HOW TO CREATE THAT "MILESTONE" SCENE

I'm looking at you, 10 Things I Hate About You car scene.

You know those scenes in books and movies that you can just never seem to get out of your head? The ones that make your heart jump, tear in half, or just fall to the bottom of your stomach? Those are milestone scenes.

If you read through your novel and don't have a few scenes that make you put your book down and think, "I can't believe I wrote this," you're missing your milestone scenes. These are the scenes that get your readers emotionally invested in your characters and that drive your plot forward.

Some examples of milestone scenes

Let's take a look at a classic, Louisa Alcott's Little Women. A few of the milestone scenes in that novel are:

1. Jo's heartbreaking monologue to her mother about her struggle to balance loneliness and ambition.

2. Jo's realization that she was too late with her letter as she learns of Teddy and Amy's engagement.

In both of these scenes, we catch a glimpse of Jo's inner world in very emotionally-charged moments. We see her break, and how she responds to that leaves an impression on us.

The build-up to a milestone scene

Writing a milestone scene takes time. You can't jump right out of the gate with them. After all, an audience needs to spend time with something to really appreciate it. There is no immediate physical attraction or visual aesthetic when it comes to writing. You have to allow your readers time to form an attachment to characters as people before you can build up to your milestone scene. Let them fall in love with your character, make them relatable and messy and endearing.

Once you have let your readers spend time with a character, gotten them invested in a relationship between two characters, or have them rooting for a certain outcome of some point of conflict the character is going through, let it all fall apart. Leave them hopeless, have them break down. Maybe it is loud, like in my first example from Little Women. A tearful outburst, yelling, pacing, crying for everyone to see. Or maybe it is more like the second scene, a quiet, silent suffering known only to the character and the reader. Either way, allowing your reader to watch them go through a painfully human experience is what really leads them to relate to and love your characters.

How do I know if a scene I've written is a milestone scene?

If it shows who my characters really are.

When I started conceptualizing All the Beautiful Things, I started out with just a few scenes playing through my head that I really loved. Some of them weren't even really scenes, just snippets of dialogue that I knew really carried my message. That's all I really went into writing that book with. A few characters playing out three or four scenes that had no real context. But those few scenes had me hooked in their story before it had even really been flushed out at all.

These scenes should show who your characters are at their worst. They should bring to light the side of a character that isn't well known to those around them. How they deal with loss, an unexpected decision, the quiet parts of their life that are overlooked but happen to say a lot about them as a person. These are difficult moments, and watching how they respond to those challenges should leave an impression on your readers.

If you want to know whether you have those milestone scenes down or not, flush them out entirely, and then let an unbiased party read them. If they are already hooked in and craving more, you're set.