Authors: Susan May Warren
Tags: #Reference, #Writing; Research & Publishing Guides, #Writing, #Fiction, #Writing Skills, #General Fiction
The
Black
Moment
That
place
in
the
book
where
everything
hits
a
crisis, where
internal
and
external
conflicts
come
to
a
head.
It’s
the
climax
of
the
book
and
can
be
the
most powerful
scene
if
it’s
done
right.
Where do you derive your security? Hopefully, for all of us, we derive our security in the strength of God and trusting in His love for us. But not everyone has that strength of faith. Most of us can admit that, when we are broadsided by life, not all of us go running to the Bible or prayer first.
Maybe you call your mother.
Or exercise. Or dive into the refrigerator. Or gather in your children.
Maybe you go home and curl up on the sofa with the Lifetime Channel. Or take long walks. Maybe some of us run from our problems, while others charge in like a bull and try to organize or control our way out of them.
What is your security?
Joe, the hero in
Happily Ever After
, has a history of leaving. Hitting the road when the going gets tough. He trusts only himself, and when life hits the skids, he finds his security by packing up and going in search of new beginnings, leaving the old dangling like threads. He’s got a lot of loose ends.
Defining your character’s security blanket—the one he reaches for before he finds salvation or spiritual depth—will help you craft that climactic moment of choice, that “Aha!” moment where everything changes. At some point in the book, Joe has to confront the failures of his past. He has to make a choice: Will he continue to run, or will he stay planted? If he does decide to stay, it will change his identity. So, ask your character: When the going gets tough, what do you do?
Now, gather up the building blocks you have
created.
Poor
Joe
Motivation:
His past makes him afraid of developing deep relationships.
Greatest Fear:
That he will get into a relationship and it won’t survive the challenges, especially the very possible one of a special-needs child.
Greatest Dream:
To restore his
family
Purpose:
To be the caregiver his father wasn’t and provide for his brother (while still not sacrificing his heart).
Competence:
His handyman skills—only they aren’t working. In fact, they’re making the situation worse. Black Moment must come when there is no longer anything Joe can do to “save” the day except face his greatest fear. In Joe’s case, that would be continuing a relationship that will only hurt him because he’ll have to leave. This will cause the inner conflict: What if he has to sacrifice the trust of someone in order to protect his family? Or sacrifice his family to earn the trust of someone he cares about?
As I develop my plot, I want to draw my character deeper and deeper into trouble. I try and set it up with three “Trouble” points, leading to the final “Turning” point, and ending with the Happily Ever After that brings it full circle.
Here’s how it works:
As you create your character, you know what his dream is. Now think of the things in his normal world that pull him away from his dream. We’re going to start him in a place of
UnHappy.
Hint of Trouble
often happens in conjunction with the Inciting Incident—that event or decision that makes it seem he won’t get his desire. Again, it’s in the world of his competence, so as you figure it out, relate it personally to your character.
Trouble along the way
are the “Disappointments” on your character’s quest that push him further and further from his goal until he reaches that Y in the Road! I recommend at least three “Disappointments.”
Big Trouble
is the Black Moment, where there is no turning back, and no hope. I also think through the
Happily Ever After
so I know what my ending will be.
How do you determine the “Trouble” your character will get in? Attack his competence! With each swipe at his competence, you now bring him further and further from his dream and purpose.
And when he reaches the Black Moment, his point of no return, he’ll be facing his worst fears and be tempted to revert to security mode. He’ll either grab the Teddy Bear, or choose to change.
In Dr. Kimball’s case, he’s been on his own so much, and his greatest fear is that no one will ever know the truth about his wife. Even more than his freedom, he values justice—he wants her murderer caught. So when the agent tracking him offers him this opportunity, he’s faced with his greatest dream happening, or losing everything by betrayal. If he surrenders, he’s risking his freedom, and facing his greatest fear: going to jail and never solving the crime. If he doesn’t trust the agent, he’s risking the dream that the murderer will come to justice.
You have to bring your character to this point of choice, where his competence is at an end, his identity is threatened, his security is calling him, and his purpose is dangled before him at great risk. Then it’s time for your divine paradigm shift, which brings us to the Epiphany.
An
Epiphany
is
that
AHA!
moment
when
your
character
suddenly
realizes
why
he’s
on the
journey. He
realizes
that
what
he’s
believed
all
his
life,
what’s
been
d
riving
him,
is
a lie.
This
is
accompanied
by
a
truth
that
unlocks
possibilities
to
become
a
new
person.
It usually
precedes
a
change
in
character,
beliefs,
or
values.
If
you’re
writing an inspirational book, there has to be a spiritual component to the plotting— God’s
handiwork
woven
throughout
the
plot.
