Plot Essentials: The Darkest Hour

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Okay, so maybe that plot point name is a bit dramatic, but to be honest, I can’t remember the official name of this point, and that basically sums it up. So. Anyway. 

The darkest hour is the point in your manuscript where your protagonist has reached his lowest point. This usually comes right before the climax—it’s where all hope seems lost and the worst of the worst has happened and your protagonist doesn’t know how they’re going to overcome their insurmountable odds.

Keeping with our examples from the last plot essentials posts, here are the darkest hours from some popular novels. If you haven’t read any of these, please skip over that particular example, because SPOILERS. You’ve been warned:

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling): Harry is dead. Voldemort has finally killed the boy who lived, the Battle of Hogwarts is lost and the wizarding world’s only hope is gone.
  
  Note: I chose the last Harry Potter book rather than the first in the previous examples because this is one of the best darkest hour points that I can think of in literature, period. 


• City of Bones (Cassandra Clare): Valentine has opened up the gates to demons, Jace seems to be cooperating with him and worse—Clary and Jace are siblings and definitely shouldn’t be in love with each other.


• Divergent (Veronica Roth): Tris’s parents are dead, all of her friends are under a simulation that’s turned them into mindless murderers, innocent Abnegation citizens are being killed and now Four has fallen prey to a simulation that has turned him against her. 

The darkest hour is actually one of my favorite plot points to write, because it shows our characters at their lowest point, which really allows us to get a sense of what they have to overcome and makes the eventual victory that much sweeter. Also, I’ve found that how characters (and people) behave when they’re at their lowest really says a lot about their character.

All that said, if you get the darkest hour right, then the ending and victory becomes much stronger and more powerful than it would have been otherwise.

Can you identify the darkest hour in your WIP or favorite book?

Working on a plot for your WIP? Writers @Ava_Jae discusses the importance of the darkest hour. (Click to tweet)  

Do you know your WIP’s darkest hour? Writer @Ava_Jae talks identifying this plot point, with examples. (Click to tweet)

Plot Essentials: The Point of No Return

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It's time for another plot essentials post! Now that we've talked about the inciting incident, it's time to move on to the next major plot point: The Point of No Return.

Whereas the inciting incident kicks the story off that dominos scene after scene into a novel, the point of no return is the moment in the book in which the protagonist must embrace the journey he or she's about to take and move forward, knowing full well that they will never be able to return to their normal life.

Keeping with our examples from the last plot essentials post, here are the points of no return from a couple popular novels:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling): There seems to be some debate online on the PoNR, but I tend to agree with the most popular answer—when Harry boards the Hogwarts Express for the first time. Up until the point, he could have hypothetically returned to Privet Drive and continued to live as he did—but after boarding the Hogwarts Express, there's no turning back. He's on his way to wizarding school, where he'll start on a new phase of his life. 


• City of Bones (Cassandra Clare): When Clary's mother is abducted and Clary herself is attacked by a demon, her life irrevocably changes. She can't go on as a normal teenager—her mother is missing, her life is in danger and she can no longer deny that the things she's been seeing (the demons and Shadowhunters) are indeed real. 


• Divergent (Veronica Roth): When Tris chooses to become Dauntless, she can't go back. She's made a decision that has altered the course of her life—she can't change her mind and go back to Abnegation, and even if she fails Dauntless initiation, there's no returning home. 

Similarly to the inciting incident, the PoNR isn't a plot point you should skip, either. Of course, I wouldn't list it as a plot essential if including it wasn't important. :)

Can you identify the point of no return in your WIP or favorite book? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Working on a plot for your WIP? Writer @Ava_Jae discusses the importance of the point of no return. (Click to tweet)  

Do you know your WIP's point of no return? Writer @Ava_Jae talks identifying this plot point, with examples. (Click to tweet)

On Clichés and Writing

Photo credit: Tom Newby Photography

Oh, clichés. We writers hear about them all the time—how to avoid them and how to recognize them and exorcise them from our work to avoid the dreaded words of this is a cliché.

But lately I’ve been thinking about plot-related clichés and how, while we’re advised to avoid them whenever possible, they sometimes work.

The Hunger Games, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and Every Day all start with their protagonists waking up. And each of them make it interesting and necessary and twist the cliché in a way that works.

