Part Two: Sequences 5 through 8
Part One: Sequences 1 through 4
Sequence 5: Reaction to the Midpoint & Raising the Stakes
In Plot Basics I give twelve potential functions for Sequence 5. Many of these relate to a ‘reluctant hero’ and/or a flawed hero, so they don’t apply in the way I wrote about them in that book.
In some stories, the failure of the hero’s first attempt to achieve the goal in Sequence 4 and the discovery made at the midpoint can cause a significant rift in a relationship – either harming the developing friendship between two ‘buddies’ or the developing romance between protagonist and co-protagonist.
In many stories, Sequence 5 is a quieter, character-based moment. A sequence where relationships are explored, especially if there is a romantic subplot. It can also be a significant sequence in a character’s development arc because it shows how far a character has come but also how far they still have to go. In a thriller or action-adventure story, I’ve noticed that these functions can sometimes be shifted into Sequence 6.
In many stories, Sequence 5 (or 6) is where the protagonist and co-protagonist (usually the ‘love interest’ or ‘buddy’) share a quiet moment and tell stories about their past experiences – particularly the situations which were responsible for their psychic or emotional ‘wounding.’
In The Vampire’s Skull, I pretty much avoid all the personal and relationship stuff and concentrate on action and fear. Though I do include some of the relationship stuff between Frankie and Roca in Sequence 6.
1. Emotional Reaction to the Midpoint
As I mentioned above, a thriller hero often discovers the villain’s plans at the midpoint. This is a moment when the hero really discovers what they’re up against. The scale of the challenge may be such that the hero feels overwhelmed and completely out of their depth, especially if they are an ‘amateur’ hero. With a ‘professional’ hero like a private detective, this is less of an issue, they they might still experience some of the same emotions.
In The Vampire’s Skull, I avoid any opportunity for introspection and have the three main characters go racing off to protect Theo’s mother because they’re afraid the villain will target her and use her to force Theo to give up the skull/MacGuffin.
2. Reluctance to Go On
Again, this applies to the amateur hero who was probably reluctant to accept the challenge at the beginning of the story. This doesn’t apply to Frankie Rowan.
3. Decision & New Commitment
An amateur hero would need to make a decision to continue with the quest and demonstrate a new commitment to it. Frankie and her friends just carry on regardless.
4. Hero Tries to Prove Him/Herself
This applies to the ‘flawed hero’ story where the protagonist has some weakness to overcome. Having experienced doubt after the midpoint discovery, they may feel a need to prove themselves and that they have achieved some degree of personal growth, demonstrating that they have moved some way along their character development arc.
It may not just be the hero who suffers a crisis of confidence at the midpoint. The hero’s allies may feel that they, as a group, are not up to the task. Or they may express doubt about the hero and his/her ability to continue to lead them.
5. Hero Redeems Him/Herself
Following on from the above, the hero may undertake some action that proves they are up to the job of completing the quest and/or leading the group. This act in some way makes up for the hero’s earlier failings or weakness. Again, this doesn’t really apply to The Vampire’s Skull – Frankie doesn’t need to prove herself to Roca and Theo.
7. Active Hero
In thrillers, the hero is often reactive during the first part of the story, responding to whatever the villain and his henchmen are doing. This is particularly true of heroes who are fugitives on the run. The decision that the hero takes at the midpoint is to stop being reactive and to become proactive. Instead of letting the villain dictate the agenda, they will take the fight to the villain.
In the case of Frankie Rowan, she stops trying to avoid the threat the bad guys present and turns to face them head-on.
8. Planning the Second Attempt
Having rededicated themselves to the quest, the hero now needs to come up with a new plan. They will make a second attempt to reach their goal, using all that they have learned and experienced since the first attempt failed.
Frankie Rowan’s second attempt in The Vampire’s Skull will be to arrange peace talks between the two vampire clans so she can persuade them to join forces and prevent the crazy plan of Maxim Jarratt and the Brotherhood.
9. Pinch Point II – ‘Page 75’
This is linked to Pinch Point I (‘Page 45’) in Sequence 3. Typically, something set up in the third sequence pays off here. Or there is some strong thematic link or character growth element – a kind of ‘before and after’ – between these two points.
I didn’t really use this in The Vampire’s Skull, except to have the significance of the ‘Corpus’ set-up and payoff. And my payoff is a bit of an anticlimax – the Corpus is a fake.
