Let’s get back on track with our crafting of a Suspense!

Over the past 3 months, we’ve been talking about the elements of a suspense, laying out the components of each Act. Just as a review:

Act 1 is the set up of the GAME. It contains the Players, the Threat of the Big Event, the Inciting Incident and the rules (or the set up of the story).

Act 2 is the GUTS of the story, where all the good stuff happens.  It contains the Romance of the hero/heroine, the unexpected twists and turns, the droplets of truth and the uncovering of secrets.

Act 3 is the GLORY of the story – the ending, which contains the Black moment, the epiphany, the Climax (or Final Battle) and finally..the Happily Ever After.

I know I have covered many of these final elements in previous blogs, but sometimes it helps to apply the information to the genre at hand.  So – what does it mean to have a Black Moment, when you’re building a suspense novel?
First, what is the Black Moment?

Oh, good question—maybe we should stop and define it. The Black Moment occurs in the beginning of the third act, the end of the second act. It’s when the worst possible thing happens, the greatest fear of the protagonist comes true, and when the lie the protagonist believes seems overwhelming.

It’s that point in the novel when everything seems lost, and that it seems as if their journey will fail. Let’s name some classic black moments, just so we can identify them.

I just saw True Grit. (I just love the dialogue in this movie!).  The Black Moment, of course, is when Tom Chaney has captured Mattie Ross and is going to kill her.  She’s failed in her quest to apprehend Chaney, and been abandoned by Rooster Cogburn – in her words, she “chose the wrong man.”  She not the heroine she wants to be, has not found justice for her beloved father.   It’s a black moment that has us gripping our seats and yelling at the screen.

The Black Moment should occur in the last part of the book….before the final sequence of events (that I call the final battle).  And it should involve the physical, emotional and spiritual climax of the book.  In other words, a powerful Black Moment is Personal and Plausible and most of all, sets up the Epiphany of the novel, part of the inner journey of the protagonist.

It’s important, as we deconstruct the Black Moment, to note that the Black Moment Event is different than the Black Moment Effect.  We’ll touch on the difference tomorrow, but for today, we’re concentrate on looking at the overall package of the Black Moment.

The components of the Black Moment:

A great black moment is Personal.

The key to a great black moment is that it must be specific to the character.  One character’s black moment will not be the same as another’s.  (although they can align over the same event, they will perceive them differently).

For example:

In a suspense, you can often use the Black Moment to affect all the POV characters.  For example,  in my book Expect the Sunrise, the event that causes the black moment is the kidnapping of the heroine by terrorists who want to blow up the Alaskan pipeline.  Of course it affects them in different ways – the heroine is besieged with guilt that she didn’t listen to the hero’s warnings, and the hero realizes that he’s been right all along and should have stood his ground.  Because it is a romance, both of them also realize in that moment how much they love each other and don’t want to lose each other.  The Black Moment  also contributes to each of the character’s personal lies – Andee can’t get past the guilt of her regrets, and Mac believes he will never make a good decision (that he can’t have love AND do his job).

This is an example of one black moment, used differently in each of the character’s lives.

However, maybe you only have one character on the page.  Then, you can strike at the heart of the character without worrying about the others.   In my recent suspense, Double Trouble, the black moment for my heroine, PJ, is when her family is nearly killed because of her sleuthing, and her sister throws her out of the house.  Her worst fear is to be rejected, again, and even more, to have someone pay for her curiosity.  So….I make that happen.

How do you make a Black moment Personal?

To do this, return to your character study of your protagonist. As you have dissected their past, find one event in their past that has wounded them deeply and told them a lie about life and/or faith.  Then, figure out what from this moment is their Greatest Fear. The idea is to take this moment and then figure out a way to make it happen again.  The point of doing this is to cause character change in your hero/heroine.  This is the point of the journey – the action is simply the catalyst to the change. Thus, when their greatest fears come true, they are required to face dark truths about themselves, find a way to change (the epiphany) and save the day.

For example, my hero in Expect the Sunrise is an FBI agent who got his brother killed because he went after a terrorist he saw while out fishing with his brother.  From this, he fears getting someone else killed.  But he also fears letting a terrorist get away.  So…in the black moment of Expect the Sunrise, I make both of these things happen.

