story structure

We’re just eight days away from the longest night of the year. What better time to think about the dark moment in your novel?

Until now your protagonist has been facing increasingly difficult obstacles to get what she wants, but at the dark moment, all hope for a good outcome seems lost. It is worse than falling short of her goal—it is the opposite of success.

The structural bones of your story will point you toward what this moment might look like. The examples for today’s discussion are brought to you by the mad skills of author Janet Benton in her historical novel, Lilli de Jong.

Inciting incident/story goal

To construct an effective dark moment, you need to look back at what it is the character wants, and why she wants it so badly.

Raised as a Quaker, Lilli de Jong values education, independent thinking, and a strong moral character. But when she soon finds herself completely at odds with her dreams for her life—pregnant, left behind by her lover, banished from her congregation and teaching position, and cast from her father’s home by his new wife—Lilli must face alone a society that has little compassion for unwed mothers. With no other option, Lilli enters a haven for wronged women to deliver her child. The expectation for this charitable support is that three weeks after delivery, she will allow a married couple to adopt her baby.

After giving birth, Lilli writes in her diary:

The doctor has cut the fleshy cord that connected us, but an invisible one has taken its place. I begin to suspect that this one can neither be cut nor broken.

And soon:

My shoulders, back, arms, and neck ache from holding her; my nipples are scabbed and sometimes bleeding; yet the most worn-out, painful part of me is my heart. It stretches so wide when she’s contented that I believe its fibers are tearing. When she suffers, it shrinks and throbs and hardens into a knot.

Lilli sees herself and Charlotte as an emotional, spiritual and physical unit. Her goal, further motivated by the strong bond she had with her recently deceased mother, is to keep her.

Stakes

To appropriately plan for the dark moment, you must return to the stakes, for this is where your protagonist will suffer from them the most. Lilli’s bond with Charlotte deepens through nursing, but as her three weeks of safe harbor near their end, Lilli attends a church service and has this epiphany:

I saw laid out the whole of my upbringing, which had urged me to live honestly; my coming situation, where lying would be the rule; and the cowardice that had kept me from admitting this divergence…

But the moment I let go of Charlotte and pretend she never existed, my life of sin begins. Lies will color—no, suffuse—my most intimate relations. The pain at my center will stay closed and festering, while lies spread like a layer of lard beneath my skin.

[Read more…]

I managed to enter med school without attending a funeral or viewing a single dead person. So at age twenty, as I boarded the elevator which would take me to my first practical session in Human Anatomy, and with it my first encounter with a cadaver, I roiled with emotion.

Though we didn’t speak of it, I could tell my classmates were in a similar state. (Even then, the “code” was to maintain emotional control in front of one another.)

I recall the jostling, the nervous laughter when the elevator doors parted and we were struck by the scent of formaldehyde. (An oddly sweet aroma which lodges at the back of your throat.)

Then we poured into the lab with its harsh fluorescent lights, the blue cards bearing each cadaver’s name, age, and cause of death; the sounds which seemed sharp and outrageously loud in the cold room.

I had many questions as I approached the plastic-draped body.

Would I vomit? Would I learn enough to be worthy of the gift our donor had bestowed upon us? Or would I lose respect for the whole person when focusing on the nitty-gritty of the parts?*

For all the uncertainty of that morning, I never doubted its necessity. I had to acquire certain motor skills. Who better to be my teacher than the willing and generous dead?

Given that understanding, and given that I’d read multiple craft books urging novel dissection as a means to understand the mechanics of fiction, I’m not sure why I resisted as long as I did. However, last winter, after wrestling with the same plotting issue in my novel for months, I became desperate.

I dug out resources, analyzed three favorite books in the genre I write, and found it such a worthwhile investment, I’ll do it again.

Here’s what I learned:

[Read more…]

Welcome the Darkest Hour

Inciting incident/story goal

Stakes

The Cadaver Wore Text (aka the Case for Plot Dissection)

Here’s what I learned: