Correctly Progressively Complicating Your Scenes

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book StoryGrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we are solidly in the middle build. I sent Shawn three more scenes for us to go through, and this is all about. And I named the episode correctly, progressively complicating your scenes, which is quite the mouthful, but it's really what this episode is about, because when you're in the.

Middle of the middle build, you have.

To keep the story moving without going too fast and skipping over things or, you know, upping the stakes too much, which is what I tend to do. But you also don't want to go so slow that it's boring and people stop reading. So that's what we discuss a lot in this episode as we get deep into the middle build of my story. But we all hit that middle build, and trying to figure out how to keep the story moving at the right pace is really important. And so I think you'll enjoy this episode. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I took a couple weeks off, went on vacation, and came back and started working on this, the next series of scenes. It's been so funny because I always this. These last couple sequences, I don't know what to do with them. And so I just put off the writing because I can't think of anything. And it's amazing how it reaches Monday morning, and I need to write something, and inspiration hits. But anyway, so I sent you the next three scenes. So this was where after the first test, and then Jesse kind of hijacks the test and burns the tower down so that nobody can actually finish the test.

This is like the fallout from that. And so as I was writing it, I was thinking several things. So one is, you know, one of the problems I had in my first try at writing the test was that it was too linear. Like, there was no. Like, they tried something and it failed. And so I tried to input that into this, where they come up with a plan, and then before they can even implement the plan, the plan fails. And that's in the first scene where they decide to try to, like, hide Jesse or something. And then I tried to be surprising in presenting the president and tried to really turn him at the end of the scene where, you know, it really seems like he's this nice guy and then it ends with like him showing, like this is what I'm really after because I know in a few scenes I'm going to make the faction the enemy and I want to kind of set that up. And then in the last scene, what I thought was, what I was trying to do was create some secrets between the friends. So there's Jesse and then Alex and Ernst. And it's pretty straightforward what Alex and Ernst want out of their time there. And it's pretty straightforward what Jesse wants out. And this is the first time like everything's in conflict and so she hides from them what's really going on. And so I thought that would be nice to kind of set up some conflict there where she's now not saying what's really going on. So she's got her own secret from even her friends. So anyway, that's kind of what I was thinking as I wrote these three scenes out transitioning into when they'll, when she first kind of runs into her brother. So would love your thoughts.

Well, what I really liked about these three scenes is that you really progressively complicated them. Remember, one of the really difficult things about writing a long form story is that you, you always have to be moving the ball forward and you can't go backwards. And when I say that, what I'm talking about is when people make choices in the story and things aren't working well, they can never go back in time and they can't go back to before the choice they made is the action that the person takes. Is that irreversible or not? That is a really good test to see if you are progressively complicating the story. So for example, when at the very beginning of the novel, when Jesse makes the decision that she's not going to go to the, to the training, that was a reversible decision.

Right.

She was able to, by the end of the beginning, hook, reverse that decision and actually go to the training, which is important because you do not want to lock yourself into irreversible choices for your lead character at the very beginning of a story. Because then you, you put yourself in a box and you can't get out of it. No. But as you progress in the telling, once you hit the middle build, you have to get to a point where the decisions that the character makes are irreversible, meaning they can't go back in time and go home. So once Jesse got to the training, she's trying to reverse her Decision again, she's trying to go back home. And what's happening here in these three chapters is you are building an irreversible choice for her because you wisely had the force of evil. Who's the antagonist? Who's the president? Say to Jesse, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Not only will you suffer if you mess up and you get flushed out of the program, but the other two who are now attached to you are going to suffer even more. So she now has to make very difficult choices, and the ramifications of her choices are no longer just about her. So the choice that you made here to do that was very impressive to me because this. We're getting to the meat and the heart of the story. The middle of your novel, are the moments when your character has to face really serious dilemmas. And the choices that they make when faced by these dilemmas are what are really telling about their character. So one of the things people talk to me about the story grid, just to take a step back for a second, is that they say, oh, well, the story grid is all about plotting. It's all about action. I don't really know how it's going to help me developing my characters. I'm really into my characters, and I really need to flesh them out and make sure that they're believable. And, you know, the great truth that people who are amateurs don't realize as writers is that action is character. The other stuff are characteristics. Somebody's hair color, the kind of clothes they like to wear, how smart they are. Those are characteristics. Those are not character. Character is making a choice under stress and the result of that choice. So I can say to you until I'm blue in the face, hey, Tim, you can always trust me. But if you tell me some deep, dark secret from your past, and the next thing you know, I go and tell all my friends and laugh at you. What my words are and what my actions are are completely, you know, contradictory. And my character is reflected in my action, not my words. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. I remember Stephen King talks about this a good bit in On Writing. He talks about how fun it is to always have, like, one of the fun. I'm probably butchering it because it's been a while since I read it, but he talks about how he enjoys having characters say one thing and then do a different thing.

