By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)
by Alexandra Sokoloff
Home stretch!
Well, theoretically, anyway. But I find that right about now is when people tend to start dropping during Nano. First of all there’s, well, Thanksgiving. Which even though it’s a holiday, involves family, and family is never conducive to marathon writing. (They don’t like to lose us to a book, it’s just the truth. It brings up all kinds of feelings of abandonment and inadequacy. So – pretend you’re going shopping and go to a cafe to write, that’s what they’re for.)
But also, let’s face it, it’s EASY to write a first act. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s exciting, it’s like the first flush of being in love. You’re so high you don’t stop to think, and that means you don’t get in your own way.
It can even be not so hard to get through Act II, part 1 to the Midpoint. But it’s that third quarter where things get murky. You feel like you’re not getting anywhere. In fact, you have no freaking clue where you are, or why in the hell you’re wherever the hell you are to begin with, and you just want to give up and sleep for a week, or eat turkey and chocolate for a week, or all of the above.
I had a friend in movie development who called it “the third-quarter drop dead.”
Well, here’s an interesting thing. Structurally, this is EXACTLY the point in your story that your hero/ine is feeling those exact same things. In other words, it’s the BLACK MOMENT, or ALL IS LOST MOMENT, or the VISIT TO DEATH, which almost always ends up as the climax or just before the climax of Act II.
It’s as if we as authors have to work ourselves into the exact same hopeless despair as our characters, as if nothing good will ever come out of this situation and we might as well give up right now – in order to convey that emotion on the page and feel that exhilaration when the character SOLVES the problem and gets that final revelation and makes that final plan.
So if you find yourself in this situation, you might want to review the elements of Act II: Part 2, and take a look at some of those questions to see if they might help you find your way.
And remember – the Force is with you.
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers “Grow, grow.”
– The Talmud
– Alex
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All the information on this blog and more is in the writing workbooks. Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are available for just $3.99 and $2.99.
If you’re a romance writer, or have a strong love plot or subplot in your novel or script, then Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks II is an expanded version of the first workbook with a special emphasis on love stories, and more full story breakdowns.
Via: Alexandra Sokoloff
