The Big Middle Build Moments

Hello and welcome to the Story Grid 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. Now, as you may be able to hear, I'm fighting a little bit of a cold. Thankfully, this came on after the recording of the episode, so you won't have to listen to this for the next hour. But in this episode we talk about, we're continuing into the middle build of my book. And, you know, I'm still struggling with these big moments, as if you've been following along, you know, as I come against these big moments in the middle build, I really kind of freak out and can't figure out what I should write about and feel like I have no good ideas. And so we talk some more about that and what I have left to do in the middle build. And I think you'll really enjoy it because it will help you as you think about your big moments in your middle build and how to keep the momentum going and hit the right notes at the right time. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I worked on the next sequence, which ended up being four scenes, and I was. After admitting to you that I kept waiting until two days before I had to turn in the scenes to write anything, I decided I was not going to do that this time. And I actually wrote five out of the seven days between episodes and actually just tried to, like, chip away at it instead of just sitting down and like writing 2500 words at once. Anyway, I don't. I don't know if it made it any better or worse, but that's what I tried to do just to, you know, build consistency instead of these days of tons of writing. And then I don't write for five days. But anyway, so four scenes we got through. In the last one, we got through kind of the aftermath of the severing where she had burnt down the tower. And then so she had to confront the president and he gave her the warning and, you know, those three scenes. And now we're into, you know, we decided that she needed to have a run in with Az, her enemy, and. And then I wanted to start kind of telegraphing the meeting with the brother. So I had her kind of drop into this empty space. I had a lot of fun writing that because it allowed me to kind of get more into the digital world that I just haven't yet. And so that was a lot of fun to write. Anyway, so those were the. Since you. The four scenes, what are your thoughts?

Well, this might be a short podcast because I think you did a really nice job. You know, again, when we talked last week, we were talking about progressive complications. And one of the difficulties of the middle build is that you have to keep ratcheting up the tension and the complications for the protagonist so that, you know, she is facing more and more difficult tasks and more strange things are happening to her that are undermining her global goal. And when I talk about, you know, what she wants, and what she wants is to go back home and go back to the place where she felt the most comfortable, which was a time that was in her past when her brother was alive and her parents were, you know, just average, functioning people and she was part of a larger family. So she just wants to go back to that. And now all of her actions are based upon that global wanting to go back to, you know, a better time. And within each scene, this is the thing that you, you know, writers really need to remember is that I, in the way I explain it often is when former President Obama wanted to become president while he was campaigning, there were certain things that he had to do to ultimately reach that goal. And so each day he would have a little want. Today I want to convince the Iowa farmers that I can do a great job as president. So today I'm going to go to the diner and sit down with some Iowa farmers and see if I can get them on my side. So that was his micro want that served his larger want. So the micro wants that we're talking about in your book concern Jesse, you know, moving her agenda forward so that she eventually has the ability to go home with the least amount of damage possible.

So in the last sequence, you wisely ratcheted up her problems to include her compatriots. So it's not. She's not just fighting for herself anymore. If she fails or if she does something in the wrong way, if she disappoints the authority figure, her companions will be harmed, and they will be sent home permanently damaged, and their families will. Will not no longer be able to get the benefits that they're getting now. So that was a really great way of escalating the stakes for Jesse. So now she's got to concern herself with not screwing up, because if she does, then those two. Those things will happen to her friends, they're not even really her friends yet, but they are the only people who are doing anything, know close to helping her. So that last sequence was really terrific. And those consequences were put on Jesse by the antagonist. The antagonist has finally showed his face. He is the president. His name is Marcus. He's been using other pawns to do his work for him, what he wants. Because your antagonist must have their own want. Two, the antagonist's global want is to win the threshing.

So it's the most important thing to him, and he will do whatever is necessary to make this happen, is to maintain his power in the society. And the only way he can maintain his power is by winning this upcoming threshing. And one of the ways he's decided to that will help him do that is by using Jesse because she seemingly has talents and a gift that could prove very useful at that time. So all of this stuff that I'm saying right now is embedded in the work that you've done. And if we were to pull somebody off the street and we gave them these 28 chapters and say, what does Jesse want? I'm pretty sure they would say, oh, she wants to go home, back to, you know, a better time when things were better. I still think we need to ratchet that up and we can do that in the next, you know, draft. But I think it's clear. And if we ask them what is the. Who is the antagonist? They would say, well, there's a bunch of them. There's this guy who was the president, who sent her down into the number, and now the president is also threatening her while she's part of this larger team of people who have to fight in this big event. So I would say, and then there's some personal stuff between her and another guy who's in the program. So I think they would be able to say, well, there's personal one on one conflict between Jesse and as, plus there's larger societal conflicts that are bearing down on Jesse. And you furthered those. You made those even more clear in these four chapters. In that it's not just AS who's not in her camp, it's all the other coders. It's in fact the military guy who's in charge of the entire program. They're not in her camp, they think she's a troublemaker, they think she's a liability, they want to get her out. So there's the one on one and there's the larger societal thing and then there's the, the internal antagonist that she hasn't even identified yet, which is her naivete. This is a coming of age maturation plot inside of an action story thriller. And her naivete is keeping her from asking herself questions that could really help her. She's not asking herself, well, why? You know, why me? Why does the president want me? What's the big deal with me? What's going on? What happened to my brother? She's not asking any of those internal questions. She's just blindly moving forward with an agenda that only takes her back to some mythical time when things were okay. So all of this stuff is going on, and in these four chapters, you made a really nice choice by adding yet another level of mystery and conflict. And it was a really wise decision to have Jesse enter this nether world without explaining who's behind it. Now, I'm sure a lot of people who've been following this podcast from the very beginning will say to themselves, well, of course it's the brother. Duh. We know it's the brother. Tim's been saying it's going to be the brother. But what I think you've done here is, and we'll see when we go through further drafts down the road, is you have dropped in the brother element very, very early on in the book. So you're setting up the brother revelation for, you know, the climax of the middle build. And you didn't. You introduced it very, very early on in the book. Now, depending upon the grade level and the age of the reader of this story, they may or may not have have figured that out. And my gut is that. Go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, we mentioned it. I mentioned it in the scene one, but I have not mentioned it since.

Right.

Like, I've referred to him, but not in any context as her family. So, like when the. The president said he has an advisor, but there was one other time, I think. So I've referred to him, but I've only mentioned him once. And that was scene one.

Right. Well, that's good. That's good.

Okay.

So anyway, this. What I also liked about these four scenes was there were very clear crises in each of the scenes. Okay. So we pick up after, you know, the whole crew, the whole team of people who are preparing for the threshing have learned that not only did Jessie not get in trouble, but she was rewarded for burning down that tower, and that her team now has better equipment, they've got better resources, and it's as if she won the entire threshing or won the entire severing by herself. So now they're kind of walking down the hall, she and her two compatriots, Ernst and Alex, to go check out the new stuff. And they run into as, who is the person who was sort of humiliated in the last severe. So what's really nice here is that you immediately had as has an agenda. And his agenda is to dupe these people, these three, into doing what he wants. And he's explaining to them on very straightforward terms, he wants to practice, and he wants to get back at her. He wants another chance. He wants to fight again. It's like the. You know, the UFC fighter who wants the rematch soon after being beaten.

Yeah.

So. And, you know, and then he pulls out this mysterious zip drive or whatever and says, look, I've got the. The whole simulation here. All we have to do is go in, and it'll just be me and you, one on one. And if you don't like it, you can just always log out. And this is all information that all of the people assume to be true and so does the reader. And so we sort of go along with it, too, as we're reading. And we go, oh, well, I guess that's a good point. I wonder what is. You know, I wonder what the trick is. And even though, you know, after you read it, you go, oh, of course that's what he did. You were invested in the narrative drive of the story so that you're not immediately, you know, trying to figure out the puzzle because you want to see what Jesse's gonna do. So she. She agrees to do it because they make a good argument. Hey, if we wipe him out now and we destroy his confidence, he'll get out of this entire thing. He's the biggest competition. Wouldn't it be better to get rid of this competition now than have to deal with him in the next several. So there's this best bad choice, you know, crisis that she faces and she makes. The best bad choice, in her opinion, is, I'd rather face this guy now, get him out of the. Out of the equation, and then that can move my agenda forward. If I get him out of this, I'm closer to going home. So it all makes really solid storytelling sense. Then when she gets there, the element I really liked is when she goes back into the cyberspace and she's facing in the same setup and something's weird. She doesn't know what it is. And we think, as the reader, oh, this weird thing is something that as is doing.

So it's a really great red herring. It's a way of distracting the reader and making them think one thing and then delivering something else later on. So I'm not even getting to the part where I like. The part I liked is when she gets in the open field.

And then these other people start stepping out. One's got a baseball bat, and these are the other coders. And it's obvious that everybody in her entire thing wants her out. So what you did is you. You escalated the stakes. You complicated it even larger than it was before. Now it's not just as who's a jerk who wants her out, it's everybody. Even the guy who is the military officer who runs the training wants her out. She's a bad egg. He doesn't like her. She's not playing by the rules. She's a favorite of the president. All these things are adding up. And not once did you ever have to write, hey, Jesse, you're the favorite of the President. We don't like you. No, instead, what you did is you actively showed these people attacking her, and then you went one better. Then we're thinking, how is she going to get out of this situation? It's the hero at the mercy of the villain scene early. I mean, this isn't even the ultimate villain. So what you're doing is you're setting up some payoff down in the future that's even bigger than this hero at the mercy of the villain scene. Oh, no. Yeah, so you're really digging yourself a big hole. And it's great because you're at midpoint. You're at midpoint in your novel. So when your readers get to this point and they're engaged and they're locked in, and when Jesse falls into that wormhole, they're going to go, oh, my gosh, what's going on? Holy cow, this doesn't make any sense at all. And then you. You did a really nice thing, and you resolved it by having the nasty guy, the military guy, pull her out and he unplugs her and he yells at her, and he physically abuses her and pulls her down to his office, and it looks like he's really gonna slap her around a little bit. And then the President shows up and asks her what happened. Now she has an even bigger crisis. For whatever reason, she had a feeling when she was in that netherworld that it was a friendly world, that the voice that she heard in that friendly world was going to help her. And if she ratted out that friendly voice to the President, that would be a mistake, and it would be a betrayal. Of that friendly voice. What's really nice about here, Tim, is that, you know, if you look at this metaphorically, that friendly voice is her authentic self, even though it's her brother. And we know that, but she thinks it's her authentic self. So what you're doing here is you're saying she needs to start listening to her authentic self inside of herself and start questioning the things that she's doing and stop thinking about the world in terms of going back to some, you know, mythical, wonderful time. And get with the program, honey. You got to figure out life is not what you think it is. It's a lot more complicated, and the sooner you get a grasp of that, the better your life will be. So that's the metaphor that you're playing with. And because you're writing now, you're very locked in to, for lack of a better word, your muse. Your muse is directing you in a way that hasn't directed you before. Do you feel that, or you just feel like I'm just cranking it out.

I feel like it's coming more naturally, and then I'm making decisions. What's happening is I'm, like, playing it over in my head in the shower and driving to work or whatever, and when I find the right answer, I feel confident it's the right answer now. So I had a lot of fun.

So the part in the simulation, I thought of that, too. Of, like, I wanted to telegraph that AS had done something, and then it wasn't as, and she uses it to escape him, you know?

Yeah.

So I did think of that. Of, like, I. Everybody's going to assume AS is up to something. So let me just tell them he's up to something, but then lie, you know, make that a lie, that it wasn't really him.

Right.

So that was one I really enjoyed, the kind of Netherworld. I kind of sat down and wrote that in one sitting without planning too much. So I felt like that just kind of fell out of me. I was a little worried because there wasn't much of a crisis in it because it was mostly her just kind of walking around trying to figure out what was going on. And then it disappeared. So I didn't. I was worried that scene didn't work because I couldn't really pinpoint what the crisis was.

Well, let me just stop you there. Let me stop you there. Okay? What you did instinctively in that scene was you cut the scene at a progressive complication. So technically, some story grid nerd like myself will say to you, your crisis occurs in the next scene or chapter. And that crisis is, do I tell the president about the netherworld and the ghostly voice, or do I not?

So that's the crisis.

Yeah, okay, I knew that for that scene. So you're basically saying I just wrote one long scene.

Yeah, yeah. And it's perfectly reasonable and it's a good idea to do those sort of cliffhangers every now and again. Now a lot of people think, oh, I'll just do a cliffhanger in every scene. I'll stop before they make the climactic decision, and then I'll pick up the climactic decision in the next scene. But what you did here was you set up your cliffhanger by stopping on the progressive complication. Because your progressive complication is so large it works. Now, if the progressive complication was she's going to the cafeteria and they're out of trays for her to get her food, and you stop the chapter there, that's not enough. Do you know what I'm saying? That's just a stupid progressive complication that's fine in the story. But you can't end a scene on that because it doesn't lead anywhere. It doesn't provide any suspense or mystery. This progressive complication is the emergence of even yet. Even. Yet another virtual reality. So what you're doing is you're like, almost, she's living in a dystopia. She goes into a virtual reality, into a battle. That virtual reality has its own wormhole that's yet another virtual reality. And nobody's talked about this wormhole. It's a completely unique and fresh thing that you're sticking in here. So to stop the scene after she comes out of this wormhole and people say, you've been out. You've been in the netherworld for five hours. Everybody's in bed. What's going on? That is a great way of ending a chapter because you're ending it on a very massive story point that progressively complicates the entire story. Because up until this point, we've been thinking, oh, this is going to be like Ender's game where, you know, she joins his band and she gets better and better and. Oh, my gosh, wait a minute. What? So you are. You're innovating the convention of this particular.

Science fiction, fantasy, coming of age action, dystopia story, whatever the hell this thing is. Right. Like Ender's game. That's a good one to think of. And if anybody hasn't read it, it's Orson Scott Card. It's a terrific story about a young boy who has, you know, is gifted, and he becomes. He has to fight battles for his government. And it's a very strong, straightforward action story. And there's some similarities in your story about the setup. It's a different world. It's fresh. You're innovating. You're not ripping off Orson Scott Card, other than, you know, using the plot point of somebody who has to go to an academy to learn how to fight something. But this. This. This element that you just threw in is that moment when readers really get excited and they go, oh, my gosh, I thought it was about one thing, but what is that trapdoor you just stuck in there? What is that all about? So let me just get back to the fact that you were worried that you didn't have a crisis in that scene, and you cut it off right at the progressive complication. What I'm saying is that works because the progressive complication is so vast and large, and it takes the story to another level. To another. There's a force. We don't know whether it's good or bad, yet we suspect it's good, but we're not really sure. We're, you know, we're sitting in Jesse's shoes right now. Which is exactly what you want. You want your reader to empathize with your protagonist and this chapter. If somebody hasn't been fully committed to Jesse by now, this. This will really do it. Now they're going to say to themselves, we got to find out what that wormhole is about. Jesse's got a. This is now her next want. Her next thing is while she, you know, while she navigates the school. Her next want is she's got to figure out what the heck that wormhole is. And she is smart enough to. Now she's going to have to say to herself, do I trust Alex and Ernst? Can I tell them?

Will they betray me? How am I going to figure this out?

Oh, yeah, I hadn't even thought about that yet.

Yeah, because you want to set up a Judas figure for her.

Well, because she's already keeping things from them, right?

So she's going to reach a point of, oh, my gosh, I got a. As much as I hate to do it, I've got to trust somebody. As much as this is going to bother me, I've got to trust somebody. And guess what that is. That's a maturation point. That's a point when we start to discover we can't make it all the Time by ourselves. Sometimes we have to trust somebody, even though they might betray us. We've got a risk. We've got to take that risk. Because the stakes are so large that if she can't figure out what's in that wormhole, there's no way she's going to survive the severing, let alone the threshing. And so these are all wonderful, juicy plot lines and opportunities that have arisen with this new sequence of events. And it's really terrific because you boiled the story to a place where she can't go back. It's irreversible. If she tries to get out of this thing, other people are going to suffer. She's already made the choice that that's not going to work for her. She said to herself, I'm not the kind of person who's going to selfishly try and get back to my home at the expense of other people. So now it's irreversible. So now her goal is, I've got to get through the threshing, I've got to get this antagonist what he wants, and I've got to figure out, you know, what that wormhole is. Because that wormhole is the thing that she secretly knows in her heart of hearts, that's the thing that she's going to need in that threshing.

Okay, so before we go on, I want to mention one thing too. So I don't know if you noticed this, but in the last couple sequences, I started going inside her head.

Oh, I didn't notice. Good, great.

You know, so again. So once again, I was listening to Harry Potter, and I was just noticing how much of the book, because my struggle has been, I want it all from Jesse's perspective. So there's not a single scene in the book that is not from Jesse's perspective.