Yeah.

Because you can never trust what people are saying. You have to trust what they're doing. And it's the same thing when you're writing is that you can have the character say one thing, but then they go and do something opposite, and now you actually know who they are.

Exactly, exactly. And you're creating much larger crises in your story than one particular scene that you usually have in a particular scene. So one of the things that I do in the story grid is I say, when you're outlining your novel, what you want to do is boil down your scenes. You need to have a scene in your beginning hook that serves as the crisis of the entire beginning hook. You need to have a scene that serves as your climax. You need to have a scene that serves as your resolution. And a lot of people say, yeah, yeah, I understand. I understand that. But when it comes to actually doing it, they misinterpret what I'm saying, or they're incapable of being able to do it. And what you did is created a really strong crisis scene for your middle build. That crisis scene is when the president says to Jesse, you know, you're in deep trouble now. I'm gonna. I'm gonna hurt other people if you don't do what I tell you to do. So that can serve as your crisis of the middle build. And the question is, what is Jesse going to do? Is she going to save herself and try and get back home, no matter what, at the expense of her friends? Or is she going to figure out another way out of this predicament? And you don't really give the answer here, which is another smart thing to do. She's contemplating it, and she's keeping it secret from Ernst and Alex because she doesn't want to rain on their parade. So these three scenes were really, really nice because they raised the stakes of your story from sort of, oh, is she going to win the competition? To. If she doesn't win this competition, she's going to cause a lot of hell for a lot of other people, not just her friends, but the families of her friends. So you're making the choices larger and larger and larger, which is exactly what you need to do to get the reader more and more invested in the story.

Well, and I thought it. I was also thinking that I wanted to put her in the same situation that she was in at the end of the beginning hook, which was her actions now damage somebody else. Right. And so now she where that she didn't realize she was damaging other people. And now she'll know if she's doing it, if that makes sense. Like she took actions and somebody got hurt, but she didn't realize that would happen. Where now he's like telling her, if you do this, these other people are going to be hurt. And now she has a choice to make.

Yes. The other thing that I really liked in the scene was, you know, the little trick you did with the President, having him be sort of like the wizard of Oz. A little befuddled and silly and kind of absentminded professor like when Jesse finally does meet him. And it also explains that there's a lot at stake here, far more at stake here than we previously thought. This is not a rich society. This faction, these group of people are sort of just kind of barely getting by. And this threshing thing is really important. Obviously it's very important because the head of the entire government is, you know, investing a lot of energy in getting this little girl to fight for the entire, you know, structure. And I also like the fact that you kept it a secret about who let him know about her abilities. That's one of the things that we often forget to do when we're writing is to drop in a lot of setups and a lot of secrets and a lot of pay ups. So now at the end of these three chapters, your reader is going to be really intrigued. They're going to say to themselves, I wonder when she's going to tell Alex and Ernst about her discussion with the President. I wonder when she's going to trust them enough to tell him that. I wonder who was behind her coming to the thing in the first place. The other thing that's really good is that your thematic elements are becoming stronger. And when I say the thematic element is, you know, this is a girl who just wants to go home. She wants to return to the time in her life when everything was taken care of for her. When her brother was home, her mom was happy, her father was happy, they were all together. She didn't have to worry about anything because she was just a child. Now she's. The longer you get in into your story, the more responsibilities that, that are starting to weigh down on her back, which only increases her. Her want to go back to the time when she didn't have to deal with any of that stuff. So now it's getting larger and larger and larger. And I also like the fact that they were rewarded. They were rewarded for Jesse's brilliance in messing up the game. And I really think you did a nice job of not overdoing it over playing the drama. So, you know, what do you mean? Well, when you had the scene where the president sort of explains to her that she's not in Trouble, you know, she's a little bit in trouble. But he does admire the fact that she was able to outsmart the game and she did cause some trouble because now he's going to have to eliminate twice as many teams as he would have, you know, that he had planned. And, you know, that's a small, you know, switch for him. But just, you know, but don't forget who's boss here. And at the end when he dresses her down very strongly, it was a real indication. Yeah, you know, I, I can play the friendly absent minded professor, but let's not forget who's in control here. Which was a really nice touch. And it wasn't. What, how long is that scene? 1500 words, tops.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was because you had said before, like, trying to make it where like, she's flattered. And when I was writing the scene, I felt like, I felt like she wouldn't care if he was flattered. Like if he was, you know, like she just wants to go home. She doesn't really care about anybody else and what they think of her. And so I start, I was thinking, that's why I kind of. And then, so she did this thing that she thought was really clever and she was trying to be the thorn and he like, kind of like waved it off like it was no big deal. And so like, she thought that was her ticket home. And she realized, like, it didn't even bother him. It didn't even get her close, you know, So I wanted, you know, because part of this is making her feel helpless and forced to do the things she doesn't want to do. So anyway, good.