Divergent the opens with a cliché writers are often told to avoid: characters describing themselves while looking in a mirror. And yet Roth did it and got away with it why? Because she made it work.

Now does that mean as writers that we shouldn’t bother trying to avoid clichés? Not so much. As many of Amy Trueblood’s first five pages interviews with agents have shown, clichés in openings in particular are often an instant turn-off for agents who see them way overused. But on the other hand, I don’t think the use of a cliché means the immediate death of your manuscript either…as long as it’s handled well.

Let’s take a look at the opening clichés in the published books I mentioned above.

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) starts like this:

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim`s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the Reaping.”

Why does this work? Because this isn’t a typical character waking up and brushing their teeth like every other day morning. This opening is laced with foreshadowing and a sense of foreboding, and right off the bat readers are left with questions.

Now The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (Holly Black):

“Tana woke lying in a bathtub. Her legs were drawn up, her cheek pressed against the cold metal of the faucet. A slow drip had soaked the fabric on her shoulder and wetted locks of her hair. The rest of her, including her clothes, was still completely dry, which was kind of a relief. Her neck felt stiff; her shoulders ached…”

Why does this work? Because Tana woke in a bathtub for crying out loud. We know (or at least, sincerely hope) this isn’t normal and as she begins to take in her surrounds, we get the sense more and more that something is off.

Now Every Day (David Levithan):

“I wake up. 

Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It’s not just the body—opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I’m fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth.The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you’re used to waking up in a new one each morning…” 

I think it’s pretty obvious why this works so well, namely, our protagonist immediately tells us he wakes up on a new body every day. That this is normal for him, which to me, is insanely intriguing.

Finally, Divergent (Veronica Roth):

“There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.” 

Why does this work? Because when she looks at her reflection, she has to sneak a look, because it’s not allowed. Tris has rarely ever seen her reflection up to that point, and is only permitted to sit in front of a (hidden) mirror once every three months.

These are just a couple examples, but the point is this: while clichés are generally best to be avoided, if you’re creative with them and make them unique to your manuscript in one way or another, they can still work.

What do you think? Have you ever tried to make a cliché work in a manuscript of yours? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Are clichés a death sentence to your MS? Here's why writer @Ava_Jae says not necessarily. (Click to tweet) 

"While clichés are generally best to be avoided...they can still work." (Click to tweet)

Do Your Characters Make Enough Mistakes?

Photo credit: Alex E. Proimos on Flickr

After re-watching The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for the umpteenth time, it occurred to me just how crucial character mistakes are to the plot—and not just in The Lord of the Rings, but in nearly every bestseller that I can think of. And I’m not talking about minor character mistakes, either—I’m talking plot-changing horrendous errors that cause death and maiming. These characters make mistakes that they can never take back—mistakes that leave them scarred in more ways than one.

Let’s take a look at a few examples (some of these are a little spoilery, so proceed with caution):

• The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)—Paranoid about people trying to take the ring from him, Frodo sends Sam away, follows Gollum into a rather eerie tunnel alone and nearly gets eaten by Shelob, the giant spider. And he sort of decides at the last possible second that he’s not going to destroy the ring after all, so Gollum has to bite his finger off to get it away from him.


• The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)—Over the course of seven novels Harry makes some judgments about Snape and accuses him of more than a couple horrendous crimes, and we all know how that turned out. Oh, and there’s also that nasty habit he has of running into situations unprepared that often leads to people dying.  


• Divergent (Veronica Roth)—Tris refuses to forgive a certain depressed teenager and says some horrible (if not deserved) things to him and shortly thereafter he commits suicide.

These are just a few examples, but the list goes on.

There’s something to be learned from these characters’ less-than-stellar decision-making skills, namely, that characters make mistakes just like their real-life counterparts—except their mistakes often have more dire consequences.

But character errors are more than just a chance to make our readers want to slam their heads into walls: they provide opportunity for character growth, great tension-filled plot points and a chance for our readers to relate to them. We all make mistakes, and reading about a character who never makes mistakes not only misses a whole slew of plot possibilities, but also makes the character significantly more difficult to relate to.

In short, I encourage you to make sure your characters make plenty of errors along their journeys. Don’t be afraid to let them royally mess up or make the consequences of their actions dire.

Because just like reality, mistakes are essential for our growth, and unlike reality, they make the plot significantly more interesting.

What do you think? Are character mistakes important? Do your characters make enough mistakes?

