Last month I talked about the rule of three in structure and in dialogue. You can read it here. This month I want to discuss how to use it in a major scene.
Scenes have a beginning, middle, and end, and your major scenes have a disaster coming at the end (all scenes should end with a twist or something to make the reader turn the page). So how do you set up for it? First of all, think of your scenes as suspense scenes—where the biggest payoff is withheld (postponed) until the end. Withholding builds anticipation. In this way humor and suspense scenes are similar: both are about postponing. The anticipation builds by postponing the disaster (or surprise or punch line).