No, I think that, I think that was a good choice. I do. Because he, you know, he's reversed. He's psychologically manipulating her. And what was nice about that scene is that the beginning of the scene, he wants to befriend her, right? He's giving her very smooth and soothing language. He's letting her know that he's not the scary guy that she thinks he is. He hired somebody to play him because he just doesn't like to do that sort of thing. You know, he would rather enjoy a nice cup of coffee in his study. And he's a very nice gentleman. So he's, he's using that tactic. He's trying to slowly present himself as a father figure. And when she doesn't respond to it in the way that he wanted her to, he goes to the hammer. And so what's great here is that you're increasing the dilemma of Jesse, because, you know, he's implicating other people's lives for her, and she still just wants to go home. So now she's going to. She's still gonna, you know, pursue her want, which is to go back home in the least amount of pain to other people as possible. That's still her. Her serious want. And, you know, she wasn't overly flattered by the guy, but now she knows I have to play the game if I want to go home safely, I've got to play the game. I've got to do what this guy's telling me to do, or other people are going to get hurt. So she's like, if you want. If you want me to be that warrior, then I'll figure out how to do it as long as I can get home. And that works as well. As somebody who's flattered by the attention and wants to get more attention, you also set up something nice, because now we know there's going to be some dramatic confrontation between AS and Jesse because he was dressed down in the meeting with everybody else. And I also like the choice that you did not do shoe leather. You could have easily, and you may decide later on to do this. You could have easily given us that scene.

Right.

You could have taken us into the room, and everybody could have been yelled at, and AS could have been humiliated. And that's the scene, you know, the reader's kind of expecting. But instead, what you did was you zigged when the reader is expecting a zag. So when we get the scene where Jesse talks to the president instead, after, you know, they're trying to escape, and then when she comes back from that she's reported, they report to her what happened in the meeting that we didn't want to read about anyway, because we know what was going to happen that meeting. So you didn't. Yeah. You didn't stick in a scene. That's all to say is that you didn't go for the obvious trope, which is to give us that scene and.

Try and innovate a scene.

I wasn't. Yeah.

I wasn't being that clever. It was mostly I was like, well, she wasn't there. And we're doing this book where we only see things through her point of view. So I can't. So I was like, well, if she wasn't there, then I can't tell. I can't.

Well, you could have put her there.

Yeah, I guess I was just. I was thinking, well, like, she was off doing something else. I wasn't Thinking that I wasn't thinking like, well, I'm gonna zig when. When I should be zaggy was mostly like, well, I can't, because I got her over here. What else am I going to do, you know?

Well, this is the great thing about when you start sort of hitting your stride in your story, is that you eliminate so many options that you would have thought of earlier because you're so focused on the character. You were like, oh, she wasn't at that meeting. So somebody has to tell her. You intuitively knew, oh, well, she's at the meeting with the president while they're having that meeting. You know what I'm saying? And that makes perfect, logical sense. But what happens when we're grinding on a story is that we say, oh, now I have to have the scene where that happens. And then it has to be there. And we never think. I'll just tell. I'll just have the character, another character, tell her what happened in that meeting. And so you're doing that means that you're starting to see your story through your lead character's eyes. And that's why, even though you were lazy and you didn't sit down and do your work until Monday.