What Makes a Great Final Sentence?

"Your first chapter sells your book. Your last chapter sells your next book."—Mickey Spillane (from Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell).

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I wrote a post a while back about what makes a great first sentence, but it occurred to me that I never followed it up with an equally important discussion on the second most important sentence in your novel—the final sentence.

I think what Mr. Spillane said about the first and last chapter of a book applies to the first and last sentence—while the first sentence is largely responsible for hooking the reader, the last sentence must resonate with your readers, or else you risk losing them to an unsatisfying ending. That's not to say that a terrible ending can be completely saved by a stellar last sentence, but the final sentence is like the final note in a composition—it should echo and leave the reader with a certain tone. If done correctly, the final sentence provides closure and often mirrors the beginning, creating a full circle.

But of course we can't talk about final sentences without examples, so I've provided some sentences that I thought were especially effective. The sentence(s) in brackets are the ones that come before the final sentence that I included to provide a little context:

"[I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave.] I suppose that now, I must become more than either." –Divergent by Veronica Roth

"[It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.] But there are much worse games to play." –Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

"[The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years.] All was well." –Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

What I love about these examples is the way they echo overarching themes that repeated themselves throughout the book or series. For those who haven't read it, much of Divergent was about Tris (the protagonist) trying to choose her identity between two factions: the Abnegation girl her family raised her as, which values selflessness, versus the Dauntless girl she had chosen to be, which valued courage. Her acknowledgment that she must become more than either both confirms one of the great revelations of the novel (without spoiling anything—that Tris is different from most) and points to the future books where we know she will have to be strong to survive.

In two of the three examples I purposely included the final sentence of a series because they so effectively wrapped up not just their respective novels, but the series.

In the case of Mockingjay we all know what games Katniss is referring to when she says, "there are much worse games to play" and it leaves the reader nodding in agreement while thinking back to the events of all three books.

In the Harry Potter example, the throbbing of Harry's scar was a foreboding sign throughout the series that became more and more frequent throughout the course of seven books as Voldemort became more powerful. To say that Harry's scar hadn't hurt him for nineteen years really confirms the final sentence that all is (finally) well.

So in short, a great final sentence does two of three things:

1. Reflects elements from the novel/series.
2. Wraps up both the book and series OR wraps up the book while leading into the sequel.

Once your final sentence accomplishes both of those things, you know you have a great final note on your hands.

Now it's your turn: What else do you think a final sentence should do? What are your favorite final sentences and what made them so memorable?

Mini Book Reviews: The False Prince & Re-Reading

Photo credit: Goodreads

So I’ve found that now that I’ve been reading more, I’ve really enjoyed the mini-book review system in which I give a little blurb about everything I’ve read over the past thirty days. Hopefully you lovely readers enjoy the system as well.

Now I’ll admit I’ve been a little negligent with the mini-book review system as I failed to post one last month, largely due to the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of re-reading as of late. In honor of The Hunger Games movie release, I re-read the trilogy in March, and now as Insurgent by Veronica Roth will be released in a DAY, it goes without saying that I spent time this month re-reading Divergent. (If you’d like to see my review, I posted it a while back here).

However! Divergent wasn’t the only book I read this month as I was fortunate enough to see an ad for The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen, which lead me to track down the online sample, which lead me to promptly buy the book. All very fortunate indeed, because I loved it.

Firstly! The summary from Goodreads:

"THE FALSE PRINCE is the thrilling first book in a brand-new trilogy filled with danger and deceit and hidden identities that will have readers rushing breathlessly to the end. 

In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point -- he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well. 

As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.

An extraordinary adventure filled with danger and action, lies and deadly truths that will have readers clinging to the edge of their seats."

Besides the action and fabulous pacing, what I really loved about The False Prince was Sage—the first-person narrator. It can be very difficult to pull off an unreliable narrator convincingly, especially in first person, but Nielsen nailed it. Sage is witty and admirable, but flawed and makes more than a few face-desk-worthy mistakes, and to top it off, there are twists that I really enjoyed.

For all those reasons and more I highly recommend it.

What have you read/re-read as of late? Anyone else re-reading Divergent in anticipation of Insurgent? 

What Makes a Great First Sentence?

“When it comes to selling your book, the most important words you’ll ever write are those on page one.” –Jodie Rhodes, President, Jodie Rhodes Literary Agency (from Hooked by Les Edgerton).

