a midpoint in the story where something really dramatic happens and then they switch to after and they start counting up. And this scene opens with this line: the week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going away party. I wanted to read that line as is because it just gives us so much great context. You know exactly where this whole story is beginning. So in this scene, miles attends his going away party. He isn't happy about it. He didn't want a going away party, and worse, only two people show up, two people he's not even really friends with. He pretty much fails at making small talk with them until they go home. And then his parents look really sad and they ask him if this is why he wants to leave because no one came to his party and he tells them, no it's not. But they still look really sad and they clearly don't understand why he wants to leave. And he knows that his mom really doesn't want to let him go, even though his dad attended the same boarding school when he was Miles' age. So Miles goes to his room and he pulls out a biography of Francois Rabelais, forgive my messy French accent, and he opens it to a line that's really compelling to him. Rabelais' last words I go to seek a great perhaps. And Miles explains to his parents that that's why he's leaving, because he doesn't want to wait his whole life to start seeking a great perhaps, and he definitely won't find his great perhaps here in this boring life with these two incredibly dull acquaintances that were the only people who came to his going away party. And then he and his parents sit back down on the couch together and they're quiet for a while, and then they turn on the TV and they eat the dips from the party while they watch the History Channel. And the last part of the last line is, and as going away, parties go, it certainly could have been worse. So that's what happens in this scene. Let's take a look at some scene basics to see what we're working with. First, the word count. This scene is roughly 900 words. If you listen to episode eight on what a scene is, you know that the general range that I gave for the length of a scene was 1000 to 3000 words. So this is on the shorter side of that range. And in fact, in looking for Alaska, there are a lot of shorter scenes like this. There are some scenes that are even shorter than this one, and then there are a lot of scenes that are between 1200 and 1800 words. The longest scene is, I believe, roughly 2,400 words, but that's an anomaly. This is a book that's built on shorter scenes. They're quick, they're punchy, they keep you turning the page, and they keep the story moving. Next, let's talk about the boundaries of the scene. If you listen to episode eight, you know that I use three indicators as likely boundaries for the. One set of characters, one location, and one time span. If all three of those things change, the scene is probably over. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but in this case it does apply to this scene. Let's take a look. First characters. The characters in this scene are Miles. Miles', mom and dad and Marie Lawson and Will from school halfway through the scene, Marie and will leave, and then it's just Miles and his parents. That's a change in characters, but the scene doesn't end yet. And one of the ways that we know this is because the location and the time span haven't changed the location. Miles's parents' living room, we're here at the site of the failed going away party from beginning to end. Miles very briefly leaves the living room to go to his room to grab a book, but he comes back immediately. And the time span, I would guess that the scene spans about two hours. That's probably the length of an awkward failed party and the debriefing afterwards, and there are no breaks here, miles doesn't say. A couple hours after Marie and Will left, my parents came up to my room to ask me whether I was okay. The scene just flows straight through that whole time span of two hours. So this scene does follow my general guideline that a scene usually includes one set of characters, one location, and one time span. Before we move on from this, I also want to specify how I know where the scene starts and ends, because this can be really tricky for writers to figure out when they first start looking for scenes. Sometimes it's really obvious, but sometimes the boundaries between scenes are really hard to find even in your own writing. Happily, for us in this case, it's easy. We have several clues. First, there's the visual look on the page. You can't see it, but I'm going to describe it to you. There's a chapter heading at the start. Remember that's 136 days before, and then the next visual break is the next chapter, heading 128 days before. There are no line breaks anywhere in the scene, which is a common way that authors delineate between multiple scenes in a single chapter, and the chapter is just 900 words, which is pretty short and tough to fit more than one scene. in. Second, those boundaries that we just looked at. One set of characters, one location, one time span. Those are all met within this scene. And when the next chapter begins, it's set a week later when Miles arrives at boarding school in Alabama. So that's a really clear change. And finally, and most importantly, this scene includes a story event, a single event that moves the story forward and contributes to the overall plot. It also includes all six elements of story structure, everything from inciting incidents to resolution, and then it stops. We haven't done that analysis yet, but that's what's coming next, and I'll show you how that works. Let's get right into it. To find the story event in the scene, I'll ask five questions about the scene. They'll help us drill down to the most important action and change in the scene. First, what's literally happening on the page? Miles' parents throw him a going away party, nice and straightforward. Second, what tactic are the characters using to get what they want? Miles wants his parents to understand why he's leaving and so he tries sharing something personal and meaningful to him to explain himself and hopefully win them over to his way of thinking. And I'll add to this, that before he shares something personal, he's kind of got a grit his teeth and just deal with it kind of attitude. He just wants to get things over with to wait it out until this all dies down. But his parents keep harping on why is he leaving? Is he really sad here? And so he's gotta change his tactic. Third, what values change for one or more characters? I'm going to list several changes that I see in this scene. First, there's failed party to successful party. Miles starts out feeling pretty bad about how this whole party is going down, but by the end of the scene when he's sitting with his parents on the couch eating dip, and watching the History