Right.

So. But I've tried to just do it as if I was just watching what she was doing. And I finally just reached this point a couple weeks ago where I'm like, I don't know why I decided to pick up this fight of staying out of her head. I think at the beginning of the book, if I went back and listened, it would probably be because I didn't think I could do it. And so what I've been able. So I've started using that, like, saying, like, basically sharing her thoughts as a way to continue to tell the story.

And.

And I don't know, I just finally was like, I need to tell this story from her perspective in a much more literal way than Just like if a camera was sitting on her shoulder, you know. So I'm pretty sure the last two, it might have been the last three sequences, but definitely the last two. I just went ahead and just started writing as if we were inside her head. So, like in the last one, when she's trying to make the decision, the last scene of the last sequence, when she met with the President and then went back to see them, I do this whole thing about how she's, like, struggling inside of herself whether or not to sell Alex and Ernst that what the President said and that she met with him. And so there's like. I'm looking at, like, probably a dozen sentences that's all inside her head, what she's thinking. And then, because I couldn't figure out a way to, like, tell that without just telling what she was thinking. And so anyway, that was another decision that now I'll have to go back and probably fix in the second draft.

Well, not necessarily. Let me just interrupt you there. What you're talking about is free indirect style, which is a. It's this sort of. This glob of point of view that allows the writer to present third person and the interior thoughts of a specific character. And one of the first people to ever do it was Jane Austen. And you know, just coincidentally, after I'm finishing up Pride and Prejudice story grid, and I tracked her use of free and direct style, and she doesn't get into Elizabeth Bennet's head until chapter 33. And chapter 33 is about midpoint of the story. And I was thinking about why she made that choice. And beyond the fact that nobody had ever done it before, very few. I don't know off the top of my head if Flo Bear was running at the same time he did it with Madame Bovary. But anyway, why it works if you don't do it until the midpoint is that it provides a bulwark or a foundation for the ultimate worldview point of view change of the lead character. It's almost as if, you know, when we don't want to deal with things, we sort of don't listen to our thoughts. We try, you know, we try and drown out whatever that noise is in our head. And so the fact that you're starting to use this, I didn't even notice it, which is great because it means it's organically coming through. And I confess, I did not put on my story grid goggles. I just read this like a. Like a normal person. So you were mentioning Harry Potter, though, and Harry Potter There's a lot of free indirect style in that, too. Correct?

Right. So we had a road trip a few weeks ago, and so we were. My wife and I were listening to the final book, the Deathly Hallows. And, you know, it's been a year now that I've been working through the audiobooks of the books, and I just noticed that of, like, how much of the book is him struggling inside his head with what's going on? And.

It was finally, like, when I sat down to write after listening to that, I was like, I just need to use this because there's so many things I'm not getting across that I really need to get across, and I can't figure out how else to do it.

Right.

And so then I was like, well, then I was trying to think, well, why am I not doing it? And I couldn't remember. Whatever reason that was seemed so important at the beginning, except for I think I just wasn't. I thought just writing what I saw was so overwhelming anyway. Trying to do the inside of the head too, seemed. Probably just seemed too overwhelming that I couldn't pull it off.

And so, yeah, you might not even. You might not even have to. I suspect you might not even revise that on later drafts. When we did work on the early scenes, I remember I did stick in free indirect style in one of the early chapters. You read it, you liked it, but then you cut it, and I. I thought, okay, he doesn't want to do that. That's cool. And now you're sort of seeing the reason why you may not have wanted it earlier is that, you know, there's so much stuff. You got to keep control in your head and to. To be able to move from wide angle to interior. Thinking takes a while to develop. And the story wasn't completely solidified in your head yet, and it's still not completely locked in. But at least now you have a confidence that you can take the wide angle view, watch the scene, describe the scene, and then you can also say to yourself, well, what is Jesse thinking about watching all this? Maybe I can. You know, maybe this is a good time to share her thoughts. And so my advice to you is just keep doing what you're doing, and we can deal with whether or not you should open with free indirect style or you should wait until the midpoint. Right now, I like the idea of not having it until these really, really progressive complications, because, you know, I think this is. That is a metaphor for the way we deal with change. We try and avoid it. We Just have our ideas, and then all of a sudden, we have to start deliberating in our head. And having her deliberate now and having it on the page is really paying off. And it's really firmly establishing every crisis in every scene. And once the reader understands what she's thinking, they can understand her, they can empathize because they've had the same crisis moments in their own lives. Just keep going on the free indirect style. I think it's. It's really helping.