Since the beginning of your suspense, the author should have been hinting at this fear, and been slowly pushing the protagonist to this dark place.  We know that Frodo fears succumbing to the ring.  We know that Bourne (Bourne Identity) fears he’ll never be more than an assassin.  You know that Richard Kimball (The Fugitive) fears letting his wife’s killer go free.  We know this because we’ve asked hard questions, and we’ve figured out what is at stake for our hero.  So, now, to put it in Jean-Luc Picard language  – make it so.

In Book Therapist-Speak…ask your character, what is the event in your past that has wounded you?  What, from this event is your greatest fear?  How can you make this happen again?

Here’s a trick that I use – journal this event and pull out all the nuances from it. You’ll use it later to share with the heroine or other members of the cast.  It also gives you a good look at the different choices of greatest fears and offers some creativity in your plot. For example if a protagonists’ dark event is the fact that his brother died in his arms, and the realization that he pulled his brother into the altercation that killed him, his fear would be pulling someone into danger.

For Will Masterson, in my novel, Escape to Morning, his black moment was leaving his friend behind to die while on a mission in Iraq. He is forced to do this same thing (to the woman he loves) during his black moment.

When you recreate that Greatest Fear, it allows your hero to take another run at it, perhaps react differently.  Or, it allows them to see a truth they may have missed before.  Most of all, it gives them an opportunity for character change.

The Black moment is also Plausible.

The key to a powerful black moment is that while it should be unexpected,  it should also be something that COULD happen.   It must make sense for the movie/situation/character.  Whatever black moment you choose, it must be something that could happen.

For example, even though I didn’t love the latest Indiana Jones movie  (despite Shai LeBeouf) the black moment did work.  Because, even though I didn’t like the crystal skulls coming to life to suck out people’s brains through their eyeballs, and then vanish on a spaceship, it was pretty classic Indiana Jones.  After all, in previous movies, the Ark came alive and punched out people’s souls, and then there was the melting man who “chose poorly” in the Last Crusade.  So, even though I didn’t like the premise the screenwriters DID build up enough plausibility for it to happen.  And, let’s admit it – it was sort of unexpected (and creepy!)  So, you can get away with crazy out of this world black moments if you build up the plausibility.

In Expect the Sunrise, the black moment of being kidnapped by terrorists who want to bomb the Alaskan pipeline is plausible because my hero and heroine, (Andee and Mac) discuss the possibility (and dismiss it). I also made sure to drop powerful hints and build the pieces throughout the storyline that connected the dots for the reader.  Finally, I used an event (the bombing of the Alaskan pipeline) that had nearly happened.  So…everything about the event was plausible.

Always ask:  Is my black moment plausible?

Finally, a Black Moment should lead up to a Healing Epiphany.

Right after the black moment, you want the hero (or heroine) to look back to his mistakes, and see what he did wrong.  In that moment, or not long after, they will come to some truth that will open a new door to a new future. This means the black moment will have to have some sort of internal element or attack a belief in some way so that their foundation is shaken and they are ready to hear the truth.  (I call this the “Lie Journey,” and I will break that apart next week on the blog.)

One of my favorite movies is an older movie called Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It’s a story about two travelers both trying to get home to their loved ones for Chrstimas.  It stars Steve Martin and John Candy.  John Candy is a bumbling salesman who seems to attach himself to Steve Martin like Velcro.  He continues to tell Martin about his family, and his life…until the black moment when Martin realizes that Candy’s character has lied to him…and has no place to go.  All Martin’s annoyance  about his travel troubles, and especially Candy is put aside by his gratefulness that he has a family to return home to.  His perspective is changed and he’s forever a changed man, just in time for the holidays.

In Expect the Sunrise, my hero’s lie is that he can’t be an effective FBI agent if he is in a relationship.  He thinks emotions get in the way of clear thinking (eg: if his brother hadn’t been there, he might have been able to do his job without worrying about his brother- something that contributed to his brothers’ death).  When the girl he loves is kidnapped, right under his nose, he blames the fact that he was “distracted with love.”  

Make sure your black moment, in some way, attacks their core beliefs, or values, and then you’ll be set up for the Epiphany.  We’ll dissect this more next week.

In the meantime, Ask:  What lie does your hero believe and how does the black moment make the lie seem overwhelming?

So, now all you need to do is set up the Black Moment!  Stop by tomorrow and we’ll continue our talk about creating the Black Moment.

Susie May

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