The Turnip in Lightspeed June’s Lightspeed features the most recent in my Tales of the Great Sweet Sea series, called The Turnip. It is based on the Grimm story of the same name, one of the odder stories in the Grimm canon, which has always fascinated me.
The "scene-and-sequel" thing elicits from me the same reaction as pretty much any structural advice in writing, which is that it illustrates a useful principle -- in this case, "you need to give your characters (and your readers) time to react to things, not just hammer one thing after another without respite" -- and that beyond the level of the principle, it rapidly turns into an unhelpful straitjacket. In the third Rook and Rose book, Alyc and I have an entire *chapter* that's basically "sequel," because it's entirely devoted to the fallout of the previous chapter. Which isn't to say that nothing happens in it; just that what happens are character beats, not the plot as such moving forward.
And that in turn makes me think of the game Prime Time Adventures, which explicitly says that every scene should advance either the plot or the characters. My reaction: "Why not both?" I think the "why not both?" feeling is why I may be more prone to writing scenes that are, in your metrical analogy (which I like), trochaic: I want to *end* them on something that sends them forward into the next beat (advances the plot), but they may well *begin* with a moment of breathing room (advances character). But do I alternate "event reaction event reaction event reaction" the whole way through? No, I do not. Some parts of the story need "event event event." Some, like the chapter I mentioned above, need a lot of reaction time, because *not* including that means the characters will feel thin and underdeveloped. For example, you might want a dactylic foot when an event involves two viewpoint characters, and both of them need a chance to react to it. (Or even if they're not viewpoint.)
So that's a longwinded way of setting myself up to fly the Latin nerd flag high and say that maybe sometimes your narrative meter is dactylic hexameter (which, despite the name, is made up of both dacytls and spondees, the latter being two stressed beats in a row) or hendecasyllabic or something. :-P The principle of "give characters a chance to react" is good, but a story will feel less rigid if the pattern of stressed and unstressed beats flows to fit the needs of the narrative.
(Redacted here: a whooooooole rant about why prologues can be excellent and necessary . . .)
The "scene-and-sequel" thing elicits from me the same reaction as pretty much any structural advice in writing, which is that it illustrates a useful principle -- in this case, "you need to give your characters (and your readers) time to react to things, not just hammer one thing after another without respite" -- and that beyond the level of the principle, it rapidly turns into an unhelpful straitjacket. In the third Rook and Rose book, Alyc and I have an entire *chapter* that's basically "sequel," because it's entirely devoted to the fallout of the previous chapter. Which isn't to say that nothing happens in it; just that what happens are character beats, not the plot as such moving forward.
And that in turn makes me think of the game Prime Time Adventures, which explicitly says that every scene should advance either the plot or the characters. My reaction: "Why not both?" I think the "why not both?" feeling is why I may be more prone to writing scenes that are, in your metrical analogy (which I like), trochaic: I want to *end* them on something that sends them forward into the next beat (advances the plot), but they may well *begin* with a moment of breathing room (advances character). But do I alternate "event reaction event reaction event reaction" the whole way through? No, I do not. Some parts of the story need "event event event." Some, like the chapter I mentioned above, need a lot of reaction time, because *not* including that means the characters will feel thin and underdeveloped. For example, you might want a dactylic foot when an event involves two viewpoint characters, and both of them need a chance to react to it. (Or even if they're not viewpoint.)
So that's a longwinded way of setting myself up to fly the Latin nerd flag high and say that maybe sometimes your narrative meter is dactylic hexameter (which, despite the name, is made up of both dacytls and spondees, the latter being two stressed beats in a row) or hendecasyllabic or something. :-P The principle of "give characters a chance to react" is good, but a story will feel less rigid if the pattern of stressed and unstressed beats flows to fit the needs of the narrative.
(Redacted here: a whooooooole rant about why prologues can be excellent and necessary . . .)
Congratulations on the sale to Fantasy and hitting the Adamant Triple Crown!! Very much looking forward to reading "The Turnip" later today xx