10. Hero Wants a Second Chance
If the failure of the first attempt and the midpoint discoveries caused a rift in the relationship between protagonist and co-protagonist – or a rift between the protagonist and their ‘Scooby Gang’ – the hero will want a second chance to complete the quest and achieve the goal. And they will want to try and repair the relationship with their friend(s) or lover. The protagonist needs to get them to give him/her a second chance.
I don’t really use this function in The Vampire’s Skull.
11. Bonding and Increased Intimacy
After the first failure and midpoint findings or revelations, and after the hero does something to redeem her or himself, the bonds between the protagonist and co-protagonist (buddy or love interest) or the hero and their team are strengthened. They feel they have learned something about each other and trust each other more.
In The Vampire’s Skull, Frankie and Roca share a significant kiss, but the demands of the action mean that they put off considering any implications of the kiss. Neither of them is comfortable expressing feelings, so there’s a strong element of denial here.
12. Unite Against the Villain
Given their increased level of bonding, the protagonist, co-protagonist and/or the team commit to working together to overcome the threat the villain presents, even though they now know he (or she) presents a bigger threat than previously thought.
There’s not really ever a crisis of confidence in the Scooby Gang in The Vampire’s Skull, but in Chapter 26 (Sequence 7) I have a brief dialogue scene – about the Three Musketeers versus the Three Amigos – where Theo commits to helping Roca and Frankie.
Sequence 6: The Second Attempt: The Crisis
Only four functions are listed here in Plot Basics, you’ll be relieved to hear. For some reason, I gave them Roman numerals in the book. Either I was getting bored by that point or I’d decided ‘The Crisis’ was the main plot point and the following four were sub-points. I’ll pretend the latter was the case.
The main function of Sequence 6 is to set up the story’s main crisis, also referred to as the hero’s darkest hour. In a romance, this is when the hero and heroine separate, and it seems there’s no way they can be reconciled. In a thriller, the crisis occurs when the villain seems to have won.
The four headings below are taken from the Joseph Campbell/Christopher Vogler model of the ‘hero’s journey’ or ‘monomyth.’ They were structured in terms of a mythological hero preparing himself to enter the villain’s lair to face the thing he fears most. In some stories, these stages are taken literally and in some, they’re treated more metaphorically.
In The Vampire’s Skull, I’ve already had my heroes go into a literal underworld, the catacombs under an old abbey, and the ‘dark place’ I have them heading towards in Sequence 6 is a battlefield (a deserted village) and then a return to the catacombs where blood magic will be performed. But they don’t know that all this lies ahead of them. They’re busy trying to arrange peace talks between the two vampire clans in an effort to get them to join forces and stop the real villain, the high priest of the Brotherhood, Maxim Jarratt.
It is pretty common in stories to have a fairly optimistic set-up scene as this then puts the crisis – a disaster – in stark contrast, making it seem even more of a blow to the protagonist.
The crisis can occur at the very end of Sequence 6 or, as is often the case in action-adventure stories, it may occur in Sequence 7.
(i) Preparation for the Ordeal
Frankie and Roca arrange peace talks between the two vampire clans. They arrange to use the House of Sin belonging to Madam Echidna as a neutral meeting place. I couldn’t use Oskar’s bar because that belonged to one of the two vampire clan leaders.
Frankie also asks Lily about blood magic, wanting to know what sort of ritual Jarratt is planning to use to resurrect the vampire sorcerer – and she wants to know how to stop it. They consult a grimoire in a hidden vault.
(ii) Opposition
There is an attack on the House of Sin and the peace talks never occur. This attempt by the heroes to end Jarratt’s criminal/magical conspiracy is a failure.
In other stories, the hero faces opposition as he tries to reach the villain’s lair.
(iii) The ‘Underworld’ or Villain’s Lair
This is equivalent to the moment when James Bond enters the villain’s secret base, planning to destroy it and end the villain’s evil plan for world domination.
In The Vampire’s Skull, I delay this until late in Sequence 7 when Frankie and co. go first to the abandoned village and then back into the catacombs.
(iv) The Supreme Ordeal
In a James Bond movie, this is where the hero is captured by the villain and is about to be tortured to death. In a romance, it is the argument that leads to the couple breaking up. In a flawed hero story, this ordeal is often of a psychological nature – the protagonist comes to a situation that will force them to face the thing they fear most.
