(NaNoWriMo Day 7): 6th Key Scene: All Hope is Lost

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

– Anne McCaffrey

The All Hope is Lost Scene: Breaking It Down

The All Hope is Lost scene occurs at the end of a series of try-fail cycles.[1] Each time the protagonist and her allies fail, the stakes are raised.

First try-fail cycle. The protagonist and her allies make a plan to defeat the antagonist and achieve the story goal. The plan fails.

Second try-fail cycle. The stakes are higher now but the protagonist and her allies don’t give up. The plan is revised and they try again. The revised plan ends in failure. This failure is more dramatic, more severe—perhaps one or more of the protagonist’s allies die or abandon the quest. Whatever the case, the plan fails spectacularly.

Final try-fail cycle. This is the All Hope is Lost scene. The stakes are now the highest they’ve been but the protagonist is not giving up. She thinks on the fly and tries one lasts thing. Perhaps it seems as though this time the plan will work, but it doesn’t. She fails and she fails spectacularly. There is now no hope at all that the protagonist can succeed in her quest.

What is it?

- Setup. Before the final try-fail cycle—the All Hope is Lost scene—there often is a ‘suiting up’ scene where the protagonist and her allies prepare for battle. This also serves another purpose, it tells your readers what the plan is and all the ways it can go wrong! (This is going to be a sequel.)

- Cause. What causes the final try-fail cycle to fail? It could be anything. Perhaps the protagonist’s plan hinges on one critical element that fails. Perhaps one of the protagonist’s allies is captured or killed, perhaps he turns traitor and gone over to join the antagonist’s band of un-merry men. The point is that the plan contains a critical element and, because element doesn’t come into play[2], the plan fails.

- Unexpected. What causes the final plan to fail should happen in a way that the audience won’t foresee. Though, looking back it must make perfect sense. Further, the plan will fail in a way the protagonist couldn’t have anticipated, but which in retrospect makes perfect sense.

- Stakes. Part of what makes the All Hope is Lost scene the All Hope is Lost scene rather than, say, the protagonist-is-mildly-inconvenienced scene, is that the consequences of failure are worse, much MUCH worse, than we thought they would be. Sure we spelled out the stakes, but the protagonist had underestimated. WAY underestimated.

As bad as things seemed at the end of the last try-fail cycle, now here, the protagonist plumbs the depths of the true bottom. We have now reached the lowest point in the story. It turns out that what the protagonist thought was the true bottom—the worst things could possibly get—was only a way-stop on the way to complete and total ruin.

Where is it?

If you’re using three acts, the All Hope is Lost point comes at the end of the second act. If you’re four acts, the All Hope is Lost point comes at the end of the third act.

How is it connected to the protagonist’s desires?

At this moment the protagonist’s desires seemed destined to be unsatisfied.

The All Hope is Lost Scene: Examples

I think one of the most effective All Hope is Lost scenes is in the movie Edge of Tomorrow. In that movie the protagonist, Cage, has a special power: every time he dies the day is reset. Why? No one is sure, but it happened when an alien bled all over him as the two lay dying on the battlefield. Something happens to Cage’s blood. The thing is, if Cage ever bleeds to death or has a blood transfusion, his death will no longer reset the day. That would be game over for humanity.

 Cage’s external goal is to kill the Omega (the Big Bad). If humanity is to survive, the Omega must die. Toward the end of the second act Cage uses a piece of tech on himself to find the Omega’s location. It works! That’s when the event that triggers the All Hope is Lost moment occurs: Cage gets shot in the leg and wakes up in the hospital having received a blood transfusion. He can no longer reset the day!

Testing the Scene Example

Setup. The setup here was Cage and Vrataski getting the gadget they needed and it was easier than they thought. They are then ambushed and they flee. It is their flight that initiates the All Hope is Lost scene.

Reason for failure. The reason for Cage losing his ability wasn’t exactly unforeseen, but it was a good time to play this particular card.

Stakes. The negative states going into the scene were, “If we fail to get the Omega’s location this time we might be able to get it next time.” It would have been a disappointment, a setback, but not a game-ender. Cage losing his ability is a game ender. It means rather than having tens, hundreds, or even thousands of tries to win a battle, they now have only one. It is a great way to launch into the action of the third act.

How the Midpoint is Implemented in Three Genres: Action, Romance & Mystery

Action Genre

I’ve covered this already with the example, above, from Edge of Tomorrow.

Romance Genre

In a romance, the All Hope is Lost scene is where the lovers break up once and for all. Something has happened, come between them, and they realize (or one of them does) that their relationship is impossible. She has been deluding herself; this can never, will never, work.

So, not only is it a break up, it is a finally-final breakup.

Murder Mystery Genre

In a murder mystery this is usually where it seems the murderer will get away with his crimes. The sleuth has a few ideas but he hasn’t been able to come up with the whole picture. He sees bits of it, parts of it, but not the whole thing. There’s a memory flickering at the edges of his consciousness, or perhaps an idea, but he can’t ... quite ... grasp it.

Perhaps something one of the other characters has said has been bothering him, a phrase that keeps rattling around inside his skull. He knows it’s signifiant but he just can’t think.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I’d like to recommend On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser. From the blurb: “On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does ...”

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. In the meantime, good writing!

Word count so far: 9,985
Word count for today: 1400
Total words this month: 11,385

Notes:

1. What I’m calling the All Hope is Lost scene is also known as the Major Setback.

2. This element could fail to come into play for various reasons. One of the protagonist’s allies doesn’t show up, the widget for the doohickey doesn’t arrive, the parcel isn’t delivered, and so on.

