Scene cards

Scene cards put each scene of a story on its own card so the writer can see the whole book at once and move pieces around. Novelists and screenwriters have used index cards on a corkboard for decades. Each card answers the same few questions: whose scene is it, what do they want, what stands in the way, how does it end, and what is different afterward.

The core test comes from Dwight Swain's scene and sequel model, popularized for novelists in Techniques of the Selling Writer: a scene has a goal, a conflict, and a disaster (or at least an outcome that is not simply "yes"). A card that cannot fill in "what changes" marks a scene that may not be earning its place.

When to use it