The Secret System Behind Strong, Marketable Books

Unlock unforgettable storytelling with the DAC Method—craft scenes that hook readers and drive powerful character arcs.

The Secret Behind Every Strong, Marketable Book

The real secret behind every strong, marketable book isn’t just the high concept premise or clever plot twist. It comes down to the smallest arcs of your story: the scenes. If your scenes don’t work, your book won’t either.

In this article, I’m going to show you the single most powerful tool my authors use to make sure every scene carries its weight — plus the system behind it that makes their stories not only work, but connect with readers on a deeper level.

Why Scene Work Matters

In all my work coaching and editing for science fiction and fantasy authors, the scene work is one area in which too many are still feeling lost. So much so, sometimes, they waste their time trying to compensate for it in all the wrong ways.

I see this all the time, and I understand the unacknowledged avoidance.

As someone who is hopelessly directionally challenged, I often find it hard to want to drive somewhere new. What if I can’t find parking? Or worse, I stop up traffic while I’m trying to figure out where I need to turn? It makes me start to panic and hyperventilate just imagining the feeling! It’s silly, yet no less daunting for me.

(And I bet that feeling isn’t all that far off for those times you feel stuck in your writing either.)

My dad used to tell me I needed to pay better attention. The sad part was, that didn’t help! My inner compass (or memory for reference points) is simply defunct. (Can I blame the ADHD? Maybe I’ll blame the ADHD.)

So before the days of GPS, I had to study maps to completely memorize routes so I wouldn’t get lost. That kind of preparation took time—time I didn’t always have when I wanted to be spontaneous with high school friends. But it worked to mask my ineptitude with navigation.

Having to always study maps or try to memorize turns wasn’t comfortable, but using these tools provided me with the confidence I needed to venture to new places. (Ironically, I do love traveling!)

The knowledge of my route diminished my fears and empowered me to go further.

Writing can be much the same. You might know your final destination and even a few major landmarks, but without turn-by-turn directions or a memorized knowledge of the route, it’s easy to get lost in the in-between.

That’s what happens when you outline your major beats like we did in my previous article with the turning points outline, but you don’t have a system for connecting the scenes. You aren’t entirely sure what they need to be doing for your book.

So they wander, lacking purpose, drift off course, or end up unfinished. You have to rewrite entire drafts just to see what it was your scenes needed and find your way back to your purpose. More than keeping you lost, this all tanks your confidence as a writer and keeps your story stuck in safe mediocrity.

The Power of Scene-Level Outlining

That’s why I teach my authors how to do this outlining work at the scene-level too. Because stories are fractal—what happens in each scene mirrors the same pattern that makes an entire story resonate.

Just like the overarching story, each scene is a microcosm of the whole, nested in the larger arcs—setting up, disrupting, escalating, and paying off reader expectations.

When these arcs build together, they keep readers hooked because the brain science of the reader experience shows how heavily readers rely on prediction. But it also shows how a lack of disruption to that prediction results in bored readers.

That’s why this pattern of disruption, escalation, and payoff engages readers and gives them the deepest transportation in your story. When every scene delivers that micro-arc, the entire novel becomes unputdownable.

What Is a Scene in a Novel?

But what do we actually mean when we talk about a scene?

Beats might be considered the smallest unit of a story if we don’t get into the weeds of words or language mechanics. Which we won’t—it’s not useful here. For story, these beats are the points of action or thought that, strung together, make a scene.

But a scene isn’t just any chunk of text where something happens. In theater or film, it might often be defined as ending at a location switch or time break. That’s often true in novels too because these elements tend to shift simultaneously with the breaking of a novel’s scenes. But they don’t designate what makes a scene a scene.

For a novel, a scene is the smallest story arc. And a narrative arc implies something dynamic—something that changes. My definition of story relies on that idea that it goes somewhere worth going—in other words, there’s a change in some way. Or there wouldn’t be anywhere to go with the story.

