A homework question came up about plotting scenes above and below the Plot Planner line.
1) The Plot Planner line shows the steady increase in tension as the story rises to the Crisis and and then again to the Climax . The Plot Planner is also a line that divides scenes with lots of conflict, tension, suspense from those scenes that are quieter and where the protagonist is in control.
Often in a rewrite after a major revision, scenes below the line switch from scenes to summary in order to move the character quickly from one dramatic action scene to the next. (For instance, if you find that a scene you wrote to move characters from one location to another does not have much external dramatic action, consider turning the scene into summary. Allows for a faster pace in the first quarter of the story, moving the reader smoothly to the middle.)
2) Also, seeing scenes lined up above the line on the Plot Planner often frees up ideas how to incorporate two pretty good scenes to make one terrific scene.
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