Fiction Workbench  Blog of the Fiction Fix-It Shop
Clarification on Motivation-Reaction Units  Posted by Meredith
in Writing Advice (November 10, 2010 at 3:56 pm) . 1 comment. .
Today’s question comes from another Advanced Fiction Writing
blog reader, Stacey, who wants to know when in the story do we
begin using the Motivation-Reaction pattern. For those of you
who are not familiar with this concept, Randy Ingermanson has a
great overview of it in his article “Writing the Perfect Scene.”
As a review, the MRU is a way of describing the process of cause
and effect that should characterize the movement of the story.
Something happens in the story–either thought, dialogue, action,
feeling, etc. (“Motivation”) and the character responds to it in
either thought, word, or action (“Reaction”) which leads into
something else happening (“Motivation”) that triggers another
response (“Reaction”)–and so on through the story.  Stacey says:
I’m writing with a request to clarify the usage of motivation-
reaction units (or