A scene is the smallest complete meaningful change unit of story—a mini-story arc in itself.

So looking at a scene from the reader experience perspective, it’s the smallest complete meaningful change unit of story — a mini-story arc in itself. It gives readers that immersive transportation they look for through that cycle of prediction, disruption, and resolution.

Reader Experience and Brain Science

During story comprehension, brain regions associated with prediction and empathy, executive function, and memory track nested goal hierarchies and outcome chains.

Recent fMRI studies show brain networks (e.g., DMN, ECN) activate in response to goal-directed action sequences embedded within stories. And they reveal how neural mechanisms track intentions and plans across multiple narrative layers. In other words, readers simulate intentions and outcomes at multiple levels.

The DAC Method

But let’s make that cycle and the brain science insights more practical for the author side of all this so that your scenes reliably fulfill the things your story needs and your readers are looking for.

Every strong scene has three things:

• A decision your character makes, rooted in their goals, fears, and corrupted truth.
• An action that follows from that decision.
• A consequence that creates internal and external change. It escalates tension, raises new questions, or complicates their path. It sets up the next decision.

These essential components come from that rhythm readers seek and the three primary processes that consistently underlie story structure, as revealed by research using computer-based language analysis combined with cognitive theories to identify universal narrative arcs in texts.

Why the DAC Method Works

When scenes follow this nested arc, readers predict what might happen, which drives curiosity and a need for resolution. They feel the empathy and investment through understanding what the character wants to happen, experience surprise when things escalate, tension with disruptions, and feel rewarded when the resolution—the payoff—lands.

That micro-cycle of tension and resolution triggers dopamine and oxytocin, the neuromodulators tied to anticipation, empathy, and satisfaction.

Scaffolding readers’ understanding through your story’s nested decision-action-consequence chains builds toward the ultimate payoff in your story’s climax—the final sense of awe and lasting impression you want to leave on your readers.

Scenes as Memory Units

Because your brain processes story in chunks, each scene becomes a natural “unit” that gets stored in memory. Strong scenes stack into strong chapters, and strong chapters stack into novels readers remember long after they close the book.

So if your scenes don’t work, your novel won’t either. But if you nail the scene-level arcs, the whole story works together toward its main point—because you’ve built it on the same patterns readers’ brains are wired to crave:

Decision. Action. Consequence. The DAC Method.

Why the DAC Method Matters

That chain is what keeps readers hooked — and it’s also the foundation of my Scene Spellbook Outline inside my book coaching program. It’s simple enough to remember in the moment and work through in my scene outline template, but powerful enough to keep your whole book tight and marketable.

Every scene feels purposeful. You avoid filler because every page is testing your character’s truth versus their corrupted truth. Character growth feels earned. Readers stay hooked because their brains are constantly cycling through the same prediction-disruption-payoff rhythm we talked about earlier — but now at the micro level, not just the macro story arc.

In the macro arc, these in-between scenes also need to set up some crucial things in prep for each major turning point beat to pay off. This applies both to the plot and to character growth, ensuring that each turning point pushes your characters further than the last one along their internal arc.

Following this method, your scenes also necessarily escalate those major turning point beats, making their order necessary because the character wouldn’t have been able to make the same choices without the growth that happened along the way. The DAC Method is what really helps drive that.

When I work with authors inside my program, this DAC approach is the single most powerful tool we use to transform drafts. I’ve seen writers take stuck or lackluster manuscripts that felt impossible to fix — and once we mapped out their scenes with the DAC Method, suddenly the whole book had focus.

They didn’t just know what happened — they knew why it happened, and how every moment tied back to the character’s transformation.

When Your Characters Don’t Stick to Your Outline…

However, I’m sure you think that’s all well and good… if you could actually draft by sticking to what’s in your outline. Or if your characters didn’t deviate from all your plans and run amuck with them.