You were able to bang out these three scenes. And these are three of the best scenes you've ever written.

Did you know that?

No, but it's good to hear.

They're very clear. They're very. There's. There's clear five commandments in each of them.

Yeah, well, I. The other. I was thinking that, like, so. Because I was struggling with. In the first scene, like, as I was writing it and getting towards the end, I realized I had no crisis because I knew I was getting them. I was gonna have them get away from everybody. Alex be really pissed off, and then she get picked up by the guards. Like, I knew that's where I was going, but that meant I had. That was. There was no crisis there. Like, what? You know, the guards come for her. There's no crisis. And so that's why I just, like, was like, okay, well, I need them to make a decision. Right? Because. Right. I was thinking, like, you tend. You tend to want more active crisis than revelatory. Right. So my default, like, I try to think of how to make it an active thing. So I was like, well, I'll just have him make this decision to hide her. Even though I know, like, it's before they even get started, they're going to get caught. But then at least I have a decision. Like, I just came up with some decision and, like, stuck it in there so that there would be a crisis and then a decision, you know, climax and resolution, and then it just gets hijacked and I get where I need to go anyway. But I realized that as, like, I remember, like, typing. I was in the middle of the scene typing, and I'm like, I have no crisis. And so I just dropped one in. That seemed like the most obvious that came to mind.

Well, again, that's. That's a character choice too. That. That sheds a lot of light on the character. And the character that sheds on is Ernst. Because Ernst is a guy who hides. And his initial thing is. Oh, we'll hide. And the other thing is. That's all of our initial things. That's our initial reaction whenever we face a conflict or a crisis is we go, oh, I'll just run away from it. I can hide from it.

When I think of Alex is like, his initial reaction is to fight and Ernst is to run.

Yes.

And so one's fight and one's flight.

Yeah. And it comes off. I mean, it doesn't have to be any deeper than that. And it rings true. And it's also a really nice thing that those two are now her protector. And I also like the fact that you make it so that the comms people and the communications people and the people who regulate the body, the medic. The medic, they don't see what the hacker or coder sees in the world, so they have to rely upon what the coder tells them when they get back. Right.

Right.

Now, I'm going to say this now. The fact that you use that, you need to pay that off later.

What do you mean?

Well, think about, you know, one. One of the really difficult things about writing this kind of book is to have surprising twists when the lead character is challenged in an active way. So, you know, the two severings that are coming up and the threshing, you may even want to. Well, I don't. I don't want to tell you what to do, but you're at. How many scenes do you have now? 23.

Yeah, 25. 25 scenes.

Okay. So 25 scenes in, you're close to the midpoint of your novel, and at the midpoint of your novel, we usually see the low point of hope. There's a real sort of all is lost moment that is looming.

Right. And that's the plan is to trigger that with her brother.

Yes. The other thing is that just because you say there are three severings and there are three Challenges, you could say, you know what, we're skipping the third challenge because this is, you know what I mean? You could pull that out and ratchet up the stakes by having a revelatory turning point in one of the future scenes where the President says, yeah, yeah, we decided to cut the third severing. So everything is going on this so that it can really, really raise the stakes. Because you prepared the reader for three challenges, right. And so you can really get some cheap. You know, it's not cheap. I mean, we're planning it, but some excitement and intrigue in your reader by changing the rules at the last minute. Because that's. That's what, you know, tyrannies do all the time. They say one thing and then they change the rules in the middle of it. So back to that setup I was talking about, where the comms and the medic guys don't see the world. So if the coders come back, those two are reliant on what the coder tells them happen there in order to react or not act.

So.

So she could be an unreliable narrator or one of the other people could be. And they could say, oh, she could be.

You know, she could lie to them while she's in there, too.

Exactly.

About what's going on.

Yes. And so can the other players.

You know, it's interesting because I went back when we stopped and you had me start planning out the middle build because I kept missing the mark on the first sequence. And, like, I can't even. It's unusable now because I'm so far off of where I like, of the path that I built originally. So I've had to go back to that document and start rebuilding it. And so in just two scenes, they went so different than what I had laid out that I had to, like, I have to start replanning everything that's good. And so, yeah, I mean, here's a.

