This week, I’d like to discuss the importance of the “Black Moment” when writing fiction.

No, it’s not a time when an author fails to come up with new ideas, suddenly aware that the story is a flop and cannot come up with a way to fix it.

The Black Moment is the point at which obstacles stand in the way of the main character ever obtaining the desired goal.

Defeat seems inevitable.

This often takes place at the end of Act Two, but it has been effective as the crisis point slightly before or after that. The importance is that your book have one.

It has to be something that snags the reader’s heart and takes their breath away.

This is not just a simple change of heart or the discovery of a hangnail. 

It is betrayal, the uncovering of a lie, a cancer diagnosis, a revelation that you are not the real father of the darling baby girl with rosebud lips…

And from there, the story goes on a rollercoaster ride of struggles and disappointments until unbelievably the hero wins!

Readers cheer and find it nearly impossible to wait to read the next book in the series.