Channel, he thinks that this really isn't such a bad going away party After all. Then there's misunderstood to understood miles'. Parents start off thinking that he needs a going away party. Here's a line from the first paragraph, when Miles knows that no one is going to come to his party still, my mother persevered a wash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her for all these years. Then after the two guests leave, his parents ask him all these questions about why he's leaving, which show they really don't get it at all. His mom thinks that he's sad because he doesn't have friends, and his dad thinks that he's going to follow in his father's footsteps. But really, miles wants to go to seek a great perhaps, and when he explains that to them, they get quiet and they stop pushing back against his plan to leave and they just sit there quietly together and accept him. And the other change that I see here is a change from self-protection to vulnerability. Throughout the party when Miles is surrounded by his parents and these couple of guests that he doesn't want to hang out with. Miles is pretty closed off. He doesn't want to engage very much. He's not going to try very hard at small talk. He's not really going to work at explaining himself to his parents. He's going for self-protection here. He's just kind of shut down, not really engaging. And then he chooses vulnerability. He decides to share with his parents why he's really leaving. So we get that shift from self protection to vulnerability. And that brings us to question four. What is the most important change in the scene? Here, I'm going to look over all of those changes that I listed, and I'll choose the one that's most important to the larger plot of this book, which of course is something that's easier to do when you know the plot of the whole book. So I probably have an advantage over you here. I'm going to choose misunderstood to understood, and here's why. This book is about Miles's internal journey of growth as a person, as he goes to seek a great, perhaps he's going to think at some point in this book that he's found it and then he's going to experience some unexpected tragedy and he'll have to reframe what seeking a great perhaps really means. This isn't really a story about learning to throw successful parties. It's about Miles's journey of internal growth, of understanding himself and seeing and understanding the people around him. And so Miles starting out misunderstood by his parents and ending the scene understood is right in line with that overall story. Fifth, let's put it all together. What's the story event? I'm going to combine our answers to all of those questions that we just talked about into one single sentence that describes the whole scene. Here it is. After a lackluster going away party Miles tries to help his parents understand why he's leaving for boarding school. That's it. That's the whole scene right there in one sentence. I could have skipped the whole synopsis at the beginning of the episode and told you just that and you'd know everything you need to know about the scene and how it contributes to the story as a whole. So that's our story. Now let's talk about how it works. The plot on the page that gets us from the start of this lackluster party to the end with Miles sitting with his parents in newfound understanding. Let's break down the scene according to the six elements of story. First, the inciting incident. Something happens to disrupt the protagonist's normal. Here our inciting incident is that Miles's mom is throwing him a going away party. That's the disruption in Miles's life. He's chugging along like normal, and then his mom decides to throw him a party that he doesn't want next. Progressive complications. The conflict escalates as more complications happen, these events might make things better or worse, but they certainly make things more complicated. I'll list out some progressive complications that I see in this scene. First, if we start at the very beginning, in the first paragraph, we have the fact that Miles knows that no one is going to show, but his mom is relentlessly optimistic about this party and somewhat disconnected from his reality, and she insists on throwing it anyway, even though he tries to stop it. Then something worse happens. He thought the worst thing that could happen would be that no one shows up, but no: two deeply uninteresting people that he doesn't care about do show up, which is exactly the wrong number of people to come to a party next. He can't figure out how to make small talk with them, and he also isn't bothered to try. But his mom extends the awkwardness by chatting with them for ages, and when they leave, miles sits on the couch with his parents and he feels them pitying him. So those are all progressive complications, new events that escalate the scene. Next we have the turning point. This is the largest, most problematic progressive complication, which forces the protagonist to respond in this scene. I consider this to be the moment when Miles' parents each offer a reasonable explanation that has nothing to do with Miles' true motivation. Miles's mom asks whether Miles wants to leave because no one came to his party, and his dad asked whether he's going because he wants to follow in his dad's footsteps. And in asking this, both of them reveal that they really just don't get it. Just like they didn't get it when he told them that he didn't want or need a going away party and it wasn't going to go well if they threw one, which leads us to the crisis. In order to respond to the turning point, the protagonist must make a difficult choice. This is a choice between two bad things, best bad choice, or two good things, irreconcilable goods here. Miles is faced with this choice. will he reveal something personal to him, the true reason that he's leaving for boarding school and risk his parents still misunderstanding him even when he's shared something vulnerable? Or will he choose not to take that risk and not share that personal truth and guarantee that they'll continue to misunderstand him. And we see the choice that he makes in the climax. This is the moment when the protagonist takes action on the crisis choice and experiences the consequences. Miles chooses vulnerable honesty. He goes to his room, he gets a book that's important to him, and he reads them the line that's inspired this whole thing. I go to seek a great perhaps, and he hopes that they'll understand that he has to leave to find it because he will not find it here. And after that climax, we get the resolution. This is the new normal. After the climax, something has changed since the scene began with the inciting incident. Here Miles sits back down on the couch between his parents in front of the spinach artichoke dip and the television, and they sit in silence for a while with this