Good rule of thumb. If, while you're writing, you surprise yourself when you're writing the stuff, you know you're on to something. Because if you are just assigning yourself tasks and doing exactly as you thought you would be doing in the task, you're not surprising yourself. And if you can't surprise yourself as you're writing and you don't see any and things occur to you that you write down that really work, then you're writing something that's pretty. If you can't surprise yourself, you're probably not going to surprise a reader. So the fact is that when you wrote these scenes and you go, oh, no, now I have to completely redo my thing because it isn't anything that I planned. That's a good sign. That should not be something that says, you're really frustrated. Now, with that said, as long as you are abiding your five, you know, commandments of storytelling in each scene, as long as you are still on theme. So you need to be able to allow yourself to work and write your scenes with as much creativity as possible, with very confined requirements of those scenes. But when you're writing the scenes, let yourself write the scene and don't stop yourself because you're going to have to revise your outline.

Yeah, I was just surprised how. How in just two sequences, I went wildly different than what I had planned on, which has been good because, like, what I planned out was this very linear. She goes into the severing, she wins the severing, you know, and da, da, da, da. And then.

Well, can I.

Have to tell you something that I've been holding back from telling you for a while and. No, it's not. It's not bad. It's not bad. But one of my major concerns with the progression of the novel was that we were losing our empathy for Jesse. And that means that the reader is losing the why of what she's doing. That means that the story spine, the hero's journey, is getting lost in the tropes and the micromanaging of the scene by scene. So the story spine is all about what your character wants versus what they need. Now, what Jesse always wanted was to go home. And you can say that until you're blue in this, blue in the face, but until you actually see her literally trying to get what she wants on the page, it can often be. It can often fade into the background of the narrative and the reader will slowly lose interest without knowing why. So these two scenes or three scenes that you wrote, they really put us back on the train, back on the story spine of her quest, of her want to get back home. And it also indicates to the reader, because this is the second or third time where, you know, once she makes a little bit of a connection with somebody else, it's immediately threatened. So her need is to discover the truth that there is no magical way of going back home. She's not. Her want to go back to a more blissful time is never going to happen. That is what her need is. That's maturation. That's when you discover that the magical childhood place when food is magically on the table and everything is taken Care of. And if your. If your socks get holes in them, you get new socks. If that magical. That magical world is not reality. So the maturation process is moving into understanding the world as it is, as opposed to what you. You were lied to in your youth about what it is. So I've been a little concerned about us losing that thread about who Jesse is and who she really. What she really wants and what she really needs until these three scenes, because it's very clear that the president is a father figure, that. Here we go again. There's some nice older man who's being nice to her as long as she does what she's told. So it's a conditional sort of attention. The father figure will give her a conditional attention as long as she does what he tells her to do. That is information that she's slowly starting to learn, that life is a lot more complicated than it seems and that parents are real people, too, and that sometimes what they want us to do isn't good for us. So anyway, this is really nice because we also see her forming a bond with Alex and Ernst now. She's. Now she's become their protector. So she is getting her family. She's getting what she needs. She just doesn't know it. What she needs is to have a group of people who care about her and will sacrifice for her and will be her family. And those two people, Ernst and Alex, are serving as that reminder to the reader, oh, those people are taking care of her now, just like 83 and 61 did back in the numbered world. So anyway, this was a really nice step forward with these scenes. And, you know, I enjoyed reading them. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. And it's a good job.

Thank you. That's nice to hear. You know, it's funny because I've been so angsty about the length of the book and the length of the scenes, and you keep telling me to stop worrying about that. I can't, or I've had trouble putting that to the side. And so, like, those scenes I sent, these scenes were a thousand words, sixteen hundred words. And then I think it was like six or seven hundred words.

And then.

So as we were talking here, I pulled up the book because we're now 25 scenes in, which means we're. I'm hitting stride, so I should have the middle point. You know, all is lost scene and roughly five scenes. And lo and behold, I'm at.

28,000 words, so I'll be around 35,000 words. And we were planning on a 60,000 word novel. So.

