Recently, I’ve been replotting my book, which of course means I have several outlining sessions in store for me.

I’ve been wanting to improve my grasp on basic story structure, so I’ve selected one of my current favorite books to study, Scythe by Neal Shusterman (let me know if you want to see a study for the 4-act story structure!).

The bulk of today’s post will just be my breakdown, so if you haven’t read the book, be aware that there will be a lot of spoilers. I’ll also be including my overall thoughts at the end of this post, so if you are only interested in that, just scroll to the bottom.

Scythe — Neal Shusterman

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Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

Act One:

• Hook:
  • Citra: Scythe Faraday visits Citra’s family for dinner, where she demonstrates her honesty and clear disapproval of scythes for gleaning people.
  • Rowan: Scythe Faraday visits Rowan’s school. Rowan insists on being there for Kohl Whitlock, the student to be gleaned, even though it costs him great pain. This demonstrates an unusual kindness despite his fear of the scythe.
• Setup:
  • Citra and Rowan both receive a strange, handwritten note and a ticket to the opera. Citra accepts out of curiosity; Rowan to escape his home life. This is where our two main characters meet each other.
• Inciting Incident:
  • Scythe Faraday appears and reveals himself to be the source of the opera tickets. The next day, he takes them to a diner and explains that he has chosen both of them to train as scythes. While neither Citra nor Rowan want to accept, they are also told that only one of them may receive the position after the training is complete.
  • Citra:
    • Why it matters: she hates the idea of killing others for the good of society.
    • Why she accepts: she senses a greater purpose in becoming a scythe rather than settling down into a mundane, everyday life.
  • Rowan:
    • Why it matters: he hates the thought of becoming a scythe, but the thought of a less empathetic person becoming a scythe is more sickening.
    • Why he accepts: he thinks that gleaning can bring back a hint of the passion and emotion that was once present in the Age of Mortality.
• Build-up:
  • A new conflict is set up between the main characters: they are being forced to compete for the position, but neither of them really want it.
  • Since he already has a lifetime experience of being a loner, Rowan also makes an effort to befriend Citra, especially since they are in the same predicament.
• 1st plot point:
  • Scythe Faraday brings them to watch a gleaning and offers them both the opportunity to help him. When both Citra and Rowan refuse, he informs them that they have passed a test: this was their first initiation rite and they are now officially apprentices.
• 1st pinch point:
  • Internal pinch point: Both Citra and Rowan feel sickened by the gleaning, yet now that they have passed Scythe Faraday’s test, there is no turning back.
  • External pinch point: an elegy of scythes execute an entire flight: passengers, attendants, and all. However, this is not the compassionate gleaning that is expected of scythes; rather, these scythes take a horrific pleasure in the massacre. This is the antagonistic force Citra and Rowan will have to deal with later.

Act Two:

• Pre-midpoint reactionary hero:
  • In a number of scenes, Citra and Rowan are trained in everything a scythe is required to know or be aware of. Slowly, both are realizing that they want to be the winning apprentice — a shift in goals.
  • Scythe Faraday and his apprentices attend conclave, where among other things, Scythe Goddard, the man responsible for the airplane bloodbath, is established to have a large influence on the rest of the scythes. The apprentices are also tested. When Citra fails her test, Rowan deliberately fails his, too, so that she will not have to be punished alone.
• Game-changing midpoint (a.k.a midpoint):
  • Noticing the camaraderie between Citra and Rowan, Scythe Rand, one of Scythe Goddard’s friends, suggests a better way to motivate the apprentices to do their best: the winning scythe must glean the other. Scythe Faraday is outraged by this, but High Blade Xenocrates has the final say and overrules him. This shifts the context of the story, as Citra and Rowan are now playing a deeply personal game.
  • Desperate to save the apprentices the action of having to kill the other, Scythe Faraday gleans himself, as it is said that in the case of a mentor’s death, the apprentice is freed. However, two scythes have volunteered to take Citra and Rowan’s mentorship: Scythe Curie will mentor Citra, and Scythe Goddard will mentor Rowan (a turning point that changes the game and raises the stakes). High Blade Xenocrates’ decree remains in place — one of them will still have to glean the other.
• Post-midpoint action hero:
  • Now that Citra and Rowan are dealing with new mentors, they have to switch gears.
    • Citra: Although beginning to get along with Scythe Curie, Citra suspects that Scythe Faraday’s death was foul play — someone has murdered him. Her new plan is to scour the backbrain of the Thunderhead for evidence so she can call off Xenocrates’ decree.
    • Rowan: Scythe Goddard presents a more difficult challenge to Rowan than Scythe Curie to Citra. As Rowan learns to mimic Goddard’s immoral ways of killcraft, he makes a vow to himself: whatever happens, he’ll let Citra win. With this in mind, he projects a false image of himself to Goddard so that the scythe suspects nothing — yet despite this, he finds himself wanting to give in to Scythe Goddard’s twisted logic and new order.
• 2nd pinch point:
  • As time moves forward, a sense of inevitable disaster is present, perhaps more so for Rowan than for Citra. Both characters are struggling with internal and external conflict.
  • Internal pinch points:
    • Citra: Despite having found suspicious evidence to do with Scythe Farraday’s death, Citra knows the Harvest Conclave is drawing near. Scythe Curie warns Citra not to trust Rowan as she fears Goddard has brainwashed him into the new order. This is where Citra’s conflict stems from: she fears that the Rowan she will meet at conclave will not be the Rowan that she once knew.
    • Rowan: After being forced to attend one of Scythe Goddard’s massacres, Rowan’s conscience is heavy. Scythe Volta, another of Goddard’s closest followers, admits that his own conscience never left him, and that it would be easier for Rowan if he were to wholly surrender to Goddard. Rowan considers giving in, but knows that his morality is too high to embrace what Scythe Goddard teaches.
  • External pinch point: when an anonymous accusation against Goddard is declared at the Harvest Conclave, the scythes brush it off with a laugh. Scythe Curie, disapproving, notes to Citra that Goddard is slowly becoming a figure that too many people look up to, to the point where he’s almost invincible within the scythedom. A few other old guard scythes express dissent at Goddard’s new ways and order, but their voices remain unheard.