feeling of togetherness and understanding. And eventually they turn on the TV and they watch the History Channel together. And Miles thinks this going away party isn't so bad after all. And what I want you to notice here is how different this is from the beginning of the scene. Miles goes from watching his mom put together this party that he really doesn't want, and thinking about how badly it's going to flop to actually sitting with his parents and enjoying their company and thinking that this right here is a pretty decent going away party. And he goes from feeling like his parents are misunderstanding him at every turn, to feeling this quiet support and understanding from his parents in this resolution. We see the results of that misunderstood to understood value shift that we identified earlier. We watched misunderstood happen throughout the inciting incidents and progressive complications in the turning point, the crisis and the climax. We saw the moment where it changed from, misunderstood to understood, and in the resolution we see understood really happening and what that looks like in Miles's life. This right. is how stories work. It's how scenes work, it's how acts work, it's how novels work, it's how stories work. Stories are about change, and this is the structure in which that change happens. And when you can master the structure, when you can master writing a scene in which something changes, you can tell any story you like and you can tell it really, really well in a way that hooks readers from beginning to end. Now, I also promised you that I'd give you some high level overview of why this scene works and how it plays into the larger story of the novel. So I want to point out some things that I think this scene does really well, both on its own and in context. One thing that I think is great about the scene is that it's small and focused and normal. There's a really clear change here. Misunderstood to understood. And better yet, that change comes with some internal shifts for miles. He goes from self-protective to vulnerable, and that's a choice that we're going to see him be challenged to make throughout the rest of the book. We're really starting off from the very beginning with the kinds of stakes that are going to be challenging for miles throughout this whole entire story. But with all of that, it's still a pretty small, low stakes scene. It's setting the scene, so to speak, for the larger story. It's like the beginning of an adventure story when a character in a fantasy land leaves on a quest. Except that Miles lives in Florida in 2005, and for him leaving on a quest means eating spinach artichoke dip with his parents in front of the TV before he goes to boarding school. So this is a really excellent example of a scene that reflects a regular, everyday true to life moment, but it uses great scene structure to do it and make sure that it's interesting all the way through. Did you know that eating spinach artichoke dip could make for such a good story? And then in the larger context of the novel as a whole? I love that the scene introduces the stakes and themes that we're going to play with throughout the whole book. If you read the book, what you'll find is that Miles spends a lot of time searching for his great perhaps, and wondering what it is, and then wondering whether that's really a worthwhile quest or even the most interesting question for him to be asking here. And also it introduces his parents, these characters who we can see want the best for him, and who may or may not always know what that looks like, but they're going to support him in what he needs, whether he realizes it or. And the choice of whether to be honest and vulnerable with his parents or not is going to be another big thing for miles throughout this. So this scene has really strong story structure within itself. It takes a really banal, boring, normal moment of everyday life, and it adds just enough conflict and story structure to make it interesting, and it introduces the stakes and overall goal of the story and tells us where we're headed next, which is exactly what you want to do in the beginning of your. So there you go. That's how the opening scene of looking for Alaska works, and I think it works really, really well. And as a great example of an effective scene in a young adult novel about a teenager grappling with his reality and being really challenged to shift his worldview as he matures and grows. like I mentioned earlier, I do have a free download for you, a guide to all of that analysis that I just did. I filled out the scene analysis worksheet for the scene, and you can download that guide and reference everything that I just talked about there. If this episode was helpful for you, I encourage you to download the guide and then go read the full scene and map everything I say in the guide onto that scene. See if you can identify the things that change in the scene, the story event, all the elements of story from inciting incident to resolution. That's excellent practice to start seeing how all this scene theory and story theory really works. You can get that guide by going to alice sudlow.com/lfa, and you can go read the first chapter of looking for Alaska on Amazon for free. Check the show notes for that link. And to take it a step farther, I want you to follow up my analysis with your own analysis. You have two choices here. First, you could go ahead and read the second scene of looking for Alaska and complete the same analysis for that scene. It's a bit longer than this one and a little bit trickier to analyze, but I think you're up to the. I'll give you a hint. The scene begins with the line. Florida was plenty hot, certainly and humid too, and ends with the line. Alright, meet you at the lake in a few minutes. Then the colonel nodded. Or your second choice is to pull out your own manuscript and do this analysis for your own first scene. Can you find everything that we talked about here in your scene? Can you find your story, event, every story element from inciting incident to resolution. This, after all, is the real goal for you to use the story theory I'm talking about here to figure out exactly what changes you should make to your own story analysis is really fun. Well, I think it's fun anyway. We all know that I absolutely love editing. But the more exciting thing for you as an author is to go forward in your scene edits with more confidence and making more effective changes to your story. So go try your hands at analyzing a scene, either the second scene of looking for Alaska or the first scene of your own novel. And be sure to grab the scene analysis guide that I created for this first scene of looking for Alaska so that you can look through it and see how all of this really works. Get that guide by going to alice sudlow.com/lfa and enjoy analyzing some amazing scenes.