On the mats, the miss is loud for about half a second.
You miss the collar, your positioning is off, your weight is moving in the wrong direction. Everyone on the outside knows what’s happening before the student does
That’s when the scramble happens.
Elbows flail, hips pivot, knees flex and push away. Sometimes the scramble reveals a bad habit they didn’t know they had. They may invent some creative adjustment or move on the spot that no one has seen before. Whatever happens, for a few moments, I’m able to see who the student actually is when the plan goes out the window.
As a coach, if I stop the round right after the mistake or miss, I’ll never see the part that reveals the athlete to me.
Last week I wrote about letting your characters miss the grip, about resisting the urge to rescue them before they fail. This week is the other half of that lesson, and it’s probably the toughest part for me to do.
My biggest mistake after letting characters miss is looking away when they do.
The cut-away
Here’s how it looks like on paper.
The character reaches for the wrong thing, makes a mistake, or follows the wrong path. The plan falls apart, and everyone sees it. And right when the scramble begins, when things get ugly, the writer breaks away. “Three days later” pops up and a clean resolution with “We’ll figure it out” from the main character closes the loop followed by a tidy paragraph explaining what the character learned from the mistake.
The failure happened, but the reader never got to see the character scramble and twist while the conflict was still hot.
That’s the same as the coach stopping the round. Part of paying for the miss is keeping the receipt.
When I’m debriefing a student after a roll, I don’t ask about the grip they missed. They already know they missed it. I ask what they did next. Did they panic and turtle up? Did they go for the same grip again, harder? Did they give up position out of fear or exhaustion? That’s the information that helps the student grow and learn about themselves when they face conflict.
Your reader wants the same experience. They don’t need to be told the character failed. They want to watch who the character is while the failure is fresh in their hands.
How the scramble should look on the page
I don’t just mean physical battles or fights, although those are an easy example. A scramble is the beat that occurs after the plan fails or falls apart and before a new plan is thought up. It should appear like improvisation while the main character is under stress without all the facts and without time to plan or figure things out.
On the page, it might look like:
- A confession that comes out wrong, and the character trying to fix it mid-sentence while the other person’s face changes.
- A partial clue heard, and the character acting on that fragment of information because time has ran out.
- A power that misfires, and the character dealing with the mess it made instead of the result they planned for.
- A door closing on an argument, and the character deciding, right there in the hallway, whether to walk away or turn back.
These moments are short. They’re also where readers fall in love with characters, or stop trusting them. Competence, cowardice, humor, cruelty, grace. These are all qualities that come out in the scramble when the character is on edge and not in their comfort zone.
Three ways writers abandon the scramble
I’ve started circling these in my own revisions. You might find them in yours.
1) The time-skip. The scene ends one beat after the failure, and the next chapter opens once everything has settled. It feels like good pacing, but in reality it’s a missed opportunity. Try writing one more page before the break to see what the character does when their back is against the wall.
2) The soft landing. Someone steps in with comfort, reassurance, or a fresh plan before the character has created their own. This is a timing issue. If the resolution comes before the character has guided the plot forward, this isn’t support. It feels like a soft reset.
3) The narrated lesson. “She realized then that she had been wrong to trust him.” This falls into the “show don’t tell” problem. It explains the scramble instead of showing the character struggling through it. Cut it, and replace it with the conflict, showing the decision the character must make. Let the reader learn the lesson at the same time as the character.
Malcolm’s Memories
In Blood Memories, Malcolm absorbs the memories of the people he kills. That sounds like a power, but it’s designed to help generate scrambles.
When Malcolm kills, his mind absorbs their memories and thoughts of his victims. Those memories and feelings then mix with his own, causing him to question his decisions with limited facts and understanding of the situation. Then you can see the kind of person he is as he pushes forward through the fog of his mind.
During those scenes are where you connect with the character, and he becomes a real person.
Tests you can use today
Pull a scene where something goes wrong for your character. Then try these.
The one-more-page test. Find where you cut away after the failure. Write one more page after the fact. You can cut it later.
The no-rescue test. Remove anyone who helps the character in the first thirty seconds after the failure. What’s the character’s first move on their own? If you don’t know, that’s the gap.
The wrong-reach test. In the scramble, have the character try something that doesn’t work before something that does. Real scrambles are messy, and mistakes make characters feel alive.
The debrief test. Afterward, ask the coach’s question: What did they do next, and why that? If the honest answer is “whatever the plot needed,” the character isn’t in control.
Don’t look away
The student who gets better isn’t the one who never misses. It’s the one whose scrambles and keeps getting smarter.
Characters grow the same way. Not in the clean wins, and not in well-crafted summaries. In the ugly, half second after a miss, show the reader what kind of person your character is.
After the miss, stay on the mat and watch the scramble. Then write what they become because of it.
— KC
See more of my insights at kckuan.com. Early chapters and VIP notes for Blood Memories are on the site whenever you want them.
Originally published on Substack.
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