You line up the scenes that popped into your head, then glue them together with transition paragraphs. You reread it, and for some reason the middle sags.
Each scene works fine on its own.
Hmm.
I don't think the problem is what's inside the scenes. It's that there's no slope between them. My fix is what I call the taboo-and-light staircase: each scene breaks a bigger taboo than the last, in a space that's a little brighter and more open.
Today we're stealing that technique from a pretty extreme source: Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, a very short novel published in 1928.
You don't need to have read it. I'll explain only as much of the plot as you need.
From a Saucer of Milk to a Church: The Episodes Form a Staircase
"Can't I just put the scenes in order of rising excitement?"
That's half right. But what exactly is rising?
Story of the Eye follows a boy, the narrator, and a girl named Simone. Their games escalate from scene to scene. Roughly, the order goes like this:
A secret game between the two of them, with a saucer of milk and eggs.
A wild party with their friends.
The madness and death of a girl named Marcelle.
A death in front of a crowd at a Spanish bullring.
Desecration and murder in a church in Seville.
Look closely. The acts aren't just getting more extreme. What widens is whose taboo is being broken:
Just the two of them.
Their circle of friends.
The line between life and death.
A public spectacle.
The holy.
The target of the transgression grows from the private, to society, to religion, one step at a time. That's the key.
The later scenes also copy existing rituals and turn them upside down. A bullfight is already a ritual staged as a spectacle. In the church scene, the trappings of confession and Mass are put to blasphemous use.
A ritual is a form whose meaning is fixed down to the last detail. That's why breaking one hits so hard.
Reading this book through the idea of transgression is familiar territory in criticism, by the way. (The best-known example is Michel Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression," published in the memorial issue of the journal Critique, nos. 195-196, 1963, after Bataille's death.)
Move the Setting for the Image, Not the Psychology
"But don't you need a reason to change locations? Like what the character feels?"
Right. That's what we've all been taught.
Roland Barthes says the exact opposite. He wrote an essay called "The Metaphor of the Eye" for that same memorial issue.
In his view, the protagonist of this story isn't a person. It's an object: the eye.
The eye becomes an egg, a testicle, the sun. That's a chain of round shapes. Meanwhile, tears become milk, then urine. That's a chain of liquids.
Barthes calls the eye the matrix of a path of objects, each one a kind of "station" of the eye metaphor.
Here's where it gets interesting. According to Barthes, the episodes are decided in advance by those stations. They go to the sanatorium at night so the moon can light up Marcelle's wet sheet. They go to Madrid for the bullfight, for the raw testicles and the matador Granero's eye. They go to Seville so the sky can give off a yellowish, liquid light.
What does that mean?
The reason to change locations isn't a feeling. It's "because I want to show you this image next." In Barthes's terms, moving the setting isn't about cause and effect. It's a way of making the metaphor visible.
Readers don't really want psychological explanations. What they want is "What are you going to show me next?"
If the image feels necessary, the reason for the move will follow.
From a Dark Wardrobe to a Blazing Sun
"So which scenes should I show, and in what order?"
Here, pay attention to how bright each space is.
Think back to the first half, set in France:
A closed-up house.
The Norman wardrobe where Marcelle hides.
A sanatorium.
Moonlit nights.
Storms and mud.
It's dark, cramped, and damp. In the second half, in Spain, all of that flips:
The glare of the sun at the bullring.
The melting heat and light of Seville.
And finally, the sanctuary of the church.
From enclosed rooms to public spectacle, and from public spectacle to sacred ground. This shift in space lines up exactly with the staircase of taboos we just saw.
The switch from dark to light works too. Night and moon belong to the liquid side, like drops and tears. The midday sun belongs to the round side, the eye. The two chains of metaphor take turns, right there in the landscape.
Amazing!
Even after you forget the plot, the feel of "from a dark wardrobe to a dazzling sun" somehow stays with you. That's the power of structure.
How to Reorder Your Scene List, Starting Today
If you already have a scene list, this takes about 30 minutes.
-
Write every scene on its own card
One card per scene. A single line in a notebook works too. -
Write the taboo each scene breaks, in one word
For example: "a promise to parents," "the group's rules," "the law," "respect for the dead," "faith." If a scene breaks nothing, write "none." -
Reorder by how wide the taboo reaches
Yourself → two people → friends → society → the sacred.
Be careful if two scenes in a row sit on the same level. -
Note each scene's brightness and openness
Night or day? A closed room or open ground? Nobody watching, or a crowd? -
Line up the taboo steps with the space steps
When the taboo goes up a step, make the space a step brighter and wider too. For scenes that don't match, try moving just the setting. -
Rewrite each move as "the image I want to show"
Ask yourself, "What image do I want the reader to see in the next scene?" Then take your characters somewhere that image is visible. -
Put one ritual in the final scene
A wedding, a funeral, a graduation, a festival, a meeting. Pick one form with a fixed meaning and turn it upside down.
That's it.
One step up in taboo. One step up in light.
Design your scenes that way, and readers will climb the staircase on their own.