I have a theory: Your hero needs to look inward to understand what holds him back from being the person he longs to be. This is true whether you’re writing for the American Booksellers Association (ABA) or the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA).His journey is more about an inward change than an external change. Even the characters in the high- action stories—Frodo in
The Lord of the Rings
or Jason Bourne in
The Bourne Identity
—are at their heart about self-discovery of the hero.
If you’re writing an inspirational novel, then God has brought your character to this point to bring him to some kind of wholeness. Up until now, your character has been largely egocentric, with the exception of the Noble Cause. Now, God brings him to this last step. Overwhelmed, at the Black Moment, ready to withdraw with his security blanket, he gets to see God reach out and save him.
Regardless of the kind of book you are writing, your character will start out in a place of dissonance, an unhappy place. Creating the Epiphany is all about moving your character from one place to the other, from the Dark to the Light.
Or, from the Lie he believes to the Truth.
One way I approach this is to ask
: What is the Lie that my character has believed? Often, it’s something from his past that has made an impression on him and taught him a lesson, and he’s lived his life by that set of rules, by the Lie ever since. If I discover this, I can then determine how he sees himself, and the ways he’s imprisoned himself. And from there I can see the Truth that will set him free.
The thing is, if you’ve written the story right, in a way that the reader not only connects with your character, but also sees himself in that character’s shoes, the Truth can extend from the pages into the reader’s heart. It can minister, and change lives. In this paradigm shift, or the “Aha!” moment, your character sees that lesson that God has been teaching him.
So, let’s put these five components
together:
Again, poor Joe.
Who am I? (Identity): Drifter
At all Costs? (Purpose): To restore his family Let Me Do It! (Competency): Problem Solver Teddy Bear (Security): Flee to new beginnings
Zone (Belonging): Broken Family, from fatherless to Child of God
Now, as a writer, you know what needs to happen on Joe’s journey. Take that germ of an idea, that setting or situation or Inciting Incident, and start Joe on his journey.
I know this is a lot to digest. So, I’m going to tell you a story that brings this all together: The Lindy Hop and the WALTZ, in three acts.
How do Plot and Characterization fit together?
LIFE
There once was a girl named Sally, who was a housewife. She and her husband and children moved to America from another country. They didn’t have much money, but they decided to build a house. Now, Sally came from a very good family, and her mother had the nicest of houses. She filled her home with expensive things, teaching Sally the importance of creating a nice home. Sally was adopted, and more than anything, she wanted her mother to approve of her. She wanted to be like her beautiful, capable mother and provide a nice home, like the Proverbs 31 woman. She also wanted to be frugal, and to please her husband, who had her on a terribly thin furniture budget. In the past, Sally had dealt with frustration through “shopping therapy,” sometimes overspending. Sally’s inner values were approval and frugality. And her dream was creating a beautiful home without spending much money. Her greatest fear was wasting money. Her Noble Cause was to be the noble wife.
INCITING INCIDENT
Sally was very competent. She was a creative girl. She watched HG TV, liked
Design on a Dime
, and had recently created her very own ottoman with an old table, some varnish, foam, and scrap material. So, when she spotted a dresser at a garage sale, an idea formed. She would take it home, strip it, and transform the dresser into a thing of beauty that could house her table linens.
(THE STORY QUESTION: CAN SALLY BE THE PROVERBS 31 WOMAN? THE STAKES: HER
FRUGAL AND HG TV REPUTATION, HER FAMILY’S BEAUTIFUL
HOME)
NOBLE QUEST
(Ignition)
Sally wrestled the dresser into the car, feeling some victory. Returning to town before returning home, she purchased what she felt she needed for the project, thrilled with the three hours she had to work on the dresser before she had to take her children to the doctor for their yearly physicals. She arrived home, finagled the dresser back out of the car onto the driveway, and began her project. Wanting her children to learn and grow from a new experience, she strongly suggested they assist her in the project. She tuned the car radio to a radio station and began to strip the dresser.
DISAPPOINTMENT 1
Soon fumes and children complaining of getting stain remover on their hands and clothing damped Sally’s enthusiasm, but she began to see progress and the lovely sheen of wood.
However, the stripping didn’t proceed as quickly as she’d hoped, and two hours later, Sally had to interrupt the process and clean herself and her children up for their doctor’s appointments. Getting into the car with plenty of time to spare, she congratulated herself on a pretty good job so far, but determined that she would finish the project alone when they returned home. Glancing at the darkening sky, she felt a sense of foreboding. But not to be deterred, and thankful that she’d made the doctor’s appointments months in advance, well in time for school physicals, she attempted to start her car. Much to her dismay, the battery had died, with all the radio playing.
(Unexpected,
yet
plausible!)