I'm hitting all the marks. Even though, like, I keep. Every time I write a scene that is less than 1500 words, I have to forgive myself. Like, seriously, I have to go through this whole process where I'm like, oh, God, I did it again. I wrote this tiny little scene. Okay. He keeps saying, you know, I have to, like, process it. So that's been good too. So I'm struggling a little bit with how now to get her because I. The things I'm feeling are one, she needs to have another clash with as. That's a bigger one, is I've set that up and we also. I have to get her to the meeting with her brother and so have that revelation that kicks off because, again, at the halfway point is when she switches from basically being selfish to unselfish. So in my book, that means she's going to give up this. She's going to trade the dream of just looking out for herself and going home and trade it for a bigger dream, for a bigger vision of saving somebody else.

Mm.

Or saving other people. And so my original plan was to have that happen in the middle of the second sever where he basically, like, pulls her out without her realizing what's going on. And I mean, that could also be where he basically has her lie to Ernst. What's going on? I don't know. So, I mean, is that kind of.

A good plan? Like, I do. I need to. I feel like I need her to clash with as again because I've set that up and then she's going, you know, this. I feel like this middle build thing is much harder than the beginning hook.

It's just so long. And one, like, figuring out how to progressively complicate but not too much. You know, like, don't go too far too fast because we're still pretty early anyway. So that's. That's my next.

I think that's a pretty good plan. I think that's a pretty good plan. And the other thing to keep in mind is I don't know how you have resolved the relationship between Jesse's brother and the president and the faction. You don't have to tell me, but I think having her. Well, remember is that for the all is lost moment, it really has to hit a very critical place.

It will seem as if there's no way out. And you can even do that by escalating the stakes of the action element in this story. And we all know action stories turn on life and death. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about at the very beginning of the story was in her ability to survive death in the. In the virtual world.

So her being seemingly dead in the virtual world, she's capable of surviving that. And because nobody else knows of that quality, all, you know, will believe that she is dead. Maybe the medic, who's Alex will declare her dead or something. I'm not sure. But I like the idea of her being pulled out of the game by this force. So it's the game within the game, and that force, which is her, the ghost in the machine. Her brother explains to her just what's really going on here. You know, wouldn't it be great if you were able to go home without your friends having, you know, getting in a lot of trouble? So it's like he. He establishes the real antagonist, or he, you know, lies to her. Not sure what your choices are there, but whatever happens, there has to be a moment of all is lost meaning. And what all is lost means is this. I cannot for the life of me figure out what to do next. I cannot fix whatever happened. What am I going to do? This is what I talk about in the book when I talk about the Kubler Ross change curve. It's that moment in our lives when we discover, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna have to change. I'm gonna have to change the way I think about the world. How am I gonna do that? Because the way I think about the world has just been obviously proven by every stretch of the imagination. The way I used to think about the world is completely wrong. It's only getting me into trouble. It's gonna lead to disaster. So I can either change the way I see the world and come up with a solution, or I can just give up now. That's what all is Lost is about. It's facing the truth that your worldview is wrong.

Can you give me some examples? Great.

Sure. The all is lost moment in. Let me think. What would be a good example off the top of my head.

Well, I mean, start with Silence of the Lambs, then.

Oh, okay. The all is lost moment in Silence of the Lambs is when Starling, Clarice Starling, is kicked off the case. And it comes just about. I think it's probably around chapter 44 or so, scene 44. And what happens is that she goes to Tennessee, and she's looking at the victim's old apartment, the one who's been abducted. And Buffalo Bill is holding her captive. And the mother of the victim, who's a Very powerful senator accuses her of stealing things in the victim's room. And she gets her kicked off and says, I don't want that FBI agent to deal with this anymore. She's terrible. Get her off the case. So one of her flunkies calls Jack Crawford and says she's off the case. And they kick her off and she has to go back to Quantico. So, you know, she was doing her job. And now not only can she not do her job, she's completely off the case and she has to go back to school. And the all is lost moment is she had done everything right up to that point. She had followed the rules, she had given, basically opened up her brain to Hannibal Lecter so that she could get the right information to figure out where Buffalo Bill was and to get all the right clues. And she's been repaid by being kicked off the case, which means that the woman is probably going to die and that everything that she has done to increase her chances of becoming a real FBI agent have completely failed. What did she do wrong? What's going on? How is she going to fix this? And so her worldview up to that point was that as long as I followed the chain of command, as long as I find follow the meritocracy inherent in the FBI, everything's going to be okay. And what happens is she goes back. She's back at Quantico and it's like 3 o' clock in the morning. And she gets in and her roommate's there and she makes her feel a little bit better. She can't sleep, so she has to go. And the way she gets over that is she goes to the laundry room and she does laundry. It's a symbol for going back to the womb, believe it or not. Anyway, so she's sitting there and she realizes, I've got to go figure. I've got to go track down this clue by myself. I've got to disobey the direct order of the FBI, because if I don't, that girl's going to die. I've got to change my worldview. Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you don't have to go. You can't go the way everybody tells you to go or people will suffer for that. So her worldview changes from meritocracy to strict pragmatist. She's very pragmatic from that point forward. It's a flawed system, but I am not going to betray what's important. What's important is the life and safety of other People. So her all is lost moment happens around chapter 44. So that is a really, really important moment. Since we're going to do Pride and Prejudice, let me tell you the all is lost moment in that. That Moment is when Mr. Darcy. This is about chapter 32, and there's 61 chapters in Pride and Prejudice. So it's about midpoint. Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth Bennet. And if anybody hasn't read the novel, you really should.