(NaNoWriMo Day 5): 5th Key Scene: The Lock-In

People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it. —Harlan Ellison

Today I’m going to talk about the Lock-In. Before I say more about this scene, though, I’d like to talk about something else.

A Clarification: What I Mean by “Key Scene”

What follows is my take on this, you might not agree with me and that’s fine. That’s great! How boring would it be if we all agreed?

I’ve been saying that the key scenes I’ve been blogging about are scenes that any narrative story will have either onstage or offstage.[3] Let me clarify what I mean by this.

Sometimes people write to me and say, “Karen, you’re wrong! One of my favorite authors, Jane Doe, has written a best selling novel and she’s never even heard of a story climax!”

Folks have been creating stories for millennia but many of the terms, the words, we use to describe elements of these stories are of recent invention. That’s okay. Things don’t come labeled with names. The Grand Canyon could have been called something else!

Just because a writer doesn’t know the term “story climax” doesn’t mean the stories they’ve written are devoid of a climax. If the book is selling well, I guarantee you it’s there!

Every well-formed narrative story has a climax, a moment, where the final conflict, the final confrontation, between the protagonist and the antagonistic force is played out and only one of them leaves victorious (or they could both lose). Maybe this scene isn’t written down on the page, maybe it is one of those stories I hate where the climax is gestured to offstage. But all narrative stories have one.

Similarly, at some point in any narrative story there will be a place where the protagonist is locked into her quest. She’s committed. There’s no going back.

This is true of all the narrative works I’ve read or watched. That said, there are non-narrative, non-representational works I’ve read/viewed that this isn’t true of. But what I’m talking about here are the kind of stories that have been told around campfires for millennia, the kind of stories children beg their parents to tell them before bed: stories told with the intention of entertaining an audience.

Plot Point One: The Lock-In: Breaking It Down

The idea of a plot point was introduced by Syd Field in his eminently readable book, Screenplay. It’s the idea of a significant event, a complication, that spins the action of the story around in a radically different direction.

According to Field there are only two plot points, one at the end of Act One (The Lock-In) and another at the end of Act Two (The All Hope is Lost Point[2]). Other folks like working with a system in which there are four plot points, four scenes that spin the action of the novel in a different direction: the Lock-In, the Midpoint Crisis, the All Hope is Lost point and the Climax. That’s fine too!

What is it?

This complication has the effect of locking the protagonist into her quest.

One of my favorite examples of a lock-in occurs in the Matrix when Morpheus gives Neo a choice: take the red pill and learn the truth he has been searching for all his life, the truth about the Matrix, or take the blue pill and continue life as before. Whichever choice Neo makes, there’s no going back.

In Star Wars IV: A New Hope when Luke finds his aunt and uncle dead, murdered by storm troopers, he understands there’s no going back. His ordinary world is gone.

Key points: 

• The Lock-In should be be a clear point of no return. That said, sometimes this transition is figurative. Sometimes one character says to another, “If you do this, there’s no going back.” Perhaps that is a bit on the nose, but it does the job.
• There needs be be a complication, a twist. The action of this scene needs to push the main plot in a different direction.

Where is it?

The Lock-In occurs at the end of Act One. In practice I’ve found that it can come anywhere from 25% to 30% of the way through a story.[4]

How is the Lock-In connected to the protagonist’s desires?

The protagonist's desires—internal and external—set the protagonist's goal. It is that goal that the protagonist is now committed to achieving.

Stepping Through an Example

I’m going to use Star Wars IV: A New Hope as my example.

Is this a point of no return? Yes. Luke’s aunt and uncle are dead. The farm has been destroyed. Luke cannot go back to his old life.

Is there a complication, a twist? Yes, and for the same reason. Because Luke’s aunt and uncle are dead his entire world has changed, his life has just gained a new direction. Luke doesn't even think about the academy anymore, his goal now is to aid the resistance.

How The Lock-In Is Implemented in Three Genres: Action, Romance & Mystery

I’ve found that during the Lock-In, regardless of genre, there is often some banter, a moment of bonding, between the protagonist and one of her companions (most likely a helper/sidekick).

Action Genre

We’ve just taken a look at Star Wars IV: A New Hope, so I won’t go over those points again here. One of my favorite Lock-In scenes is from Edge of Tomorrow where not only is Cage stripped of his rank as officer and made to join the cadets on the front line, but his fellow soldiers are told that he has been caught impersonating an officer!

Romance Genre

The central tension in a romance is whether the antagonist and protagonist (the lovers) will bond with each other. The exact form this bond takes depends on the sub-genre.

The Lock-In often coincides with the Confession of Love. Depending on how that goes the lovers may break up or possibly have their first kiss—or at least a significant kiss. It could be that their first kiss was more or less humdrum. If that’s the case then this kiss will blow their socks off!

See: 6 Scenes Any Love Story Must Have

Murder Mystery Genre

I’ve found—and here I’m drawing on my own personal experience as an avid consumer of mystery stories—that often a major clue is given at the Lock-In, something that transforms the second victim’s life and acts as a Point of No Return for that character.

Also, often, a second body is found at the Lock-In, something that spins the investigation off in a new direction. In this case, the second body is the clue.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

I know it looks a bit like a textbook, but don't be put off! This is a wonderful reference: Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham. I've read this book cover to cover and it helped me enormously, especially when it comes to understanding sequels and the logical order of story events. Cheers!

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That’s it for today! I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, but I might take a break from writing about key scenes.

