With any children's building set, there is always a basic unit -- a smallest piece the set can be broken down into before it's just...broken. You might examine the tiny basic unit and see that it has ridges to hold to other units, and a bright color, and smooth sides, but you cannot separate those things without damaging the unit. The basic block can be combined with others, often in an almost infinite number of ways. But only a few of those ways will result in a building. My daughter has built Lego ducks, Lego flamingos, Lego cars, Lego bridges, and many other Lego things that are not buildings. To be a building, the blocks must be arranged in specific ways -- there is still creative freedom, but ultimately a certain form must emerge to call the end result a building.

Story writing is much like that. The basic unit of a story is the scene. If you examine the scene closely, you can see it has dialogue, action, sensory detail, and other shiny bits but you cannot break them out of the scene and expect them to stand alone. A scene is not just dialogue stated flatly on a page. A scene is not just sensory detail of chill wind and crunchy snow. A scene is not just breathless action. A scene is the unit of these things or other things together in a purposeful way. And when snapped together with other scenes in the right form, you can have a story.

So what rules of order will help you turn scenes into story?

A story for young people is built from scenes that show the main character doing something. Your main character is the door to your story -- he/she is the character that lets the reader in and lets the reader care. If you begin fitting in a lot of scenes featuring the parents doing something or the teachers doing something or the grandparents doing something -- you may be building an attractive piece, but it won't be a children's story. You might be building a really nice flamingo instead of a house. To build your story house, you need to cut out the scenes that take the story away from the main character and add in scenes that keep the main character in his proper place.

A story for young people is built from scenes that are heading somewhere. Stories are a kind of journey for which the destination is fated. You know the story is going somewhere and you're sure you're recognize the place when you get there. Stories don't just end. If your story is based entirely on chronology and nothing else...with the story beginning at daybreak and ending at nightfall, you may have a lot of lovely vignettes strung together but you probably do not have a story. You've probably built a nice duck, but not a building. A story is heading somewhere because of the action and decisions of the characters -- not because the sun rises and sets each day.

A story for young people is built from scenes that reveal change. Change is a constant in life. And change creates conflict, struggle, obstacles, and success. A story where no one and nothing changes, might have lots of things happening -- but will ultimately feel unsatisfying. It won't feel like a story. You will have built a really nice car but not a building. To build a story house, you will need to reflect change -- or sometimes a stubborn resistance to change. Still change will be a fundamental structural component of story.

No metaphor is perfect, and so we must also look at something Lego sets don't actually need -- transitions. The glue that holds the story blocks together smoothly and without visible seams.

Transitions aren't usually scenes, they are bits that stand in the place of a scene to move characters quickly from one place to another, from one time to another, or both.

Later at school, Joey could barely keep his eyes open. He stared at the bland round face of the classroom clock and tried to will time to speed up.

After weeks of practice, Judith felt ready for a mini performance. She called her family into the living room and set up her music stand. Her hands shook so hard that sheet music fluttered to the floor like dying birds.

After hours on the bus, Jack caught his first glimpse of the city. The morning was grey and misty, and Jack had been staring absently at the gloom when the sharp straight buildings seemed to leap out at him, making him jump in his seat.

Transitions hold the scene blocks together and they also help you eliminate scene blocks that wouldn't do enough for the story to make them worthwhile. Scenes without action, change or conflict, and character revealation are dull and slog down your pace. Replacing them with a quick transition keeps your pace crisp and your scenes purposeful. Transitions are telling, not showing -- but they help keep things moving when showing would (1) take up too much space and (2) not move the story along sufficiently.

The bigger your plot, the more you'll need to depend on transitions. Some teen magazine fiction has such huge plots that it feels as if the whole story is told with only tiny glimpses into scraps of scene...a bit of dialogue, a shred of action. Often to compensate for a story that's all telling, the writer will use first person with the hope that the voice will help carry the fact that you don't have scenes to let the reader into a world of the story. A good voice can help tremendously, but a story this is all telling and no showing usually suffers from too much plot.

How can you have too much plot? If the story takes place over too much time -- you'll end up needing to tell it, not show it. If the story has too many characters -- you end up needing to tell it, not show it. If you take up too much space, with the story occuring all over the globe, you're going to have to tell more than show. If you're tring to fit subplots into a 1200 word story, you're going to be stuck with telling to get to the end. The bigger your plot swells, the more you'll need to tell instead of show.

The key to getting in more showing -- more scenes -- more blocks and less glue is setting limits on the plot. A ticking clock with minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. A smaller cast so that scenes aren't drowned in dialogue. A smaller stage, with the story taking place in fewer locations. If you want to have a house of blocks instead of a house shaped glue-ball, set limits so there is room for the whole story within your word count. You can still use that cool narrator voice...you'll just let him show as well as tell. Your reader will thank you for it.