It's great.

So I hate to spoil it for you, but he proposes to her and she not only turns him down, she lets him know that she can't stand him. That she thinks he's the worst kind of person. He's arrogant and he's rude and he's terrible. And that the last thing, the last man on earth she would ever consider marrying would be this guy. And so Mr. Darcy, I mean, it's a wonderful scene. It's his entire. Everything he believes about the world is now wrong. He believes because he's a gentleman and then he tells the truth and that he has a certain social standing, that the fact is that he can have any woman he wants as long as she. She's attracted to him. And who wouldn't be? He's a rich guy who's a gentleman. So the fact that this young country girl is saying, I'm not going to marry you, you're a jerk, that destroys his worldview. And he can do one of two things. He can hate her for it, or he can actually take what she says and analyze it and think about it and change the way he looks at the world, which is he does the second thing. And so the rest of the novel is about that worldview change for him. And then the rest of the novel is how he proves he's changed himself to his beloved. She has to change too, by the way. But her worldview change does not come until the end of the middle. Build around chapter 48. So in that love story, we had two all is lost moments. One with one lover and one with the other. And you should really do that if you're going to write a love story.

So, I mean, so I'm planning on the brother convincing her that the only way she can get home is by helping him tear down the faction. And he's going to end up being the villain in the end because the whole goal was to take over the faction because the president put him into basically captivity after he won the last threshing. So this is his way to get back at them.

And so the all Is lost moment could be for her.

But it wouldn't be till closer to the end of the middle build. But it could be where, you know, first it was her real father that let her down. Then it was the president that showed that, you know, because, you know, I heard a pastor say one time, the way to destroy love is to put any conditions on it, right? So true love has no conditions, right? So you. You. And that's what you were saying is like her first dad was like, I'll take care of you as long as you obey the rules. And then same thing with the next one. And then the brother promises to protect her, but then she dies. And that's when it's revealed. She comes back. But when she comes back, she realizes finally, she finally gets the point that she is 100% on her own. And that then fuels how she enters into the final. The ending payoff.

I think that's a solid plan. One suggestion. One suggestion is the brother could serve as sort of her Elizabeth Bennett in that moment. And what I mean by that is that he can explain to her. I've said this again and again, but every. Every great thriller has to have, you know, the speech and praise of the villain, where the villain makes a really great speech that makes complete sense and that we sort of get enamored to that villain and we don't even know he's a villain until much later on. But this could be the moment where the villain gives us his great speech. And the great speech from the brother could be about. About the fact that she's completely out of touch with reality. There is no family, Jesse. You think mom and dad are your family? You think I was your family? That wasn't a family. That was a unit that worked for the faction.

There's no such thing as this magical. So he can actually make all the arguments to her that like all the quote, unquote truths that somebody who goes through a maturation process comes to believe, at least momentarily. So he can, you know, he can berate her. Not necessarily berate her, but give her the lay of the land. Look, honey, here's the truth.

But that would be the second interaction. That wouldn't be the first one.

