New Goals: The End is Never the End (Scene Alchemy #7)
Have you ever beta read for someone else, or exchanged feedback in a writing group?
If so, you probably know how it feels when there’s something just a little bit...off about a book. Things happen in the story. Maybe the characters even have goals. But everything feels disjointed somehow: a series of events that just sort of happen, rather than a single, focused story.
I see these novels all the time in my work as a developmental editor, and the problem almost always comes from the same root—the author has failed to properly build the chain of cause and effect that story needs to come alive.
That’s the issue we’ll be solving today, as we look at the final link in the chain of scene structure: the protagonist’s new goal.
“And So” vs. “And Then”
Think of your favourite books, and you’ll probably find they do one thing exceptionally well: everything feels inevitable. Not predetermined. Just the sum total of everything that’s happened before. Every choice the protagonist made, every mistake or bad decision, it has all brought them to this moment.
It’s one of the things that makes a book impossible to put down. Novels like this cast a spell over us. Everything feels so important. Like we’re right there with the characters, and everything is on the line.
Stories like this follow an “and so” structure, where everything that happens leads directly to what happens next:
Evelyn escapes from the dungeon where her former mentor imprisoned her. She needs somewhere to hide, so she goes to a tavern at the edge of the city. She must find some way to contact her allies, so she talks to a smuggler. But he recognises her from a “Wanted” poster and sells her out to the city guard instead.
Every event is another link in the chain, welling up naturally from what happened before.
Compare that to our disjointed, “series of events” style book:
Evelyn escapes from the dungeon. She doesn’t know where to go, so she goes to a tavern. With nothing else to do, she meets a stranger. A while later, the city guard show up to arrest her.
It’s the same series of events, but a completely different story. In the first example, Evelyn needs somewhere to hide and so she goes to the tavern. In the second, she needs somewhere to hide and then ends up at the inn.
There’s no clear connection, and no sense of how one thing leads to the next.
This is where the final step in our scene flow becomes so important.
Building a Chain Reaction
By this point, we’ve already done the hard work:
Our character has a temporary goal, something they need to achieve their goal for the novel.
They take some kind of action to try and reach that temporary goal.
A problem or obstacle shows up to ruin their day.
The character tries, fails, and tries again to overcome that problem.
We reach the outcome, where they either achieve their temporary goal or fail.
Either way, some new issue or complication appears to keep the reader on the hook.
All we need to do now is forge the last link in the chain: dovetailing the complication into some new goal that the character will follow in the next scene. Ideally, it lays the groundwork for what will happen next, sets the reader’s expectations, and gently invites them to keep going.
When it all comes together, it might look something like this:
Evelyn needs to find some way to contact her allies (goal) so she goes to the tavern to find a smuggler she knows (action). However, she has nothing to offer him (obstacle) and no matter how many promises she makes, or how hard she tries to talk him around, he’s unconvinced (try/fail/try again). He eventually agrees to help (outcome), but it’s a ruse and he shops her out to the city guard (complication). Now, she must get away before they catch her (new goal).
It’s only a very rough idea, but notice how it builds and sustains tension—mixing that delicious potion of problems, struggles, hope, and doubt that keep our readers addicted.
Revisiting the Compass of Story
By now, you have all the material you need to create a compelling new goal. We just need to select something that’s:
Concrete
Intense
Personal
Something the character must achieve to reach their goal for the novel
If Evelyn doesn’t get away from the guards, she can’t take down her former mentor, rid her city of the bandits, and fulfil her goal to be the kind of knight her father should have been. It’s tangible, solid, formed from everything she is, infused with her every hope and dream, and key to achieving the one thing she’s wanted right from the start.
Whenever you feel lost or uncertain, return to the compass of your protagonist’s goal. It’s the north star that will lead you through rough waters. Dig down until you feel the ache of that goal in your bones. For Evelyn: she’s so earnest in her ideas of justice. A young woman, utterly desperate to find her own place in the world. To mean something.
Even though she’s just a hypothetical example—invented for this series—I can still feel the emotional weight of that. To want all the things that she wants.
With all the time you’ve spent to get here, you’re already a thousand times more connected to your own protagonist.
When things go awry, often the only thing you need to do is pause, take a breath, and reach deep into the well of that character that lives inside of you.
Find the beating heart of what they desperately want, and everything else will fall into place.
Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers
Does the new goal always have to be stated outright, or can it be implied?
Sometimes they don’t even need to be implied! Take our example above: when the city guard show up, Evelyn’s new goal is obvious. We don’t need to tell the reader she has to escape, because it’s already clear from everything that’s happened before.
Whether you need to imply the new goal, state it outright, or whether it’s already obvious will vary from scene to scene. Go with your gut!
Can the new goal be something the character doesn’t realize yet? Like a subconscious need?
