TRAINING SEQUENCE in the first half of the second act.

And often the hero/ine will LOSE SUPPORT FROM KEY ALLIES when s/he begins to cross the line. ESCALATING ACTIONS/ATTACKS BY ANTAGONIST

(Lesson: infuse every character, every moment, with all the life you can cram into it.)

And you’ll also want to be continually working the dynamic of HOPE and FEAR: you want to be clear about what your audience/reader hopes for your character and fears for your character, as I talked about in Elements of Act One. A screenwriting trick that I strongly encourage novelists to look at is the filmmakers’ habit of STATING THE HOPE/FEAR AND

So while you’re struggling to pull together everything you’re trying to make happen in an ending, remember to step back and identify what you want your reader or audience to FEEL. Another important component in an ending is a sense of inevitability: that it was always going to come down to this.

Also in romance, the All Is Lost moment is often the scene in which the WRONG PERSON PROPOSES (or the hero/ine proposes to the wrong person!) and All Is Lost because the hero/ine, for whatever reason, foolishly accepts.

THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL (ALL IS LOST) This third quarter of your story is almost certainly going to contain a scene or sequence which since the ancient Greeks has been called THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, also known as ALL IS LOST, or APPARENT DEFEAT, or THE BLACK MOMENT, or VISIT TO DEATH (which may also be a separate scene).

Another inevitable element of the training sequence, and common to Act II:1 in general, is PLANTS AND PAYOFFS. For example, we learn that the hero/ine (and/or other members of the team) has a certain weakness in battle. That weakness will naturally have to be tested in the final battle. Yoda continually gets angry with Luke for not trusting the

If you can tell your story in one line and everyone who hears it can see exactly what the movie or book is — and a majority of people who hear it will be interested in seeing it or reading it — that’s high concept.