Day 18: The Resolution of Your Novel

Hey there, Igniter!

Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com here, and we are on day 18 of the challenge, and today we are talking about the resolution, which is the last part of your novel.

This is day 18 of the challenge, the resolution. So we are in the last section of the novel. So it's called part 4 in the 4-act structure. It is called Act 3 in the 3-act structure. It's called the resolution. It includes one tentpole moment, which is the transformation that takes place pretty much at the very end of the novel, where you kind of like just wrap up what's going on and kind of, you know, at least in genre fiction, you spell out for the reader like what the change has been. Uh, yeah, so, um, your protagonist has earned the right to be called a hero in Part 4. So they are the ones who save the day. They have to be the ones who save the day, make the last decision, defeat the final villain, whatever it might be. Um, friends and mentors and allies, every— you know, everybody else is allowed to help with that, but the protagonist has to be the one to save the day. Now there are a number of very popular stories where this is not the case. One example is Harry Potter and the— oh, I forget the title— oh, The Chamber of Secrets. So the second book. That is an example of one where Harry doesn't technically save the day. He basically— I mean, I think he does, but he gets very lucky with, um, the phoenix kind of comes in. And so, you know, that series, it is a children's series, but there are lots of, like, especially in those first couple books, there are lots of spaces where, you know, Harry Potter gets lucky in many ways, and he acknowledges that in later books. But yeah, I think it's like the first one, he, you know, basically his skin just happens to repel Voldemort. And that just happens to— it's, you know, it's part of the thematics of the story. His mother sacrificed her life for him, so there's love imprinted on his skin, but, um, like, and it's, it's a very old magic. And then in the second book, it's kind of the same thing. The phoenix swoops in because Harry Potter is loyal to Dumbledore, so the phoenix kind of swoops in and saves him. Um, so yeah, so those books were very popular despite not having this, but for most of us, for most authors, this is going to be really important. You have to, you have to have the hero save the day. And it's, I think there was somebody was telling me about another one, that Inception, that the hero did not save the day. And so the reason you want this to happen is it just creates a lot of emotional resonance for the viewer. They leave the story feeling good, basically. So, uh, okay, so we talked about that. The transformation— basically, the character is obviously gonna have external changes. They've just gone through a whole book where they were just like challenged over and over again. You also want to show an internal change. So we've talked about that a lot, how there's an internal arc and an external arc, and the internal arc is that emotional resonance piece again. So this is, you know, the protagonist is going to defeat the main villain, and at the same time, they really— they need to have that internal change that they've gone through. That kind of matches that villain, you know, defeating that villain. And so typically what I've seen is that the protagonist has to overcome their fatal flaw while they're, you know, while they're defeating the villain, and that, you know, that essentially will help. That's, that's essentially the internal character arc, that, that, that piece is like kind of the center of the transformation. All right, so then there's this piece about the beats of this battle sequence. And so the beats are basically the hero gets the villain, and the hero— the way the hero gets the villain is always by attacking their fatal flaw. So whatever that villain's fatal flaw is, that's why we talked about that at the beginning of the challenge. So then the, um, there's kind of this eye of the storm where the hero thinks they've won, but they can— like, the reader can feel that like there's not something quite right. And so the villain is gonna come back one last time strike the hero at their fatal flaw, and then the hero overcomes that fatal flaw to defeat the villain. And this is, you know, this can be personified by a villain. It can also be an antagonistic force. Typically it is personified by an actual person at this point. So For example, in a mystery, typically this is when the murderer starts like actually making moves again. So, you know, maybe they've been hiding in plain sight in many ways, but it's where the protagonist figures out who the murderer is, and there's kind of this back and forth between them. So the hero is probably risking their life in this battle, especially if you're, you know, if you're doing like a fantasy series, a sci-fi series, other, you know, any book where there's a lot of, yeah, like even a mystery series, a thriller, like almost certainly they are risking their life to defeat the villain. In a romance, it's really— again, the antagonistic force in a romance is always all the reasons that the two characters don't believe in love. So it's, you know, these false beliefs about love is the antagonist. So this is the part where like the characters, they think that they're together and they're solid and