How is NaNoWriMo going for you folks? Please share! :-)

Word count so far: 6,778
Word count for today: 1,500 non-fiction + 790 fiction = 2,290
Total words this month: 9,008

Notes:

1. I say every narrative story ever written because some stories are not representational.

2. Another name for this is the Major Setback.

3. If a scene occurs “onstage” then the narrator tells us about it. If a scene occurs “offstage” then we hear about it indirectly. Another character might talk about it or perhaps the viewpoint character will have a flashback.

4. Screenwriters will know exactly which page a key scene should fall on, but its position in a novel is less precise. That said, if you want your story to be easy to turn into a movie, it wouldn’t hurt to have the Lock-In at between 25% and 30%.

(NaNoWriMo Day 4): 4th Key Scene: The First Pinch Point

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. —William Faulkner

Welcome to the November madness that is NaNoWriMo! Every day this month I’m blogging about a key scene, one that any story will include. I take a close look at how this scene, this structure, is implemented in three popular genres: Action, Romance and Mystery. So far I've posted articles about the Inciting Incident, the Climax and the Midpoint Climax.

Today I'm going to talk about the first pinch point.

Pinch Point One: Breaking It Down

What is a pinch point? Sue Coletta writes: “A pinch point is a demonstration of the nature, power, and very essence of the antagonistic force.[1]”

Exactly!

I blogged about pinch points a little while ago (see: Story Structure: What Are Pinch Points?), but let’s go over them again. A pinch point reminds the reader of the nature of the antagonist, the extreme threat he poses to the protagonist and what is at stake. In other words, it brings us back to the main story arc.

Two different kinds of pinch points

As far as I can tell there are two different kinds of pinch points, depending on how developed the protagonist’s internal desire is; that is, how big of a role this desire plays in the overall story. (See: What Kind of Writer Are You? Dramatic Action versus Character Development.)

Outward facing pinch points.

For lack of a better term, I’m going to call these outward facing pinch points.

In an outward pinch point, the threat is mainly physical; the protagonist’s life is in danger. In these sorts of stories the protagonist usually doesn’t have a well-developed internal desire. Here the focus is on showing the audience the power of the antagonist and highlighting how very bad it will be for the protagonist if she fails to achieve her goal.

Raiders of the Lost Ark contains a great example of this. The first pinch point shows us the conflict between Indiana Jones and Dr. René Belloq. In this scene Indy believes Marion has been killed by Belloq’s minions. He gets drunk and goes to confront his nemesis. After a marvelous discussion about each man’s philosophy of life and relic hunting, the two men face-off—but it’s not a fair fight because Belloq is surrounded by his minions. Jones’ life is saved when a group of children surround him and escort him to safety.

Inward facing pinch points.

Second, there are inward facing pinch points. In an inward pinch point the threat doesn’t necessarily have to do with life and death (though it might), it has to do with the overall destruction of the life itself, of the one thing that makes it meaningful. It is a moment of truth leading to intense pain and radical change (perhaps not right away, but it puts events in motion).

For instance, in You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly loses the thing she loves most in the world, the bookstore she inherited from her mother. She loses it because a big chain bookstore, Fox Books, has moved into her neighborhood. In the first pinch point Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox have a face-to-face confrontation and it is a barn burner. Kathleen is deep in denial and Joe, in the most brutal of ways, tells her the truth: You can’t complete with Fox Books, you are going to lose your business.

As a result Kathleen is wrenched out of the state of denial she has been stubbornly clinging to and the truth begins to filter through: she is going to lose her bookstore. This seems unkind, and it was, but it was true and it was something she needed to prepare for. Recognizing the truth of her impending loss broke her heart, but it also did her a service, it helped her prepare for the inevitable.

Where is it?

The first Pinch Point occurs about 37.5% of the way through a story, or half way through the middle of the first half of the second act. (If you’re using a four act structure, the first Pinch Point comes halfway through the second act.)

How is Pinch Point One connected to the protagonist’s desires?

In any kind of Pinch Point it is what the protagonist wants, what the protagonist is seeking, that brings her into conflict with the antagonist. Though the protagonist and antagonist have different ends, different ultimate goals, they both want/desire the same thing.

How Pinch Point One is Implemented in Three Genres: Action, Romance & Mystery

For the first pinch point there really isn’t a lot of variation across genre.

Action Genre

In an action story, this will be a scene that highlights the essential difference between the protagonist and antagonist, and how this difference is reflected in their actions. Also, there will be an element of violence or implied, perhaps impending, violence.

Romance Genre

In a romance, the first pinch point will be a menacing scene. For instance, perhaps there will be a misunderstanding and the antagonist will threaten, or appear to threaten, the protagonist. Or perhaps, as in You’ve Got Mail, the antagonist will harm the protagonist through wielding truth like a scalpel.

Murder Mystery Genre

In a murder mystery the first pinch point often takes the form of the detective receiving an anonymous note from the murderer, or perhaps something the murderer does puts the detective’s life in jeopardy.

This is a scene that showcases the essential difference between the sleuth and the killer, the difference in how they think of both the world in general and the value of human life in particular. If the killer threatens the sleuth this could be used to foreshadow events at the climax.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I would like to share a link to K.M. Weiland’s marvelous book, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. Her book can help you choose the right type of outline for you, guide you in brainstorming plot ideas, aid you in discovering your characters and show you how to structure your scenes. What’s not to like?!

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again tomorrow when I go over another key scene.

How are you doing with NaNoWriMo? Do you have any tips and/or tricks you’d like to share for achieving your word count?

Word count so far: 5,578
Word count for today: 1,200
Total words this month: 6,778

Notes:

1. “Pinch Points In Fiction Writing,” by Sue Coletta.

