In a new blog post, Janice Hardy examines the dark night of the soul, the moment when your character hits rock bottom and is forced to choose between change and failure. “It’s the slow journey from ‘flawed soul’ to ‘fulfilled person,'” she says. “And the Dark Night of the Soul is the moment that grabs them by the shoulders and shoves them over the edge.”
At this point – usually around the end of Act 2 – your hero is at their lowest emotional point. Failure is not only an option, but imminent. In many cases, your hero has lost his way and isn’t sure how to climb back. The dark moment often follows a death of some kind, literal, metaphorical, or thematic. If you plan for your novel to end on a high point, this is when your protagonist starts to turn it around. The liar starts telling the truth. The commitment-phobe starts yearning for connection. “Whatever flaw was holding them back, they find the strength to accept it, overcome it, and carry on,” Hardy explains.
There’s no single way to create this moment, but most have a few things in common.
- This is the darkest moment of your book. Your book has its own unique tone, so dark is relevant. Your dark night doesn’t have to be dark compared to something like The Godfather, but it should be a low moment compared to the rest of your novel. Even a comedy can have a somber or reflective moment that feels dark in comparison.
- Your character is ready to abandon hope. “Put them in a hopeless situation, usually by their own making, and let them think about what they’ve done,” Hardy says. “They’ve been beaten and they know it.” Rub their noses in their flaws and mistakes. Force them to look in the mirror.
- Force them to own it. When your hero faces their breaking point, force them to reevaluate everything they believe, including the challenges facing them in the moment. “This is a moment for reflection and self-awareness, and they can’t move forward until they fully understand—and accept—the consequences of their actions,” Hardy writes. “They have to acknowledge who they were in order to become who they truly are.”
- Show them they can’t go back. Literally strip away their path back to their old self. “There’s no going back anymore, and the only way out of the misery is to go forward,” Hardy says. “This is where the ‘whiff of death’ comes in—the death of the old self, rebirth of the new self.”
- Make them accept reality. You might allow your hero one last opportunity to refuse the change, but your other job is to force them to accept it. “Even their best argument fails to get then out of whatever hole they’ve dug for themselves,” Hardy notes. This scene leverages your theme to push your character towards change and victory.
- Show them the big choice. “The protagonist faces the biggest and most important choice of the novel—do they accept the lie or the truth?” Hardy writes. “The protagonist takes the most important emotional step of the novel and embraces their change, allowing them to grow and be who they need to be.”