they're getting married, and then the ex-wife comes back in and she drops a bomb on the heroine and the heroine runs away from the relationship. It's like, so like the relationship is essentially tested at this point. And so in that case, the heroine is not necessarily risking her life, but risking the relationship. And usually the relationship falls apart right before it comes back together in a romance. All right, so hopefully that's helpful. So resolution for each character, I talk about, you know, the kind of one-two punch between the hero and villain. And I think, I think looking at this is like, to me, the easiest thing is to say like, what's the fatal flaw of the villain? The hero gets them that way. What's the, you know, and then the villain overcomes it. And then what's the— or the villain kind of leans into it as well because they're usually more evil. Then what's the fatal flaw of the hero and the villain gets them and then the hero overcomes it. So, um, you can, you can do your final battle sequence a different way, but to me this is this is really the easiest. And it's just like, you know, there are other ways to end this, but this is a very tried and true way that pretty much if you— as long as you follow this, you know, follow this pattern, it will pretty much— it'll pretty much get you that emotional resonance that you're hoping for. So if you write genre fiction, it is pretty safe to follow this pattern. All right, so for each character, you're gonna do how the hero confronts the villain. Um, that question, you know, I think fairly straightforward. It can also be like how the villain confronts the hero. So it could be, um, one of the two scenarios, but what I've seen work better is that the hero goes to the villain. And the reason why is because, remember, they're in warrior mode, they're in active mode, so it's very unusual for them to go back to passive mode in the last part. Like, they're usually— like, once they hit that warrior mode, um, after the middle of the novel, they're kind of accelerating toward the villain. So it would be very weird if they're like— they're going and going and then the villain just finds them. That's like— that's not, um, that's just not— there's not a lot of momentum there, basically, or that, that kind of kills the momentum. So how the hero confronts the villain, what is the villain's fatal flaw, and essentially their downfall. So it's going to be something pretty good, like, you know, in The Hunger Games, the villain's fatal flaw, which was Cato— Cato was kind of the main villain there— so his fatal flaw was that, um, he, like, he was just like, uh, basically just big and strong. And he, he believed that Katniss would— he, like, he had sacrificed all his allies, uh, in order to win the Hunger Games. And so he has Katniss's partner Peeta in like in an arm, you know, in an arm hold, like he has his arm around his neck or, you know, something. So I'm not, I'm not 100% on the details, but he believes that Katniss is going to sacrifice Peeta in order to win, and turns out to be just wrong. And so she's a— her and Peeta are able to partner together to to trick Cato, and then he falls to his death, and then he doesn't really end up dying right away, which is very terrible. It's actually just this horrible scene, which we'll talk about next. It's the eerie eye of the storm, that scene. So that's the villain's fatal flaw. So then in the eerie eye of the storm, the hero thinks they've won, So Katniss and Peeta are, you know, waiting for Cato to die. It's very like torturous basically, and the gamemakers do it on purpose, and it's deeply disturbing to both Katniss and Peeta I think, but especially to Katniss. And during that time she realizes like, wow, you know, Cato— she had spent this whole time in the Games, you know, just focused on the other tributes that she was battling against. And she realizes like, wow, this is like very cruel, like a terribly cruel way to die regarding Cato because he's going to die. But he like, he basically can't, like the game makers have set it up so that he, is having like a drawn-out death. And she just realizes like, wow, this is just deeply disturbing that this— the character knows he's gonna die and they're torturing him essentially for essentially like reality TV. And so she's super disturbed by that. And I think at that point— it doesn't really say this in the book— but I think at that point she realizes that this is— that Cato is not her— Cato is not the real villain here. The real villain is the, you know, the gamemakers, and specifically President Snow, who is kind of the ultimate gamemaker. And she's just— she's very disturbed by this. There's this— so then Cato dies, and they're still waiting to be announced as the winners. And they're not. And then— and Katniss and Peeta, they think they've won. They've really outsmarted everybody in this game. But then the true villain comes back and says, "New rule: the two of you cannot both win. Only one of you can go home." And so that puts them in a place of turning on each other, and the game makers are doing this for drama. Like, they had never intended to allow both of them to go home, basically. So, um, Katniss's fatal flaw is really she wants to go home. She's gonna survive, but she, she, um, is able to overcome that because her goal has changed. She's decided she wants to bring Peeta home with her, and she's