Okay, so anyway, back to your previous. Previous question. Yeah, it. I feel like it's definitely flowing better and now, you know, because I feel like a while ago, I got to where I could write a scene that worked, but then at the beginning of the middle build, I kept writing these scenes that worked in and of themselves but did not fit into what a middle build is supposed to be. And so now I feel like I've got a pretty good rhythm of what this middle build is supposed to be. And so I'm able to, like, kind of knock these things down one at a time. So it's like I can write a scene, and now I'm finally understanding how this middle build is supposed to work, and I can put those together and actually start writing stuff that works. So. But every time, literally every single time I feel like I'm starting to get it, I end up, like, blowing everything up. And we gotta stop.

Because, like, right before the middle build, I was talking to a friend of mine. I'm like, yeah, I'm finally at this place where, like, Sean's let me write, like, like, three scenes at a time. And then, like, you're like, nope, those don't work. We got to stop. But I'm like, all right.

Well, the next. The big advice I'm going to give you now is very simple, but just follow the line of reasonable action as you're moving forward. So when I was. When I was. Just follow the story, almost let your brain start, you know, working for you. And I know that sounds esoteric, but like I was saying earlier, think about the situation that she's in now, right now, she has just told. She's just lied to the antagonist and said, oh, no, I was just hiding in the woods for five hours. He's like, I don't think that's possible. No, seriously, I was just hiding in the woods, and he lets her get away with it. And now what's she gonna do now? Just think of it. What is she going to do now, now? And you also need to think about peppering in Deadlines. Severing. When's that? When is the threshing? Is there? Are they going to have, you know, one of the things that you do in a sporting when you're on a sports team is that you watch films of previous things, right? So they'll probably have some training session where they show the threshing, you know, the last threshing. Here are the highlights from the last threshing. So, and you can explain and describe the setup of the threshing and you can, you know, pull in something really cool like oh my gosh, that's 61. Right? Like she can remember the guy from the numbered who's on the video screen when they're showing the old thing of the last threshing. So you know, those are ways to signal to the reader, hey, you know, we still have two major action scenes coming up. So, you know, hang in there. Here's some more really cool stuff to keep you interested. But don't forget in the offing are these two amazing action scenes. So that's what you need to be thinking about as you're planning the next sequence. How do I get from Jesse's in a. A really difficult quandary. What is this wormhole all about? 2, do I want to do another severing scene or do I want to do something else? But you know, your ending payoff is the threshing. The ending payoff of this entire novel is going to be just a kick ass, five scene, amazing, roundabout, incredible threshing thing. You can't say that to me.

No, but that's what you have to deliver. That's the promise that you made. And you will, you will deliver on that promise. You wouldn't have gotten this far if there isn't something inside of you that, that knows what to do later on. I'm convinced that you're gonna, you're gonna come up with something great. Don't worry about it.

All right, so yeah, so the next, the next sequence is the announcement of the next threshing.

Wait, where are we?

Oh, yeah. The announcement of the next threshing then during the threshing or sorry, the next severing then during the severing is where she's going to see the wormhole again and she's going to go back into there. So she can either. So she's going to reach the crisis of I can keep trying to win the severing, which is what President Marcus told me to do and I have to do, or I can trust the wormhole thing and so she's going to trust it. Spoiler alert. And that's where she's going to meet her brother. And so that's going to be the moment when she switches from caring only about herself to caring about this bigger thing. So that's going to be the. Geez, I forgot what it's called.

Well, it's not the all is lost moment. It's, you know.

Oh, that's what I was thinking. Is it not the all is lost moment?

No, the all is lost moment is when she. She's already made that decision, but she. She can't. She figures that she can't. There's no way she's going to be able to be successful. So what is this?

What is the moment?

This is all. This is her taking. This is the final. The final challenge. Basically, this is when she takes on the burden of far more people than she ever imagined. So before, she was always fighting for herself. Now she's heroically taking on the lives and livelihood of other people. It's a major moment in a thriller when the hero takes on the burden of a group of other people. But the all is lost moment is when they realize my tools that I have in my command are not enough.