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Most readers and writers alike can agree that the first page—and even more so, the first line—of a book carries a very heavy responsibility. I’d even go as far to say that the first line in your book is the most important sentence in the entirety of your WIP. Why?

The first line determines if the reader will go on to the second (then third and fourth, etc.) line (obvious, I know, but important).

The first line is the very first impression readers (and agents, and editors) have of your manuscript.

The first line carries the responsibility of hooking your readers into the story, or else they likely won’t move on. (No pressure).

Most of us can agree that the importance of the first sentence is undeniable. But what makes a good first sentence?

Hooked by Les Edgerton focuses on, as the title suggests, hooking your readers with your first scene and naturally, your first sentence (it’s a good read for those of you who’d like a really in-depth look at the topic beyond the little bit that I talk about here, but I digress). My favorite point in the book however, came with his theory on the two things that should belong in first sentences.

According to Edgerton, every first sentence should hint at trouble and raise a question. Taking a look at some great (in my opinion) opening lines, I have to agree with him. Let’s take a look:

“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”—The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’ve seen this line used time and time again as an example of a great first line and I don’t know about you guys, but I think it’s brilliant. It also holds up to Edgerton’s theory—although the trouble isn’t stated directly (it rarely is in first lines), there is certainly a sense of foreboding as our main character wakes to a cold, empty bed. The question of course is obvious—why is the other side of the bed cold? Who was she (Katniss, the protagonist) expecting to be there?

“I’ve been locked up for 264 days.”—Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

The trouble and questions are pretty clear here—the trouble is clearly that our protagonist (Juliette) has been locked up for nearly a year. We don’t know where exactly, but by the term “locked up” we can assume it’s some kind of prison. The question of course is why? Why lock someone up for that long? What did she do to deserve imprisonment? You must read to find out.

“I see darkness.”—Saint by Ted Dekker

Trouble? Well, waking to darkness isn’t often a good thing and although we know little about the protagonist’s situation from this first sentence, we most certainly have a sense that something bad is about to happen—or perhaps something bad already has. Either way, we want to know why our main character only sees darkness (the question), so we have to read on to find out.

“There is one mirror in my house.”—Divergent by Veronica Roth

The trouble here is a little more subtle than in the last two examples. We don’t know for sure from the first sentence that anything bad is going to happen, but just the fact that we have to ask why our main character only has one mirror in her house (and why, as we quickly find out, the mirror is hidden) gives us a sense that something isn’t quite right.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” –Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

How could I go through this kind of post without including Harry Potter? Obviously, I couldn’t.

In all seriousness, this is the kind of sentence that uses a sort of reverse-psychology. Just the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley feel the need to say that they’re perfectly normal indicates that they probably aren’t (which foreshadows trouble) and also leads the reader to ask why they feel it’s important everyone know that they’re normal. Do people think they’re strange? If so, why? We must read on to find the answer.

A sense of foreboding and raising questions can go a long way to grab your readers’ attention right from the first line—are you using this technique in your writing?

What are your favorite first lines? Do they create a sense a trouble and raise questions? I’d love to hear them! 

My (Short) Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Wow. Where to begin?

You’re all going to think I’m a softie since I rated the last book I reviewed with five stars but…GUYS I just loved this book so much, I added it to my list of favorites.

So yes. I’m giving it five stars. And this is why.

To start, I was hooked from page one. No, there wasn’t any crazy action sequence, but there didn’t need to be. From the very first words, Roth crafts an engaging dystopian world that is just similar enough to be recognizable as once our own.

In Roth’s rendition, Chicago has been split into five factions based on certain traits its people consider most important: Candor (the honest), Erudite (the intelligent), Amity (the peaceful), Abnegation (the selfless) and Dauntless (the brave). In world were “faction before blood” is the rule, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose between her Abnegation family, or where she feels she truly belongs.

So she makes a choice, renames herself Tris and plunges into a fiercely competitive initiation well beyond anything she could have prepared for.

Divergent is exciting and chock full of action and memorable characters. I loved watching Tris grow, I drooled over a certain mysterious someone from the first line of his introduction and I was left itching for a sequel.

My only regret in picking up Divergent is that I read it too quickly. Definitely give it a try. You won’t regret it.

What have been your favorite reads so far this year?