(NaNoWriMo Day 3): 3rd Key Scene: The Midpoint Crisis

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” —George Orwell

Welcome to NaNoWriMo madness! Every day this month my plan is to blog about a key scene, one that pretty much any story of any genre has to include. Then I’ll take a closer look at how this scene, this structure, this general idea, is implemented in three popular genres: Action, Romance and Mystery. So far I've posted articles about the Inciting Incident and the Climax.

Today I'm going to talk about the Midpoint Crisis.

The Midpoint: Breaking It Down

I used to think that the Midpoint was primarily the place where the protagonist and antagonist confronted each other. I’ve changed my mind. It can be that, but it’s often more.

During the Midpoint the protagonist usually goes through what I’m going to call an enlightenment. She realizes that her understanding of the Special World of the Adventure is deeply flawed. She thought she knew what the Special World was like, what the capabilities of the antagonist are, but at the Midpoint she discovers she is oh-so-very wrong. As a result, the protagonist goes from being passive to active. She transitions from just reacting to the world to making plans and engaging with the antagonist.

What I just sketched in the above paragraph is generally true of most stories. Below, I go into specific variants. Note: Many of these points overlap. The difference, often, is one of emphasis.

What is it?

The protagonist goes from ignorance to knowledge. 

At the midpoint the protagonist discovers just how ignorant she has been about the Special World. Often the protagonist finds out how much she doesn’t know and, in that moment of revelation, is put at a disadvantage. The antagonist likes to do a bit of (justified!) gloating about how he has pulled the wool over her eyes. Then the protagonist uses this knowledge—and a bit of good luck—to escape.

Or, sometimes, the protagonist figures the truth out on her own. The antagonist doesn’t show up personally, he sends his minions to set a trap for the protagonist, one he hopes will prove fatal to her. But the protagonist is clever and figures out the antagonist’s scheme just in time to escape.

The pot of gold at the end of the Midpoint’s rainbow is that now the protagonist knows the true nature of the Special World. Sure, they know they’re in deep doodoo, but still. Understanding how little you know is the beginning of wisdom. Perhaps the protagonist has gotten a late start but at least now she’s in the game.

The protagonist goes from reacting to circumstances to shaping those circumstances. 

The protagonist goes from passive to active. Or perhaps that’s not the best way of putting it. It’s not as though the protagonist was a balloon drifting in the wind. When the antagonist makes a move on the protagonist she reacts, she resists, but that is the extent of her planning. The protagonist doesn’t initiate action. To be fair, perhaps she can’t because she doesn’t know the rules of the Special World yet and she keeps getting it wrong.

In any case, the rule of thumb is that before the midpoint the protagonist merely reacts to events. Something pushes her and she pushes back. She’s not thinking ahead, she’s not taking the fight to the enemy. She’s being swept along in a fast moving river, just keeping her head above water.

In the second half of the story, the protagonist makes a plan and does FINALLY take the fight to the enemy. She no longer merely reacts to the world around her, the crucible at the midpoint has transformed her into an active agent of change.

The protagonist goes through a point of no return. 

The Midpoint irrevocably changes the protagonist with the result being (among other things) that she cannot go back to the Ordinary World, at least not until she sees her quest to the end.

As we’ve seen, what the protagonist learns at the midpoint changes her, transforms her. There is no going back. This is a point of no return. What she learn at the midpoint transforms her from someone who reacts to circumstances, someone who is buffeted by external forces, into an agent who can form a plan and act on it. She is now an agent of change.

The protagonist chooses self-sacrifice because of something larger than themselves (e.g. love). 

Cage in Edge of Tomorrow is comfortable with his cowardice, his intimate, oh-so-reasonable concern for his own skin. But then he meets a girl, he falls in love, and at the Midpoint he puts her welfare before his own. It moves him from relying on her to save him to him taking the lead, to him trying to save her even if it means facing-off against the Big Bad all by his lonesome.

This all happens at the midpoint and it is this change, this internal transformation, that turns Cage from a passive, reactive, person to an active agent who makes plans and takes the fight to the enemy.

Discovery. 

The midpoint can simply be a moment of discovery, where the hero oh-so-briefly gains the thing he seeks only to have it snatched away from him. (After all, if it weren’t, the story would be over!) Sometimes this discovery is external (the protagonist briefly acquires his object of desire) and sometimes it is internal (the protagonist discovers who she really is). More on this below.

Where is it?

As the name suggests, this scene occurs smack dab in the center of the story. In practical terms, it usually occurs somewhere between 45% and 55% of the way through.

How is the Midpoint connected to the protagonist’s desires?

The midpoint confrontation is intimately connected to the protagonist’s desires (both internal and external) and the protagonist’s goal. For example, in Edge of Tomorrow, Cage’s weakness is an excessive concern for his own skin—he’s a coward. At the beginning of the movie his goal is to get as far away from the front lines as he can. His challenge is to love something more than he loves himself, more than he loves life. This begins at the midpoint.

The Midpoint: An Example

I’ve already given a number of examples. Ideally I would simply describe a scene in some detail and then go on to analyze it but today I’m running short of time so my description will have to be briefer than I would like.

In the movie Malice, Andy Safian, played by Bill Pullman, initially wants nothing more than to live in marital bliss with his wife, Tracy, and have reliable plumbing. After Tracy loses her unborn baby as well as her ability to have children (Andy gives the doctor permission to perform the surgery thinking he is saving her life), she lets Andy know she blames him for her loss and leaves him.

At this point Andy’s world is shattered and his goal becomes to find his wife and reconcile with her. At around the midpoint, or a little bit after[1], Andy begins to realize he never knew Tracy. Everything she told him about herself was a lie. But he doesn’t yet know why she did it. What did she want from him? Why did she do this? Why him? He needs to know.