just become more compassionate. She wants to She knows Peeta's not her enemy, and she wants— she realizes the game makers are her enemy, and so she wants to really like screw them over. So that's the one last battle with a twist. The villain comes back, strikes the hero's fatal flaw. And so it's right there in The Hunger Games. You know, the fatal flaw is Katniss. Is Katniss going to choose to come home, or is she going to try to outsmart the Capitol one last time and really risk her life in doing it. And so that's how the hero overcomes their fatal flaw. In The Hunger Games, Katniss uses these poisonous berries. She hands some to Peeta and she says, okay, we'll just die together and the, the game makers will have no winner of their games. And this is a tragedy for the game makers because How terrible is it to have a game and to have the finale be both characters, you know, like all the, like everybody's dead. That's kind of like a, it's kind of sad and it ruins like everything else they have planned for years to come. Like they've never not had a winner of the Games. So, um, yeah, so Katniss outsmarts them. At least for the time being. And so they declare that both Katniss and Peeta are the winners and they move forward with that. So that's the battle sequence. It's a very good one and I encourage you to study it because it's one of the best in the last, you know, the last couple decades. It's definitely top-notch. So definitely study that. Another one you you know, again, people don't really like this book series, but Twilight is actually really, really good for this. And the thing I love about Twilight's end, you know, kind of end sequence is that it's very— it really like is very— it follows almost a romance structure. In addition to also following like a thriller structure. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons that Twilight was much bigger than any of its contemporaries is because it really has a full romance structure built into it in the sense that, you know, the story's from Bella's perspective and she is the heroine, but it— all these points are also mapped for her vampire love Edward. So recently— so Stephanie Meyer released Twilight back in 2007, I think. So at the time of this recording in 2020, she has just released a counterpart book, or like a companion book to the series called Midnight Sun. And The Midnight Sun is from Edward's perspective, and so what's interesting about it is that all the points that, like, all of these points were mapped out for Bella in the first book, but they were also mapped out for Edward in that first book. And she's, you know, if you read Midnight Sun, you can see like Edward's full character arc was there the entire time, basically. Even though it was more from Bella's, you know, it was from Bella's perspective in the first book. But Stephenie Meyer had also mapped out Edward's points, and that created a lot of emotional resonance for the character of Edward. And so that's, that's very powerful in terms of building a brand around a romance. A lot of the reason why people love Twilight is because they fell in love with Edward, and a lot of that is because he had a very well well-written character arc that had both internal and external resonance. So definitely if you, you know, check out those two books as well. And the reason I mentioned— these are both young adult books, but the reason I mentioned them is because they're some of the biggest books of the last couple decades. They went on to spawn major, major franchises. Another place you can look for this if you really want to study this is comic books, comic book series. There's lots of television shows that really fit this formula. And really any comic book fight at the end of pretty much any episode of a TV series that is about superheroes, it will have this exact set of beats play out. And there, you know, it's not, it's not always, it's not always as deep as some of these other ones I've described regarding the fatal flaw, but you'll see that kind of like one-two back and forth set of beats in those superhero stories as well. So if you're kind of not into The Hunger Games or Twilight, you could check it out there. And I encourage you, like, as you're going through as you're going through, you know, whatever type of book you like to read, to, to look at this and to notice this. Because once you're aware of it, you will start to see it everywhere, um, and you'll start to see that like the, the stories that don't resonate as well at the end are the ones where these final battle scenes are not very closely tied to the fatal flaws, and that tends to, that tends to cause less emotional resonance. All right, so I've talked about that a ton. Okay, so now we'll talk about the transformation. So the misguided/upgraded goal, what is that? It's basically just to show how far the character has come. And so with The Hunger Games, I'll give you an example of it in this, this misguided or upgraded goal, it's really, um, you're gonna put it at about the 75% mark. So whenever the resolution section for your book starts, maybe at 75% mark, could be at the 90% mark if you're doing the condensed version, um, you're going to put this misguided slash upgraded goal there. And what is that? Okay, it's basically, um, so at the beginning of the book, there's the character has a goal for the journey. So in The Hunger Games, Katniss's goal going into