In most cases, we want to avoid this. A character who doesn’t know what they want is passive, and passive characters generally wreck all your hard work.
A good fix is to give the character a False Goal. They won’t get the chance to pursue it, but the character doesn’t know that, and neither does the reader.
Let’s go back to our hypothetical Evelyn. Perhaps she escapes from the city guard and takes refuge in a storm drain—helpless to do anything but watch as the guards arrest her friends and allies. She’s now completely alone. There’s an implicit or subconscious goal here. She must find some new way to deal with her corrupt mentor, but Evelyn has no clear plan on how to do that. This might happen because we’re just playing for time, waiting for the vital moment when the knight-commander (Evelyn’s mentor) drags all of Evelyn’s friends outside the city to execute them. The knight-commander is panicking, overplaying her hand, and that’s what will force the final confrontation at the climax of the story.
It’s okay, but it leaves Evelyn at the end of the scene, not sure what to do or how to fix things. Just sort of passively waiting while the story slips away.
A False Goal can fix that, and make the story even more compelling.
Trapped in the storm drain, watching her friends get dragged away, Evelyn decides to break into the knight-commander’s office and find proof of the woman’s corruption. In the next scene, she almost manages it. Then a dozen knights march past, dragging her friends out to the old execution grounds on the knight-commander’s orders.
Suddenly, Evelyn’s False Goal is shattered, and we end up in the same place we were heading from the start. But we’ve done it in a way that keeps Eveyln active and keeps her moving. Without letting all the tension drain away, by lapsing into sitting and waiting.
The key here? A character doesn’t have to succeed. We can send them off chasing a goal, knowing full well that’s not what’s going to happen.
In fact, sometimes those moments are magic.
Does the new goal always need to lead to the next scene? What if there’s a time jump?
Time jumps shouldn’t affect things. Ideally, one scene ends with a fresh goal the character must pursue. The next scene starts when they take action to try and reach it.
It doesn’t matter if that action happens two seconds later, or two years.
What if the scene ends with the character giving up? Is there still a new goal?
I’d strongly recommend against any scene where the protagonist gives up. Remember, their goal is the strongest force in the story. It’s what provides every ounce of forward momentum. When they give up, the reader starts to feel like that goal wasn’t so important after all. It undermines the very foundations that everything else is built on.
There are ways to weave in that kind of despair, and even have a character give up (Chapter 2 of Gideon the Ninth does a pretty good job with this!) but they must always be handled with caution.
For the most part, showing a character frantically scrabbling for some new way to reach their goal, even when all hope is lost, will have far more emotional impact than watching someone collapse into inaction.
Another option would be to show the character abandon the old goal (giving up on it) and instead decide that they’re going to pursue something else entirely. For example, when Evelyn hides in that storm drain, maybe she decides she can’t defeat her former mentor. She’s going to escape the city instead and start a new life somewhere else.
Of course, we then start building conflict around that in the same way as any other goal: by throwing obstacles in her path and making the new goal impossible, too.
How do I stop my scene/temporary goals from getting repetitive? What if my character’s new goal is the same as their old one—ie, because they have to try again?
Don’t be afraid to break things down and mix them up. Instead of having a character attempt the exact goal over and over again, spice things up a little.
For example, we might have three scenes like this: The character tries to climb the castle wall and fails. The next scene, she tries again. Fails again. In the third scene she tries again and finally succeeds, but by then the reader is asleep.
Instead, we might have something like this:
Scene 1: The character tries to climb the wall and fails, attracting the guards’ attention.
Scene 2: She has to run away and hide. She succeeds, but now the watch on the castle walls is doubled.
Scene 3: Now she must sneak past all these new guards to reach the servants’ door...
See how every scene has different challenges, requires different skills, and is woven together with different consequences (either “yes, but” or “no, and”)? That’s what keeps things interesting.
If you still have questions, or there’s anything here I haven’t answered, feel free to ask in the comments! I’ll do everything I can to fix that.
Conduct Your Own Experiments
Want to check how you’re handling this element in your WIP? Here’s something you can try:
Look at the end of a scene or sequence of action, where one chunk of plot ends.
Is the seed of a new goal there—something the character must do now?
Does it change the stakes (what will happen if they fail) or alter the character’s situation in some interesting way?
If they just keep doing what they’re doing, or it isn’t clear what they need to do next, you might need to revisit the complication stage to help drive everything forward.
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This breakdown of scene structure and the and so vs. and then distinction is incredibly helpful. The way you explained how a character's new goal should flow naturally from the complication really clicked for me.
Your example with the False Goal was particularly eye opening I'd never thought about sending a character after something they won't actually achieve just to keep them active. Was that a technique you discovered through your own writing or something you picked up from editing others' work?
Excellent. Thanks Cae! I am tremulously considering outlining a novel.