This midpoint scene occurs a bit late, about 65% of the way through the movie, when Andy talks to Tracy’s mother, a woman he had thought dead, and finds out the whole ugly unvarnished truth about the woman he married. It is a dramatic scene. After Andy learns the truth he is able to come up with a plan that will even the scales of justice.

Andy’s journey is primarily one of ignorance to knowledge. Andy was happy. He was! Sure his life was based on illusion, but he was still happy as a drunken clam. But this was based on ignorance of who his wife really was and what she wanted from him.

Also, Andy’s journey is one of self-discovery. None of us really know what we’re capable of, what we will choose, until we are put through the crucible of life’s pinch points. Walking through the fire of his wife’s betrayal reveals who Andy really is. How? Through his choices. Everything is stripped away from him and in that rawness he is forced to act. These are primal choices, choices that reveal character, choices that reveal (both to themselves and the world) who someone really is.

How the Midpoint is Implemented in Three Genres: Action, Romance & Mystery

Action Genre

I know I’ve used this movie as an example a time or two, but let’s take a look at Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, since it is the quintessential action movie. At the midpoint Indiana Jones acquires his goal, he finds and (however briefly!) takes possession of the ark. This is a moment of (external) Discovery.

Romance Genre

The midpoint is where the two lovers come together. Whatever differences they have are temporarily resolved, their disputes are temporarily suspended. Depending on the spiciness of the romance, this could be anything from handholding to spending the night in a creatively equipped dungeon.

Murder Mystery Genre

I’ve read ... wow. A lot of murder mysteries, and they’re all a bit different. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that there’s only one thing to do at the midpoint. That said, there is often a false resolution at the midpoint. It seems as though the mystery is solved, that the murderer has been found. But, of course, he hasn't! If he had this would be the end of the story.

Often it only seems to the police as though the case is solved. The sleuth knows it isn’t but no one will believe her.

This is one of those places where the B-story can come in to lend a helping hand. The resolution to the B-story can expose the falseness of the A-story, expose that the person the police think is the killer really isn’t. For instance, the suspected killer can be murdered!

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I'd like to recommend a book that has meant a lot to me over the years, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Have you ever thought, “Who am I kidding, I’ll never be able to do this!” If so, read this book! Here’s what Robert McKee had to say about The War of Art: “As I closed The War of Art, I felt a surge of positive calm. I now know I can win this war. And if I can win, so can you.”

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That’s it for today! Tomorrow I’ll talk to you again about another key scene. Happy NaNo-ing!

Word count so far: 3,778 words.
Word count for today: 1,800 words.
Total words this month: 5,578 words.

Notes:

1. Or a little bit after the midpoint. There’s an important subplot that plays out in the first half of the movie that pushes the timing of the main arc back a bit.

Writing to Entertain

I’m going to pick up the thread of my last blog post where I talked about two things that drive us to write: First, the desire to communicate. This is the desire to share ourselves, our thoughts, our souls, with others. Second, the desire to entertain.

Today I cash out what exactly I mean by entertainment and look at how, as writers, we can entertain our readers. The answer: To evoke a reader's emotion, the reader needs to identify with the character. Which means she has to have clearly defined goals, obstacles to those goals, she needs to have something to lose and something to gain, and there needs to be some sort of urgency.

In short, eliciting emotion has everything to do with story structure.

Entertainment: The Evoking of Emotion

Most readers want to be entertained. To entertain another person is to evoke their emotions. Even in some of Agatha Christie’s more cerebral whodunits there was the sedate emotion of curiosity.

Stephen King writes for many reasons but one of them is to entertain others, especially his wife. The following passage is from his book, On Writing:

“When I write a scene that strikes me as funny (like the pie-eating contest in “The Body” or the execution rehearsal in The Green Mile), I am also imagining my I.R. finding it funny. I love it when Tabby laughs out of control—she puts her hands up as if to say I surrender and these big tears go rolling down her cheeks. I love it, that’s all, fucking adore it, and when I get hold of something with that potential, I twist it as hard as I can. During the actual writing of such a scene (door closed), the thought of making her laugh—or cry—is in the back of my mind. During the rewrite (door open), the question—is it funny enough yet? scary enough?—is right up front. I try to watch her when she gets to a particular scene, hoping for at least a smile or—jackpot, baby!—that big belly-laugh with the hands up, waving in the air.”

Making someone else feel good—or feel anything for that matter!—is a thrill. Seeing them laugh or even smile. Seeing them tear up, it’s ... well, as King says, I just love it. It’s a high.

That’s entertainment.

And if you give people a story that makes them laugh and cry, love and hate, they will think their time well-wasted.

But how does one do that? How does one manipulate a reader’s emotions?

The Writer’s Quest

The question of how to evoke a reader’s emotions has defined my writer’s quest for most of my adult life. I want to write a story my father would have loved so much he would beg me to tell another.

Being able to make another person laugh is a valuable skill. Being able to make everyone within earshot hang on your every word has always been advantageous. Even before we had currency, travelers who could tell engaging stories bartered their skill for food and lodging. (In fact, this still happens. My friend was nearly killed on her last vacation—she’s fine now—and, in her words, ‘ate out on that story for a month’!)

What entertains us? You might think that the obvious answers are: sex, violence, death, and so on. And that’s probably right as far as it goes but I think it misses the point.

If I showed you the picture of someone who had been brutally murdered, my guess is that you would not be entertained. In fact, you’d likely be vaguely nauseous and not at all happy with me.