That's. Yeah, you could do it in the second one. I mean, Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter is always a great, you know, model for that kind of. I mean, some of the greatest evil speeches ever made are by Hannibal Lecter. But Hannibal Lecter, you know, he. He. He is the one who teaches Starling about, you know, he's the one who points out to her, you're being used by Jack Crawford. You're being used by the FBI. Do you think that they think you have potential as an FBI agent? No. You're a pretty, pretty girl that they sent to arouse me to give up information. And you, you're a doof for believing that they care about you. Now, I'm summarizing a lot of subtext, but he uses much better language than I just used.

He didn't use the word doof?

No, he didn't use the word doof. I don't even know if that's a word. I just invented the word.

But you know what I mean. It's like.

The other great thing about thrillers and action stories is that your reader is waiting for that. They want that scene. Bring me that scene. Bring me that truth. Bring me that speech from the villain. That just completely mesmerizes me. So not too much pressure. But, you know, that's an obligatory element, a convention of the genre that you need to deliver in a really fun, interesting way. And I think you've set yourself up into a nice place where you will be able to organically generate that kind of speech. But anyway, I went off topic. But the all is lost moment, we were talking about that the all is lost moment is really the crucial element of your middle build. We need that all is lost moment for your protagonist because that is the moment when they change their worldview. And it's not even like in a. In a James Bond story. They don't have an internal. Like, James Bond doesn't have an internal change. But the all is lost moment is literally all is lost in a James Bond movie. It's when the Saw is about to cut him in half and he somehow gets away from it, he changes his worldview. Change is all about his finding some brilliant thing in his brain to get him out of the predicament. It's not an internal moral or ethical shift. It's like, oh, if I hop up this way and put my, you know, the rope this way, it'll cut the rope. So even James Bond has an all is lost moment.

So, okay, so we talked a few weeks ago about the movie Family man and how it hit, like, all the marks.

Yeah.

And so right at the middle point of the movie is when he finally stops trying to get back to the old world and accepts that he's in the new world. But he still doesn't have it yet because he still tries to go out and recreate the old world. Like, integrate the old world into the new world, which is still means he hasn't really got it.

That's bargaining. That's called bargaining. When you are faced with a crisis or an inciting incident in your life, that. That completely rocks your world. You go through these stages and one of them is bargaining. Oh, okay, I get it. I can't live in the old world. I'll just make the new world like the old world. So he's like, he's got a strategy to fix it so he's not fully all is lost at that point.

Right. So his all is lost moment came closer to the end of the middle build. Yes. He finally gets that. He. What he has right now is everything that he needs. And once. Because that's the big shift for him.

That is the. That is. If I were to recommend the perfect place for an all is lost moment, that would be it. It's right before the climax of the middle build. It's right before the, you know, the jet propulsion. It's when Clarice Starling is sitting in that room watching her laundry in the dryer. Next scene, she's in Ohio. She's. No, the next scene she goes to see Crawford to get his approval to go to Ohio because she doesn't give up on Crawford. But it's like, it's a thing that propels the action into the ending payoff. It's the transitional moment that gets us over the hump. And now we're on that final stretch of momentum that propels us right to the end of the story. So if you want to plan the all is lost moment to be around in a 60 chapter book, around chapter 48, 47. I mean, when I say chapters, I mean scenes. So if you have a 60 scene book and you're going to do a 10, 11 scene ending payoff, you want it to come right before that. The resolution of the middle build in Silence and the Lambs is when she goes to see Crawford.

Yeah. Okay. Because I was kind of thinking it should be in the middle, but I'm like, well, she's not ready to have. Everything's not lost. What's gonna happen is she's gonna shift, but she's still gonna be trying to have it both ways. Right?

I mean, you could, you could thematically have her say she meets her brother. Brother says, the faction's terrible, we gotta fix it. If you fix it, you can get to go home again. So she's like, oh, okay, so all I have to do is bring down the faction and then I get to go home. Okay, okay. That's my bargaining chip. That's what I'll do. And then she. She gets into it and then she. Something terrible happens. All is lost. They find out about the brother. I don't know. She. Then she goes into cardiac arrest on the table. Everybody thinks she's dead. And she changes her worldview. That's the all's last moment. And then she has to. Actually, the next thing is she's got to go. You know, the planes leaving in five minutes for the threshing, you know.

Okay, okay, okay. I'll get to work on those scenes and then we'll go from there.

Okay. Thanks, Tim.

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