Today’s question comes from another Advanced Fiction Writing
blog reader, Stacey, who wants to know when in the story do we
begin using the Motivation-Reaction pattern. For those of you
who are not familiar with this concept, Randy Ingermanson has a
great overview of it in his article “Writing the Perfect Scene.”
As a review, the MRU is a way of describing the process of cause
and effect that should characterize the movement of the story.
Something happens in the story–either thought, dialogue, action,
feeling, etc. (“Motivation”) and the character responds to it in
either thought, word, or action (“Reaction”) which leads into
something else happening (“Motivation”) that triggers another
response (“Reaction”)–and so on through the story. I’m writing
with a request to clarify the usage of motivation-reaction units
(or rather the scene-sequel development) within novel writing.
Specifically, I wanted to know if they begin from chapter one,
page one, or if there’s some room for development of the setting
using pe