: Motivation Reaction Units? In tightening up some chapters, I began to question some of the structure of my chapters. Has anyone ever come across the method of writing scenes as breaking them

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I found thinking about Scene/Sequel helpful in learning to avoid pointless scenes, both while revising and during outlining.

If you want to read more about it, definitely check out the book he got it from, Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, and also Jack Bickham's Scene & Structure.

It does seem formulaic, but that can be helpful when you're trying something new, and the Bickham book in particular provides plenty of variations on the formula.

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When I'm writing well, I don't think deliberately about MRUs. They end up in my writing anyway, but I don't think explicitly about needing a motivation or needing a reaction.

But when I'm stuck, I find MRUs really useful. I map out a few plausible "motivations" and a few plausible reactions, maybe a few more subsequent motivations and reactions. After a few minutes of this, I have beat that I want to write, and I write it, and continue from there.

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I find these sorts of formulas, well... formulaic. If I'm going to read about how to write, I want to read someone who HAS successfully written, a lot, and well. Someone like, say, Stephen King. And when I read his On Writing, I really don't see the craft being reduced to a math problem.

I won't say that this sort of thing wouldn't help anybody, but I know that it doesn't help me. I spend too much time trying to twist and contort my writing to fit into the formula, or I discard things that I know work because they don't fit and I can't make them, and the whole thing takes the organic joy out of the process. For me.

To the poster's credit, he does acknowledge that the time to use these tools is AFTER you've already written your first draft. According to him, you write, you analyze according to the formula, and you rewrite as needed to conform. According to me, you write, you analyze according to the sense you've developed after decades of reading and studying well-crafted fiction, and you rewrite as needed to conform to the story you want to tell. Maybe these two paths will take you to the same place... but I like the scenery along my route a lot better!

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