I'm going to lose unless I figure out something else I have to change. And I have to press myself to come up with some kind of solution where I can get myself out of this problem. So it's like when Rocky, in the first Rocky movie, the night before the big fight with Apollo Creed, he goes into that arena and he looks at that stage and he says, there's no way I'm gonna be able to win this fight. The guy's going to destroy me. What am I gonna do? I'm going to lose. That's his all is lost moment. And he goes home and he says that to Adrian, and she says, well, what are you gonna do? And he says, you know what? Nobody has ever gone 15 rounds with him. I'm gonna stand up. If I can stay up for 15 rounds, that's enough for me. I don't need to win. I just need to stand up. And that's what propels the final. We know. We know what's gonna happen at the end of Rocky. He's gonna lose. But the payoff of that movie is so strong because the filmmakers and the writer Sylvester Stallone said, oh, well, we know he's gonna lose, but will he stay on his feet? So you need to think of something like that. Where Jesse hits a hole. She, you know, and we've Discussed this before. Where? Holy. Her big gift is her ability to resuscitate herself after she dies in the game. Nobody else can do that. She gets zapped or whatever. I forget what scrambled. And she's expected to not recover from that scrambling. And she's in her own mind probably at that point. Or she's talking to her brother in the wormhole and she's got to say, I'm scrambled. I'm done. There's no way I can come out of this. And she's got to find something within side of her that gets her out of that being scrambled. And to show up for that threshing with some gift that only she knows she possesses that will allow them to win or lose. Whatever way you decide if you're going to make this a trilogy, you know, you got to figure out. I mean, I'm not saying you have to map out the next two books, but you globally need to know, oh, my gosh, at the end of this novel, I'm going to want my reader to go, when's the next one coming out? Okay, so that's the all is lost moment. The all is lost moment happens right before the big threshing. So right now you're reaching. What you're moving toward is she's accepting the final challenge call in the hero's journey. This is when you know Odysseus, you know he's only five miles away from Ithaca, and he goes, yeah, yeah, I'll take a nap. I'm gonna take a nap. Fellas, we're gonna be in Ithaca in five minutes. I'm just gonna take, you know, five minutes. Take a quick nap. What did they do? They open up that bag of winds and it blows them all back to where he started. So that is sort of what you're leading up to, is she's building her confidence and she's, you know, she got out of that ad situation. She got out of the first severing. She's got to feel like, hey, you know, I'm pretty good at this. And this next thing is going to make her like, you know, I am big enough, I am strong enough. I think I can do this. You're right.