The Hunger Games is that she is going to win the games and come home and come, come home back to her family so she can feed her family and protect her family. That is her goal. So the misguided/upgraded goal going into this finale is that it is not enough for her to just win the Games and come home anymore. She is super invested in her and Peeta winning the Games together and coming home. And so the reason you want to make this very clear, 'cause like we know going into that final battle that Katniss is not gonna be satisfied with just winning anymore. Like she wants to save Peeta. She's invested a lot of her energy into saving Peeta. And she wants to bring him home. Like, that's what she wants. And so it's just, it's not gonna be enough for her to come home by herself. So with that, the reason you want to show that is again, it's really to show that transformation and to remind the reader of that transformation throughout the book. So this is just kind of, this is an important beat to like just kind of show that, you know, this character Katniss, like, going into the final battle, she is not the same Katniss that you met at the beginning of the story. And so I've, I've really set up this challenge so that you've been mapping that transformation out all along. But this is where you kind of double-check it and really, like, show, show the contrast, you know. And, and if you're looking at the structure of a story, the setup and the resolution are mirrors of each other, the same way the, you know, two middle parts are mirrors of each other. So you come out of the setup with the original goal, and you go into the resolution with this upgraded goal. And so again, this is another thing that a lot of people miss. This is just the best way to say that. So make sure, make sure you get that in there. All of these little things are really about emotional resonance. All right, so then, you know, these other two pieces you should— this is— this should be very straightforward. So the emotional death around the fatal flaw, we've talked about that a lot. I've really tried to put that into the beats of the final battle already, so you shouldn't have a hard time aligning that. And then symbolic representation of the transformation, and we've talked about this a lot as well. So You know, there's lots of stuff you can do here for— I'm trying to think of what— so I guess for Katniss Everdeen, the symbolic representation of her transformation would really be, you know, there's a couple things. I mean, one is like she gets her ear repaired. So she doesn't come back, you know, a whole person. Like she's had like she's basically had the Capitol's surgeries and, you know, so she's had a bunch of stuff done to her. So she's not coming back kind of the girl from the— from what's it— I don't know what— I forget what it's called, but like, like basically her family is a coal mine family. So she's not coming back that girl anymore, kind of the poor District 12 girl who lost her dad and a coal mine accident. She's coming back as, you know, this more, this more beautiful girl who's had a lot of surgery on her body and face and who has gotten the implants from the Capitol regarding her hearing that she lost during the Games. So they've kind of fixed her up and, you know, she's, she's got to go forward with that. Another thing is she now has the boyfriend going back to District 12, and she, you know, she does have to tell him that it was, you know, the feelings were not real, um, going, going back. So she has to, she has to kind of contend with that as well. So there's a couple things in that book, um, the same with in the Twilight book, you know, Bella has a scar from where she was bitten by a vampire and she, she almost lost her life in it. But she comes back. Not only is she like, she's kind of broken as well. Like she's, she's gotten, she's gotten like, I think her ankle was broken or twisted or something. And she's, she's been, you know, her body's been kind of beaten down. She ends up in the hospital. But also she has this scar on her. I think it's on the underside of her wrist. And it's from two vampire— yeah, like it's from a vampire bite. And that scar is never going to go away for her. So you can play around with this. And we'll talk more about this I think it's on day 20 where we talk about thematic elements around the, the emotion, the emotional journey of this. So you can, you know, we'll come up with more ideas there, but if you know what that is already, then definitely you can leave that here. So you'll do this for 5 characters.

Thank you so much for watching and listening. If you have any questions, make sure you leave a comment below. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about day 18, or any of the other days, really. So definitely leave a comment if you have a question. If you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, then there are links in the description, and it's never too late to sign up for the challenge. We still have so many days left to go, really. Uh, we're not even two-thirds of the way through, so it's very easy to catch up on the challenge. It's also easy to not catch up, and totally fine. You don't need to catch up. You can actually just join now and start now where you are. And we would love to have you, so check out the links in the description. I hope this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day!