But, yes. For obvious reasons death interests us. A few days ago a friend called to tell me his dog, Zeus, had passed away. I had walked Zeus for years and, of course, had become attached. We both cried and reminisced. But then I asked: How did he die? That mattered to me. As it happens, he died peacefully in his sleep at the end of a long life. I took some solace in that. But I would have felt very different if, say, he had been hit by a car.

Yes, we slow down to gawk at the van with the crumpled front end on the side of the road, but what question do we ask: What happened?

I believe that humans aren’t interested in death as much as we are the story behind it. We want to know: Why? When? What? Where? How? We don’t want that horrible thing to happen to us. We think if we know, maybe we can avoid it.

Going back to something I touched on a moment ago, if I showed someone—let’s call her Beth—a picture of a gruesome murder, I doubt she would be happy with me. The picture itself isn’t entertaining. But Beth would be very interested in the answers to the following questions:

• Who was the victim? Was he a stranger or did I know him? 
• Where did the victim die? Next door or two states over?
• When did the victim die? 50 years ago or yesterday?
• Who killed the victim? Is the killer a stranger or do I know him?
• How did the victim die? Was it a quick death or was it slow and painful?

Reading this, putting myself in Beth’s place, it isn’t the photograph of the dead man that entertains me, it is that one of my goals is put in jeopardy: keeping myself and those I care about safe. It is that automatic, vicarious, sense of danger that puts all my senses on high alert.

These are also the kinds of questions we ask when we’re writing a story.

Beth’s goal: To protect herself and her family from the killer.
The opposition: The killer.
The Stakes: The lives of her family.
Urgency: If the victim lived next door and was killed a few hours ago, then the situation is urgent.

As I see Beth act I identify with her. I care whether she achieves her goal. I care when she suffers a setback. I care when she reaches the All Hope Is Lost Point and it seems she cannot succeed. And, finally, I have a warm cozy sense of well-being as the hero/protagonist bests the forces of opposition and, against all odds, achieves her goal.

My point is that entertainment isn’t static, it comes from the structure itself, from the arrangement of the many parts.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I would like to share a link to one of Dwight V. Swain’s excellent books, “Creating Characters: How to Build Story People.” I bought this years ago and it has helped me enormously. Here’s the blurb:

“The core of character,” he [Swain] says in chapter 1, “lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.” Building on that foundation—the capacity to care—Swain takes the would-be writer step-by-step through the fundamentals of finding and developing [characters].

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That’s it! I hope you could make some sense of my ramblings. NaNoWriMo is starting soon! My next post will be on Halloween, Monday, October 31 and then I will post every single day in November, outlining a key scene in a novel. So, if you’re NaNo-ing this year, swing on by!

2 Rules of Thumb for Character Creation

With NaNoWriMo around the corner I thought I'd go over two rules of thumb for character creation that have served me well.

Two Rules of Thumb for Character Creation

Readers need to be able to identify with your characters. You know that.

In order for a reader to identify with your character the reader needs to feel she understands them. In order for that to be the case characters need to make sense. People might not make sense, but characters need to. Even when their desires conflict, they need to make sense. If they don’t, readers will become bored and stop reading.

The First Rule of Character Creation

So, with that in mind, here’s what I think of as the first rule of character creation:

Characters, like people, are led by their emotions, by what they love and hate. 

If you don’t think you are led by your emotions that’s fine. Look at the people around you. Are most people led by their emotions or by their rationality?

Let me give you an example:

A friend offers me a piece of chocolate. I know I shouldn’t have that piece of chocolate because it will ruin my diet, but I still greedily devour every scrumptious calorie! Why? Because I love chocolate! I know how good it will taste. Even though it will mean I can’t fit into my new dress on my birthday I still eat the chocolate, and I really really want to fit into that dress. So why do I eat the chocolate? Because, despite what I tell myself and my friends, at that moment I love chocolate more than fitting into the dress. It’s all about emotion.

The Second Rule of Character Creation

Here’s the second rule of character creation:

Thought doesn’t rule emotion, it picks up after it. 

After I eat the chocolate I rationalize that even though I ate the chocolate I’ll be okay, I’ll still be able to achieve my goal of fitting into my new dress. All I have to do is exercise more. And then of course I don’t and it isn’t!

Cashing This Out

How can we cash this insight out in our story?

What do people care about? We care about our significant others and our friends, we care about food and comfort, we care about having fun new experiences, we care about the work we do. We care about beauty. We crave novelty.

My friend, Sue, wants to be rich. Why? Because then she can afford to go travelling and have a beautiful apartment. When I was a teenager my friend, I’ll call him Brian, wanted to own a Chevrolet Camaro with leather seats and a top notch sound system. Why? Because he loved driving fast, thought the car looked beautiful and liked girls.

Having a character who wants to rob a bank because then he’ll be rich is fine, but that needs to be grounded in the messy particularities of the character, what they love, what they hate.

If someone is going to risk it all, you’ve got to show why that character passionately loves that thing and the only way to do this is to break it down and show what they love and what the hate.

Get intimate with the character. Have them whisper their deepest, darkest, secrets to you and then, at the appropriate moment, splay them across the page.

You might be thinking, “That’s all well and good, but I’ve written stories that I liked and I didn’t do that.”

This kind of deep character development isn’t for the writer. These characters live inside us and so we know their intimate details. When I ask a writer, Would your character do X? They answer me right away, no hesitation. No, we make these things explicit for the reader. Because they don’t (yet) have the character living inside them.

Here’s another article I’ve written on character creation: Be Fearless: Make Your Characters Real.

Writing Exercise

What do you care about? You’ve got goals, perhaps you want to buy a home or earn a certain amount of money a year or spend next summer in Spain or lose ten pounds, but why?

