When the world is shaken up, what will your main character do? Hopefully you've gone through some fun options about what your inciting incident will be, so the next question is...are they going to feel ready?
They probably shouldn't.
Or, if they do, they need to be mistaken about something. We're in the last part of Act One now, which is often referred to as the Debate.
What is being debated? The hero should be questioning if they're the right person for setting things right. Again, I'll pull back to Star Wars a little, and Luke Skywalker just watched Leia ask for help and the mentor figure just handed him his father's lightsaber (!!!) and invited him to come and help.
What does Luke say?
Nope.
He has to help his aunt and uncle with their farm.
He doesn't see himself as a hero. He's a farm boy and not ready to enter into the world of space battles and the Force and just wants to get to the local station to see his friends and pick up some power converters.
It would be pretty boring if he let Obi-Wan go off on own to rescue Leia, and the story needs to ratchet up and become more interesting. So, while the hero needs to be reluctant and resist the call to be more, we as the storytellers need to start turning up the heat a little.
Or a lot.
During the debate section, which is usually about 10% to 25% of the book, the thing that happened in the Inciting Incident that turned everything on its head needs to start impacting more and more things until our hero almost has to be forced out of their normal world and start going into the world of Act Two (which the first half of Act Two is probably some of the most fun of the story, and is often referred to as Fun and Games).
Basically, we need to take away things from our character that might have been the reason they didn't want to go out on an adventure in the first place.
For Luke, it meant losing his farm and his aunt and uncle.
There was nothing left there for him, and now the call to save Leia and fight the Empire was motivated by seeing what the Empire is willing to do and why they need to be stopped.
Not every story is going to be as epic on a grand scale or even have battles. None of my middle-grade stories have awful things happening to that level, but sometimes there is just the call to adventure that they need to figure out if they are equipped to handle it...and sometimes I have to give them a big oopsie nudge and bump them into a place where they can't go back.
Mild spoilers for The Invisible House:
After she discovers there's a lot in her neighborhood with a mailbox and no house there (which is what started all of Fictionsmith Family off in the first place in real life), she starts investigating.
She's curious. She's not been invited into a big mystery (yet), but she starts discovering more and more clues and it draws her in to want to solve the mystery of something that feels off in her neighborhood.
She starts discovering messages left for her, and she has to debate if it's okay to respond to them and try to figure out what she is getting herself into.
And then when she decides she wants to fully investigate, she winds up getting stuck in the past through time travel, which is the big jump into Act Two where the world is so different from where we started in Act One that we get to come up with an entirely new set of locations and characters in what we'll call the B-story.
Sometimes the debate section is merely the opportunity for the call to adventure to become more and more appealing with everything that happens.
While it's okay for us to force the protagonist into Act Two, what we really want to see are characters who make a choice and have their choices impact the story.
If all that ever happens are things happening to the character, they're not actually active in their own story. It wouldn't really matter who was the main character because everything happened TO them.
The protagonist/hero/main character is going to be so much more interesting to go on a journey with if they're the one making decisions on what happens next.
For now, as we're filling out what happens in Act One, it's okay to just call this the debate section, but we'll want to pencil in some things that happen that will cause the main character to eventually decide to step up and accept the call to grow.
The jump into Act Two.
This is a big, big moment in the story. It's the time when our hero leaves the world of the familiar Act One that we set up in the beginning, and they're heading off into the world of the unknown.
Often they will physically leave their hometown or their city to go on their quest to stop or fix whatever is a threat to them or their loved ones. Or if we're looking at something lower stakes, they could be starting school somewhere new or going to a summer camp.
Whatever it is, things will need to be very different, and in Act One we need to at least clue the reader in that this is the place our hero will need to go to even if they don't feel prepared for it.
Usually this moment happens about 25% into the story, and it's easy to spot in books and movies because often we'll start to meet new characters and visit new places and we won't get back to where we started until the very end of the story and the character will be the one who has changed and grown.
Since we're jumping into Act Two, let me give you a quick overview of it for the next two weeks so you know what is coming up:
We're currently breaking into Act Two from Act One with a big event that means the main character has to make a choice and leave the familiar to make things better or pursue what they want because there is an opportunity.
As soon as we have crossed that threshold, we are into the Fun and Games section where we meet interesting new characters and visit unique locations that make our character realize there is more to their life than what they've been a part of before. In movies, the trailers and previews often pull a lot of their moments from this section because it's so entertaining and we often see the character having a lot of fun.
Then we reach the midpoint of the story. It's usually another big moment where the character crosses a threshold and the fun and games kind of stop. Things get more serious, and there's a wrinkle in the story that means we can't look back anymore. This is a good time to introduce a plot twist or let whatever forces are opposing the main character to get a turn at winning.
The back half of Act Two is the Bad Guys Close In phase, where things start getting more and more difficult for our hero because the opposing side is starting to get more proactive and it's going to be a struggle to keep up with them.
Usually Act Two ends with something bad happening. If a mentor character has been traveling with them, they either leave or die and the main character suddenly starts feeling really alone. This is often the darkest point of the story and sometimes gets referred to as the Dark Night of the Soul.
Act Two in general is where a lot of writers get kind of bogged down. They have a fun idea for a character and a world to build, and maybe even know what the big event is that sends the character off on an adventure... but then half of the story gets filled up with all of the messy middle and it can turn into a slog if you don't have your outline prepared.
This week we'll cover the first half of act two, and next week will be the back half.
So let's figure out the following so you're ready:
What arguments does your main character have to debate not going forward in the story?
How can you take those arguments away with events happening in the story?
What needs to happen to motivate the character to leave their familiar world and take their first steps into a bigger one?
Activity: Noticing Walk
Sometime this weekend I want you to go on a walk or a drive together somewhere that is familiar to you.
I want the two of you to talk about the first time you remember coming to this place and what it felt like when it was new to you, and then how it feels now that you're used to it.
Lastly, I want you both to come up with fun ideas for how what is familiar to you now can be different or wacky or more fun.
Brainstorm for a little bit, and then after this we'll start diving in on the B-story characters and locations that make up the Fun and Games section of the story!
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