But even if that’s you, you don’t have to worry about that with the DAC Method. If you’ve built a fairly thorough plan with a system like the one I teach my authors, then by the time you’re drafting, it’s almost like you’re already writing a second draft but without as much wasted time and effort. You’ve worked through the big decisions, you’ve played with various deviations and their repercussions throughout the rest of the story. So when characters surprise you on the page, those surprises usually come from a place of truth in the story.

Sometimes you do need to explore alternatives when you’re in the weeds because something isn’t working. That’s valid. That’s different from just running off the planned path just for novelty’s sake. Always come back to the outline to assess if you’re taking the story in a direction you want it to go.

The 3 Keys as Compass and GPS

You don’t even have to guess at what that direction should be. When we have the 3 Keys to Reader Enchantment dialed in for your story—its Expectations, Enlightenment, and Experience—you have a solid framework by which to make decisions that keep you from endless story sprawl and on track for a marketable book. You know which shiny new ideas to entertain and which to table for now.

That’s where the outline becomes your GPS and the 3 Keys are your compass. You might take a detour, but you’ve still got a route to get you where you need to go.

That framework keeps you from wasting years rewriting drafts that don’t actually work. It gives you confidence that your story is headed somewhere marketable, somewhere that matters. And when you use the Scene Spellbook’s DAC Method, every scene contributes to that destination.

Case Studies

Emily’s Character Arc

For example, Emily, one of the authors in my Enchant Your Readers book coaching program, worked with me through the DAC outline to reshape her novel around the reasons it really mattered to her. It took her protagonist’s lukewarm, not-quite-committed ADHD-influenced characterization into an arc built out of those clarified, much more real struggles. We homed in on that deeper representation in her character and tailored each scene for her unique struggles.

Without that scene-level work Emily first started with the DAC Method, I wouldn’t have seen what was really important there to know where to push her further. The arc would have stayed surface-level, maybe still just fine for a workable story, but not nearly as effective as it is now.

Then going back once more and working scene by scene, we could show both the harm and protection her character’s masking afforded her. How her people-pleasing tendencies created tension in her new leadership role. The painful way her worth was tied to her achievement and usefulness and how the climax needed to challenge that. That level of nuance wouldn’t have come out without the DAC structure guiding us to ask the harder questions.

David’s Swordfight

And similarly, it helped David in revision. He had a swordfight scene that was technically fine — all the right choreography, but it read like stage directions from the passively observing point-of-view character. Readers wouldn’t have a reason to care.

So together, we used the DAC Method to reframe it:

• After a major disruption of expectations about who would win, we enhanced some dramatic irony with the POV character observing how his champion was playing right into the opponent’s tricky plan.
• That created character-personal tension and anxiety for the decision component.
• Then, we added a ticking clock with the champion wearing down faster to drive the POV character’s action to intervene by cheating despite the risks.
• The consequence: the action gave the champion a narrow opening to make the final blow and win, releasing the tension—yet creating further internal complications for the POV character.

That’s what the DAC Method does: it transforms spectacle into story.

Aaron’s Complex Structure

Another of my authors, Aaron, called the Scene Spellbook an “absolute dynamo” for helping him wrangle a really complex structure. Because with the DAC Method guiding every scene, even the most complicated plot threads line up to serve the character’s transformation for the most payoff.

The Real Magic of the DAC Method

Like my pre-GPS days, having to study maps and plan out every route before I drove anywhere new wasn’t always easy. It took time, and it wasn’t the most spontaneous thing. But the knowledge gave me the confidence to actually get where I needed to go—and eventually, the ability to go even further than I thought I could.

Writing is the same. When you know your route, when you use your 3 Keys compass and your outline GPS tools, you’re not trapped by it—you’re empowered to navigate with them. You’re free to explore, to detour, and to take risks without getting completely lost.

That’s where we find the real magic of working scene by scene with the DAC Method: it doesn’t only fix plot holes and bridge your major beats. When you get into the real work of the method, it forces you to dig into the truths that make your story something unforgettable.