Act Three:

• Supposed victory:
  • Rowan: The apprentices’ test for this conclave involves a sparring match. Citra and Rowan are deliberately pitted against each other, but both care too much for the other and fight to lose. After Citra successfully manipulates two rounds to make Rowan win, he realizes that the only way to throw the fight is to do something she would never expect from him. In the final round, Rowan breaks Citra’s neck, rendering her deadish. Since it’s an illegal move, Rowan is immediately disqualified. In his mind, it’s a victory. He hopes that Citra never forgives him, if only to make his gleaning easier for her when the time comes, but also resolves to glean himself first if he beat Citra so that he never has to kill her.
  • Citra: Since Citra had made it seem like Rowan was winning, neither of them come out as victors. Now the winning apprentice can only be truly determined at the next conclave.
• Disaster:
  • In a surprising turn of events, High Blade Xenocrates accuses Citra of Scythe Faraday’s murder. Of course, this is due to Scythe Goddard’s manipulation. Faced with barely any choices and surrounded by too many opponents to handle, Citra runs for it and jumps to her death. Now deadish again, she is untouchable until revived. Even then, she is now wanted and on the run from the entire MidMerican scythedom.
• Dark moment:
  • Interestingly, there isn’t a true dark moment in Scythe. Perhaps the closest scene that hits this story beat is when the Thunderhead speaks to Citra in her deadish state and tells her about the many future possibilities that it has calculated.
• Recovery:
  • The Thunderhead revives Citra a few hours early (a literal recovery). She meets Scythe Curie upon revival, who quickly whisks her away in order to get a head start from Xenocrates and the rest of the scythes after her. Scythe Curie gives Citra directions to follow — directions that will lead to Faraday’s murderer — and leaves to attempt to clear her name.
  • When Citra reaches her destination, she discovers that there is no murderer — rather, she finds Scythe Faraday, who had faked a self-gleaning to release her and Rowan from their apprenticeships. Citra informs him of everything that had happened afterwards, and he is horrified. He trains her for the Winter Conclave until Scythe Curie successfully clears all charges against Citra.
• Climactic confrontation:
  • Scythe Goddard and his inner circle take Rowan to a tone cult cloister for another mass gleaning. This time, however, Goddard tells Rowan to glean someone in his name.
  • As chaos breaks out within the building, Rowan finds Scythe Volta wounded. Overcome with guilt by his actions, Volta has gleaned himself.
  • Rowan comes out to find one person left for him to glean. Scythe Goddard tries to persuade him to finally kill someone permanently, but Rowan turns his weapon upon Goddard and kills him instead. He deals with the two other scythes and leaves the building to burn so that Goddard and his followers can never be revived.
• Victory:
  • High Blade Xenocrates clears any suspicion against Rowan for Scythe Goddard’s death. This is directly linked to the previous story beat.
• The end/resolution:
  • Winter Conclave finally arrives, and with it, Citra and Rowan’s final test. Both are required to kill a loved one, and both follow through. After much evaluation, High Blade Xenocrates declares Citra the chosen candidate.
  • Citra accepts the scythe ring given to her, and announces that she will glean Rowan by blade. When the weapons are offered, she hits him instead, wounding him and transferring his DNA to her ring. This gives Rowan immunity to gleaning for a year. She then offers him the blades and tells him to run.
  • Rowan makes it out and hops into a car waiting for him. There he finds Scythe Faraday, and they drive off into the unknown.
  • The book finishes with a journal entry from Citra, now known as Scythe Anastasia: rumors have spread that someone is on the run, killing scythes known for cruelty and malfeasance. It’s an ending that ties up the main conflict of the book, but leaves more for the rest of the trilogy.

My Thoughts

After this study, I’ve found some things very interesting:

• Some story beats apply to both characters but others only apply to one of the two — yet the story flows very well. For example, both characters experience pinch points around the same time, yet only Rowan drives the story to its climactic confrontation. Citra experiences other story beats, like the disaster.
• While I’ve left out many details (e.g. the romance subplot), the structure of the story still feels solid.
• The absence of a dark moment truly interests me. It also tells me that Scythe is not a deeply personal book. While you do care about the characters, it is told through an omniscient point of view and focuses on the big picture — therefore the character arcs, although present, are a little less obvious.

It all goes to show that the three-act story structure is not a rule you have to follow. You can change it up, twist it with multiple characters, even omit story beats that might not fit with the story you want to tell. Story structure simply presents you with some guidelines. Break them if you wish.

That’s all for now!

What are your thoughts on Scythe? Did I get any of the story beats wrong? If you plan, do you plan using story structure, or a different way entirely?

Also, let me know if you’d like to see more posts like this!

Make your mark,

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