Avocado Bites
Posts
🥑 miss direction

🥑 miss direction

scene starters, part 5

Addison Horner
August 13, 2025

^{When we reach 100 subscribers, I’ll pick one of you to receive 20% off any editing service of your choice (developmental, line, copy, proofread, or assessment)! Share this with your author friends.}

Let’s talk about expectations.

In the past week, we’ve covered character emotion, reader emotion, and purpose when it comes to scene starters.

When you smush these pieces together, you get expectations. The character expects something, and the reader expects something, and those may or may not be the same thing.

What drives the story forward is outcome. But what carries the reader through the story is expectation, and that’s where your opening lines come in.

Consider a scene in which Bob, our POV character, is about to rob a bank. You can set up an expectation with the opening line of the story, then subvert it—or not.

Reader Expectation	Story Outcome	Did the reader expect that?	Did Bob expect that?
Bob is preparing to rob a bank.	Bob successfully robs a bank.	Yes	Yes
Bob is preparing to rob a bank.	Bob gets caught robbing a bank.	Yes	No
Bob is preparing to rob a bank.	Bob stops because the teller reminds him of his mom.	Maybe	No
Bob goes to the bank to make a withdrawal.	Bob ends up robbing the bank.	No	No
Bob goes to the bank to “make a withdrawal.”	Bob was planning to rob the bank the whole time.	No	Yes
Bob goes to the bank to make a withdrawal.	A bank robber coerces Bob into helping him.	No	No
Bob is preparing to rob a bank.	Someone else robs the bank at the same time.	No	No
Bob is preparing to rob a bank.	Aliens!	Definitely not	Maybe? Idk, tbh

Notice I didn’t ask if the reader was satisfied by the outcome. That depends on you.

Here’s an exercise: choose a scene from your outline that you haven’t written yet (or one you’ve written that you don’t particularly like at the moment).

Write down the expectation set by the opening lines.
Write a list of possible outcomes from that expectation (including the current outcome).
Write a list of alternate expectations (e.g., Bob just wants to withdraw some petty cash) and possible outcomes.
Does any combination of expectation and outcome catch your eye?

If you need professional help (don’t we all?), check out my services and request a free sample edit!

Want feedback on your own scene starters? Reply to this email with an opening line from one of your scenes and I may use it in a future Bite.

Thanks for reading Avocado Bites!

^{Avocado Bites is a publication of Avocado Tree Press, LLC, that helps you revise your stories one bite at a time. We love working with indie and traditionally published authors on fiction manuscripts—and if that’s you, welcome to our target audience.}

^{Ready for a sample edit?}^{Here’s our site.}

^{Addison Horner is the chief editor of Avocado Tree Press.}^Here’s^his^newsletter.^{It’s different but still pretty good.}