Otherwise, it’s a little too easy to use tools like this and stop at the obvious. That’s how most stories come to me even when the authors have followed well-regarded methods and structures. While authors may do that well and produce a very admirable novel, that doesn't often result in the kinds of novels that leave the rest behind in a land of “good but kinda mediocre.”

It’s simply hard, on your own, to really dig into the specifics of what your story, in particular, needs and why.

The Deeper Connection to Readers

The authors I work with don’t just have something to say, they want to inspire someone with their book—their legacy—that they’ll leave for those who need it. And books that are fine and entertaining simply don’t last long enough for that.

Sure, some can ride a surge or trend in the marketing lottery and may blow up into something quite huge. But even then, that doesn’t always mean much in terms of longevity.

When you use the Scene Spellbook Outline and 3 Keys framework in conjunction with the right coaching, it gives you the structure that allows you to uncover the hidden fears, quirks, and motivations that resonate most deeply with readers. And I’m not even talking about perfection of prose or literary-ness. It’s more that it can connect readers in that transportive way more strongly because of how it says the things they know in their soul.

And that’s why inside Enchant Your Readers, I walk authors through this process personally. I get to push them—sometimes gently, sometimes a little harder—to bring out those weird things many readers will relate to and feel connected to on a deep level.

And I have to, because these are the things as an author you’ve likely never even articulated for yourself but always felt... or it’s just one of those odd things you didn’t realize anyone else ever thought or felt the same way.

The Author's Fear

This is the stuff of books that really hit hard and the kind we love so much as readers because they seem to “get us” in a way we never thought possible. But this doesn’t usually just happen when authors don’t have someone who knows how… and why… and what… to pry out of them for these things.

And there’s a good reason for that: an author’s own fear.

Digging into these things can often hurt a bit when you have to face the truth of them for your story. Or, at least, because it’s not something you bring to your conscious surface naturally and it’s not something you’d think to include when you’ve got so much else you’re trying to keep in your head about the plot and world and characters and all the loose threads.

Just as I had to shift my mindset to embrace the challenge of navigation, you may need to shift your perspective on how getting support through these processes and with your story craft can actually help you more completely own your author voice and everything that makes your stories uniquely yours.

Imagine having a roadmap for your writing journey.

Just as a detailed map reassured me whenever driving somewhere new, a deeper understanding of story craft and knowing where your story needs to go will give you the confidence you need for pushing your book beyond mediocrity and into truly spellbinding.

And I’m not only talking about the Scene Spellbook Outline template here! You’ll get that as a tool for your roadmap too, but—more importantly—my help working through it with you. Unlimited coaching, unlimited reviews, until your novel works.

How to Do the Deeper Scene Work

The Enchant Your Readers program is incredibly one-to-one and offers a safe and trusted space to grow in your knowledge, refine your craft, and take your manuscript to the next stage with professional feedback every step of the way.

Inside, I think you’ll find that your unique voice and stories are not just worthy, but essential for readers—because you’ll have a system that makes your story that much more heartbreaking, inspiring, and deeply connected.

But because I’m with you and your story, individually, through the whole planning, drafting, or revision process, spots in this program are very limited.

So if you’re ready to stop wasting time in endless drafts that never quite land on the page in the way you want it to hit for readers, and you want to finally craft a story that works—and lasts—click the link to join me in Enchant Your Readers.

Selected Bibliography

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7413736/ 
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9328199/
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0885201424001217
• https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-025-01736-7
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11851491/

This field is quite theoretical. I'm extrapolating for authors what I can based on the findings we do have (and I'm certainly not a neuroscientist!). To explore a fuller background, you can see this article about a breadth of brain science sources (and their abstracts/descriptions) in my site's private resource library. Note: You'll need to register a free student account to access it: https://www.inkybookwyrm.com/blog/sources-on-the-science-of-story-craft-and-creativity

Categories: : creativity, novel drafting, novel planning, outlining, story structure