Dive into the particular emotions behind your goals. Do you want to own a home because it would make you feel secure? Do you want to lose weight because you want to find someone to love, someone who will love you back?

After you’ve done this, take those emotions and give them to the main character of your current work in progress. You don’t have to incorporate them into the story, you can just do this as an exercise. Take your main character and give him a mini-adventure, write a piece of flash fiction, where you give him or her your own goals. Then show the reader the messy loves and hates these goals emerge from.

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I’ve decided that I’m going to try, every post, to pick a book or audiobook I personally have loved and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes, I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar, at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored that you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I would like to share a link to a book I have in my own digital library, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Ackerman writes, "One of the biggest problem areas for writers is conveying a character's emotions to the reader in a unique, compelling way. This book comes to the rescue by highlighting 75 emotions and listing the possible body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each." An excellent reference!

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That’s it! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said. I will admit to drawing a wee bit from Saint Augustine and his idea that we can only have one true great love and that this love will order everything else in our lives—or something like that, it’s been a long time since I took philosophy. (grin)

I'll talk to you again on Friday. Till then, good writing!

Story Structure: What Are Pinch Points?

Today I want to focus on one particular aspect of story structure: pinch points. In what follows I have a lot to say about them so let's start by looking at what they are.

Pinch Points Are Reminders

A pinch point reminds the reader of five things:

• Who the antagonist is.
• What the antagonist wants. 
• Who the protagonist is.
• What the protagonist wants.
• What is at stake.

Often, the first Pinch Point comes directly after the Fun & Games/Tests & Trials part of a story and serves to bring it back to the main storyline, reminding readers of the core conflict. Sometimes this can quickly take the reader from bemused chuckling to a gut wrenching feeling of loss.

Pinch Points Are About Truth And Transformation

More abstractly, pinch points are about exposing the truth. The truth about the protagonist, the antagonist, and their situations/realities. Realizing, understanding, the truth of one's situation often causes pain and destruction but, in the end, transforms the protagonist (or the protagonist fails to transform and has a tragic end).

It has been my experience that truth/transformation pinch points are much more common in literary works, dramas, romantic comedies, and so on, than they are in action/adventures, mysteries and thrillers.

Where Are The Pinch Points?

In a four act structure the first pinch point comes in the middle of the second act and the second pinch point comes in the middle of the third act.

In a three act structure the first pinch point comes in the middle of the first part of the second act and the second comes in the middle of the last part of the second act.

If that’s confusing (and it is!) there’s a helpful diagram in this post: Using Pinch Points To Increase Narrative Drive. As with everything, this is only a general guideline. Fit them in where it feels appropriate for your story.

Now let’s take a look at each pinch point in more detail.

Pinch Point One

The two Pinch Points serve the same purpose:

• Bringing the focus back to the core conflict between the protagonist and antagonist.
• To ensure the stakes of the conflict are crystal clear to the reader. This often means that this scene should be vivid. Dramatic. 

Also, we can take this opportunity to remind the reader of the essence of both the protagonist and antagonist, of who they are, what they want and how far they'll go to get it.

Truth & Pain

Additionally—and whether this is true of the pinch points in your story may largely depend on what kind of story it is (see the examples below)—a pinch point can also be a moment of truth leading to intense pain and radical change (perhaps not right away, but it puts events in motion).

I find that in an action/adventure the pinch points are more about showing the protagonist and antagonist (or the antagonist's agents) in physical conflict while, say, romantic comedies are more about how the protagonist and antagonist (the two lovers) destroy each other’s (false) worlds, destroy each other’s illusions, the lies they tell themselves, by forcing each other to see the truth about their lives, about themselves.

Books could—and have!—been written about this (McKee’s Story, Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, and so on) but the idea is that it’s easy to get comfortable with one’s life. It’s easy to coast. You have a job, a place to live, perhaps a significant other, perhaps a family, and you’re genuinely happy.

But then things you’re not so thrilled about start happening—you’ve been putting on weight, but that’s okay. You’re older but, hey, that’s no reason to start exercising. Sure you haven’t bought new clothes in a year but that’s not really so important. After all, being swayed by a person’s looks is so superficial. Okay, sure, you’ve been disconnecting from your friends, choosing to stay home and watch TV. And so on. Then you wake up, look in the mirror and realize: I’m my mother!!!!!! (* cue screaming violins *)

Things happen, life events, that you’re not thrilled with but you say, well, that’s okay. I’m happy, or at least not unhappy. Why rock the boat? And, slowly over the years it’s like a game of telephone. You go from being genuinely, authentically, happy with your life to disgruntled, disillusioned. It’s the death of a million cuts, it’s the frog being slowly boiled to death.

Of course your protagonist isn’t a frog being boiled to death! Instead of a frog we could talk about the postal worker who goes on a murdering spree. Or we could talk about the man or woman who gets up one morning and walks out on their family.

Speaking generally, the protagonist is on a trajectory from true happiness to destruction. If not their personal, physical, destruction, the complete and total destruction of their life, their world.

Truth as Destroying/Cleansing Fire

Every once in awhile we need a shock. We need to re-connect with how things really are, with how other people see us, warts and all. The truth, like fire, strips everything away and takes us back to our most elemental, most real, form. And it’s agony because we lose all those lovely illusions that were most dear to us. Here’s how I picture it:

Truth -> radical change/agony -> transformation or failure

At the beginning of a romantic/dramatic story, the protagonist is somewhere in the middle of this arc. What the pinch points do—this isn’t the only thing they do, but it’s one of them—is reveal this truth to your character.