We need to beat down this tyranny. And I accept that challenge. I. I will take the world on my back and I will beat down this guy. And then something happens that says, holy shit, there is no way I can do that. That's the all is lost moment. And that's the moment when she needs to dig deep down. It's you know, in terms of. I've been doing a lot of studying about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is a psychological sort of. Sort of profile. And it's. I won't get into it here, but the moment in every story that really takes us to a catharsis, to a moment as a reader. Oh, my gosh. This incredible is the moment when the hero or the protagonist reaches self actualization. And it doesn't mean that they live there. It means that they have a moment. They have a moment of self actualization, which means that they are able to understand themselves at a really, really high level. And it's at that moment that they seize control of the moment and their gift comes to fruition and they're able to be bigger than they ever were before. So, like in an action story, it's when they. It's like a MacGyver moment, you know, it's when MacGyver figures out, oh, give me that chewing gum and that lighter, that, you know, that lighter and that hanger over there, and I'll get us out of this prison in five seconds. MacGyver is always based on him reaching these moments of self actualization at critical times in the story. And this is a metaphor for storytellers. What's the MacGyver moment for your character? What is Jesse going to have that MacGyver moment for Rocky, his MacGyver moment was, oh, I know how to win. I'm gonna go 15 rounds. Nobody can say I'm a bum. If I go 15 rounds. I don't have to win the fight. I just have to stand up at the end when that bell rings. And that makes me not a bum. That makes me Rocky. And that's what he does. And even though he loses the plate in Rocky 1, everybody is thinks he's the greatest thing on earth. You can't not cry at the end of that movie. And Stallone, who wrote the screenplay, you know, he knew that. He knew, like, oh, my gosh, he's got to have a MacGyver moment. He's got to have an all sauce moment. And not to be a spoiler, but this, this recent movie, which is fantastic, is Manchester by the Sea. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's what it is. It's a redemption plot that never redeems and. And the courage of the writer, Ken Lonergan, who wrote it. It's just. It was amazing when I watched the movie because I'm like, is he. Is he gonna do it? Is he gonna have the guts not to do this. And he did. He did. And that's why it's such a devastating movie, is because we don't get the redemption. Some things are so freaking awful that we just. We can't do it. And that movie was such a courageous act of filmmaking because it's not a redemption story. He is not redeemed at the end, but we love him anyway. And we understand what he his decision because it's real. The realism in that movie is just so good, and the acting is amazing. It's kind of like every guy he ever grew up with is Casey Affleck in that movie. But what was so great about that storytelling is that the writer said to himself, you know, I can't do it. I'm not gonna have him give the, you know, the happy ending here. Sometimes things just don't end happily. Some people walk around on this planet devastated by circumstances and mistakes that were human. Human error, stupid things, and it destroys them. And that is life. That's part of life, too. So the all is lost moment is a critical moment for you as the writer, because when you get there, you're going to say to yourself, there's no way I'm going to be able to figure this out. There's no way that I'm going to make this pay off in the way that my reader is going to expect. And the really, really great news is that you've got it. You will find a solution, because you don't put yourself in that place unless inside of you has the solution. So the trick is, is to challenge yourself and to take the risks necessary to put yourself in a position that you can't solve in five seconds that you're not going to be able to figure out in an hour. You're going to sit and walk around town and drive in your car and take 20,000 showers and think through this and exercise and do anything to get it out of your mind. And you will find a solution to this. That's what Sylvester Stallone did. Like, how am I going to satisfy this audience? They want Rocky to win. I want Rocky to win. How am I going to make it right? And the way he solved that was by looking at the character of Rocky. What did he want? What Rocky wanted was not to be a bum. He didn't want to be a bum. And it didn't matter if other people thought he was a bum. He himself needed to respect himself. So he said to himself, I'm not a bum if I can go 15 rounds. So once he went 15 rounds. Everything else didn't matter because he knew, hey, I'm not a bum. I'm not a bum anymore. And that's how you solve the problem. What does your character want? What is this story about? What does it mean? What's the controlling idea? And you know what Jesse wants? She wants to go back into some mythical fantasy world where she's the little girl, she's got a big brother, and her parents are nice. Well, sorry, we don't have that life. That isn't the way life is. Once you become an adult, you understand things at a deeper level than a child does. And it's a very difficult transition. That's what this story about is about. It's transitioning from a child to a grizzled adult in some ways. So knowing that what she needs is to mature and what she wants is a fantasy, her self actualization will be that moment when all is lost, when she says, screw it. I can't go back to fantasy world. I can't. I've got to do this instead.

Okay.

Simple, right?

Simple enough.

So four sequences in, and I'm just gonna work on the next one. And the next one will include her meeting her brother.

Sounds good.

And then we'll go from there.

Yep.

All right. All right, I'll talk to you next week.

Okay.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything Storygrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found@storygrid.com podcast if you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter torygrid. And lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes and leaving a rating and review. I'll also mention here that next Thursday, February 9, 2017, in case you find this in a couple years. So February 9, 2017. You know, I'm normally based in Nashville, Tennessee, but I'm going to be in New York City for a couple days and so I'm going to be at the McNally Jackson Bookstore on Prince street at 11am Eastern Time. I have some other Story Grid people meeting me there, but if you'd like to come out, have a cup of coffee, talk Story Grid. Very relaxed, nothing major. We're just hanging out. But if you're in the city and you can make it, I'd love to meet you and meet as many StoryGrid listeners as possible. So, again, February 9, 11:00am Eastern, I'm going to be at the McNally Jackson Bookstore. If you're going to come, if you could just let me know by tweeting torygrid and saying, I'm going to be there, letting me know. If you're not on Twitter, then track down my email address and shoot me an email. Just trying to get make sure we're not going to, like, pack out this store or something. So, anyway, looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible and that can make it there. So I'll see you next week. So, anyway, thanks as always, for listening and subscribing and being a part of Story Grid. We will see you next week.