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Goals in a scene
Say there are three boys: Bob, John, and Vince. They have excaped from the cops for posession of marijuana and are hiding in Bob's apartment. So Bob, the leader of the group, tells them that they need to go out as little as possible. But one night, while Bob is asleep, John and Vince stay out late. So they eventually go home, go up the stairs, open the door to the room, undress and get in bed. Now, say at the end of your scene, you say, "Vince and John were glad Bob hadn't woken up, for he would have beat them up."
Re-wind. What was the point in your scene?
Instead, near the beginning of your scene, if you said: John began talking to his best friend Julie at the bar. He happened to look at his watch, then gasped. It was nearly midnight.
"What's wrong?" asked Julie.
"I have got to get home! Bob's gonna beat the tar out of me if I don't. I gotta find Vince..."
This is better. It changes what your reader thinks. Now, say that Vince and John get home at one o'clock. The slowly open the door, which accidently slides from John's grip and hits a chair that was nearby, knocking it over. After a moment, they continue. They go up creaking stairs. Oh no. Would they wake Bob?
The reader is more into it.
Now, your goals don't always have to be comepleted. Think of, say, baseball. If they didn't keep track of the runs, where would the excitement be? So people are reading to see if Vince and John win the game (get in bed safely) or lose (Bob beats them both).
Now, keep in mind, everyone has goals. Say you had an FBI agent who is investigating a kidnapping case. So him and an old man who knows something about it meets him at Chile's. They order food. The waiter/waitress' job is to get them their food. Characters without goals disrupt the flow of you story, which pulls your reader out from what is important.
Like I said in my other "Goal Post" is that scenes without goals is like painting without a paintbrush. You can do it, but honestly, which is better?
An excersise you can do is go through your favorite novel or move or whatever and pick out five scenes. Now, what are the goals in those scenes? The better you can pick out goals, the better you can insert them into your scenes.
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