That is, they reveal to the character that they are living a comfortable, happy, lie. In revealing this, the protagonist is forced to deal with it. (When this happens in real life it hurts like hell but you’ve been saved from something far worse. At least, that’s how I look at it.)

In this kind of pinch point you show readers how disconnected the protagonist is from the way things really are. You show the protagonist (and the reader) their perception of the world and then you show them their world (/their life) as it really is. The pinch point itself is about the protagonist being hit with this revelation.

This clash between mental image, between their current belief system and how things really are can be extremely painful. Truth hurts. But in return they get to see how they’ve gone from genuine happiness to something else. Something dark. They see they’re headed for destruction.

Sometimes this destruction can be averted, but not without a cost. If your protagonist is a workaholic who continually puts his family second because he thinks that’s what’s best for them, this revelation can save his relationships with those he loves but it might cost him his business, his dreams for the domination of the corporate world. Truth always exacts a price.

Examples

Okay, that was a lot of information! Let me try to bring this into perspective with two examples. The first is of a classic action/adventure, Star Wars IV: A New Hope. The second is of a romantic comedy—You’ve Got Mail—where the conflict, the tension, between the protagonist and antagonist revolves around using truth to destroy illusion.[1]

Star Wars

I know I use examples from Star Wars IV: A New Hope quite a bit, but the movie has the advantage that almost everyone has seen it! In Star Wars the first pinch point occurs when Imperial Forces, sent to recover R2-D2, menace Luke Skywalker and his allies.

Here the Pinch Point is split over two scenes. In the first scene Imperial Stormtroopers stop Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan to question them about their droids. This is where Obi-Wan says, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for.” It's a great scene!

The second scene (or, really, sequence) in the first pinch point has the Imperial Stormtroopers shooting at Han Solo as he’s going through the preflight check. The Millennium Falcon then takes off only to be chased and shot at by what looks like an Imperial battleship.

So here we’re reminded of the protagonist and antagonist (Luke and his band of allies vs the powers of the Empire exemplified by Darth Vader), what their goals are (Luke wants to deliver the plans of the Death Star to the rebel alliance, the forces of the Empire want to prevent this) and what the stakes of the conflict are (the Empire can blow up your planet!)

You’ve Got Mail

Just before the first pinch point we see Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan’s character) in all out denial about the likelihood that Fox Books is going to put her small independent bookstore (The Shop Around The Corner) out of business. Everyone else sees that her bookstore is in trouble and thinks she’ll be forced to close, but Kathleen is living in a dream world. She believes she can compete. “Everything is fine!” she says and smiles.

The first plot point occurs when Kathleen discovers that Joe (played by Tom Hanks)—the charming guy who came into her bookstore earlier—is Joe Fox of Fox Books (the big chain of bookstores that is putting indie bookstores out of business). They then have a passionate exchange in which Joe tells Kathleen the truth. What Joe says to her begins to destroy Kathleen's comforting world of illusion.

Let me set this scene up. When Kathleen discovers that Joe’s last name is Fox she accuses him of spying on her because she’s his competition. Here’s where they become passionate and the truth comes spilling out:

“It’s a charming little bookstore,” Joe says. What do you sell? About 350 thousand dollars worth of books a year?”

“How did you know that?” Kathleen asks, astonished and oh-so-very suspicious.

“I’m in the book business,” Joe says. He smiles at Kathleen but there is no warmth, only condescension.

Kathleen’s face grows hard. Joe has made a direct hit. She shakes her head. “I am in the book business.”

“I see,” Joe says. “And we are the Price Club, only instead of a 10 gallon vat of olive oil for $3.99 that won’t even fit under your kitchen cabinet, we sell cheap books.”

Joe pauses a moment then shakes his head. “Me, a spy?” Oh, absolutely. I have in my possession the super-duper secret printout of the sales figures of a bookstore so inconsequential yet full of its own virtue that I was immediately compelled to rush over there for fear that it’s going to put me out of business.”

Kathleen is so utterly shocked and completely undone by Joe’s words that she can only make an inarticulate squawking sound.

In my opinion, that’s the first pinch point. It’s a moment of truth and unspeakable pain for Kathleen. Joe is saying: It’s not personal, but the thing you love most in life is going to go away and I’m the one who is going to take it from you. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Kathleen’s loss doesn’t happen all at once, but that’s where she begins to wake up, begins to realize what her situation really is.

Wow, this post is long! I need to stop here. I’ll pick this topic up again later.

I’m intensely interested in what you think about what I’ve said about pinch points. Do you agree? Disagree? Is there something you’d like to add? An example you’d like to share? Please do! I love it when you contribute to the discussion. That’s how I think of these blog posts. We’re sitting somewhere having coffee, chatting, and I’m laying out my thoughts. But it can be awfully one-sided! I want to hear your thoughts too. :-)

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I’ve decided that I’m going to try, every post, to pick a book or audiobook I personally have loved and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes, I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar, at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored that you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I would like to share links to a series which has become my number two favorite series, behind Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (which I cannot recommend highly enough, the books just keep getting better). Anyway, the series is Kelley Armstrong’s Cainsville: Omens, Visions, Deceptions, Betrayals. Cainsville is a mystery crossed with horror crossed with romance. (BTW, I’m NOT saying that if you like the Dresden Files that you’ll like Cainsville. They are very different. But they are both what I would call urban fantasy.)

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Notes:

1. I should mention that, as near as I can tell, You’ve Got Mail has four pinch points, two for each main character’s arc. So, above, when I talk about the first pinch point, this is really the first pinch point of Kathleen’s arc. Just FYI.