The timing of this post couldn't have been better...I've been struggling with a scene for the past two days. Just realized what was weak - the emotional goal. Thanks!

Great! A bit of synchronicity never hurts the writing process!

Scott, you suggested it here, "Does it advance the story? If so, HOW?" What does it really mean to "advance" the story? I find the more I think about this stuff, I uncover huge assumptions lurking behind some of the language I use and accept. Yes, a scene should have a point, external or internal, but how does that point advance the story? I don't mean it as a cute tautology. I have to think constantly about how each beat and scene makes this a "story."

It's a fair question. By "advance," how about move the story forward? That can mean something that shifts or influences the Plotline [External World], something that shifts or influences the Themeline [Internal World], or more likely both. Here's one way of thinking about it: A scene should answer a question. That satisfies a need in a reader to feel like there is movement in the story. But that scene should also raise ANOTHER question to propel the reader into the NEXT scene. It's one of the most basic ways to create a sense of narrative drive. Here's another image I have: I look at scenes as runners in a long relay race. And each transition is like a scene handing the baton off to the next scene. What's nice about that imagery is it focuses attention on transitions, but also reminds us that scenes are anything but static, they have to move, move, move, a relentless push forward. Obviously the intensity of that is scalable to the specific genre and story, but a script is something akin to a race. Any of those resonate with you?

Yes! Harmonic vibrations. I like the emphasis on questions and how they pull the reader in and cast their minds forward to drive the story. It helps me get my mind right to think of them as nesting mysteries--it intrigues me to glamorize the reader's experience a little. I especially like your imagery of a relay race and the focus on transitions. I think I've thought so long and hard about structure that I've started compartmentalizing scenes and acts, even page numbers, and damming the flow of the story, isolating story events. And that undermines the growth of subtext and theme. As if your runners stop to hand off the baton. That's confusing the physical necessities of shooting a movie in scenes denoting change in time and place with dramatic units in a story. In my case the precept should be, "Don't let your scenes stop your story dead in it's tracks."