Again, in The Vampire’s Skull, I delay this until Sequence 7, so the failure of the peace talks acts as the significant negative plot moment in Sequence 6.
The end of Sequence 6 brings us to the end of Act II, the middle of our story. We are about three-quarters or perhaps a little more than three-quarters of the way through. In thrillers especially, Act III, the last ‘quarter’ (made up of the last two sequences) contain a lot of action, but it tends to occur very quickly, so the last two sequences, especially the eighth, can be a little shorter.
Sequence 7: The Climax
Here we have the action of the crisis and its immediate aftermath. And then what the protagonist does in response. This is usually a third, last-ditch attempt to achieve the goal. In the case of the thriller, a last desperate attempt to end the criminal conspiracy.
One of the reasons we delay some of the significant story points in a thriller is that once the climax is over – the last big battle or James Bond blowing up the villain’s lair, or whatever it is – we haven’t got much more to give our readers. Anything after this point would be an anticlimax, potentially leeching away the drama of the Big Finish. That’s why we keep Sequence 8 fairly short, with just important loose ends being tied up.
In Plot Basics, I list eleven potential functions for this sequence of a story. (Spoiler alert: There are only six listed for Sequence 8).
1. Reacting to the Crisis – A Decision or Dilemma
In The Vampire’s Skull, Sequence 6 ended with the House of Sin being blown up and the failure of the peace talks between the vampire clans. Sequence 7 begins with the aftermath of this, Frankie and Roca facing up to their failure. Not only is it bad that they didn’t succeed in making peace between the clans, but Roca is being blamed for the failure and he finds himself an outcast, no longer regarded as Blood Kin. This is the equivalent of him being exiled by the king or excommunicated by a pope. This leads to Frankie and Theo recommitting themselves to being his allies – they are all he has left.
2. Antagonist Forces a Response from the Hero
While Frankie, Theo and Roca are recovering from their recent defeat, members of the Brotherhood break into Frankie’s apartment, causing our heroes to flee across the rooftops. Roca is shot and falls off a building, taking the skull with him.
3. A Discovery or Revelation
I have a couple of these in The Vampire’s Skull. These are real spoilers, so read on at your peril. Theo reveals where he has stashed the skull. It has (almost) been in plain sight all along. This first revelation occurs before (2) above. Vadim Fredek is revealed to be the real villain, he has been using the Brotherhood to his own ends.
4. Highest Stakes
The bad guys have shot and captured Roca and they now have the skull (our story’s MacGuffin). Now he has the skull, Maxim Jarratt can perform the ritual that will bring the vampire sorcerer back from the dead. Frankie and Theo must try and rescue Theo and stop the ritual.
5. The Reader Learns of an Increased Threat
This refers to one of the techniques you can use to create or increase suspense in a story. I discussed these techniques at some length in Suspense Thriller (2018). What we’re talking about here is dramatic irony, or letting the reader (or viewer) know something that the character in the story doesn’t. The reader then anticipates what will happen when the character finds out. Often in a thriller, you will make the reader aware of a danger that the hero is unknowingly heading towards.
The Vampire’s Skull is told in the first person, so I can’t have the reader know something that Frankie doesn’t. This is one of the downsides of the first-person viewpoint. Sometimes you can create a situation where the reader can work out something that the narrator hasn’t figured out yet, putting the reader in a ‘superior’ position, but this only works in certain circumstances. I’ve used this a few times in my science fiction series, but usually have my hero then show the reader that he’s not as stupid as they thought he was.
6. Thematic Argument – Points of View Restated
You can either have the good guys and the bad guys spout dialogue that confirms their positions on the two sides of the thematic argument, or you can demonstrate it through their actions. I do a bit of both in The Vampire’s Skull. I have Vadim Fredek give a bit of a villain’s speech. I also have Theo and Frankie making a last-ditch attempt to get the two vampire clans into peace talks. This covers the good versus bad, selfish versus selfless theme. Later, as Maxim Jarrett’s blood magic ritual begins, I show how he as a human is much more cruel than any of the vampires in the story. Except maybe for Vadim Fredek.
7. The Final Battle
The Vampire’s Skull has a gun battle between the two vampire clans. I tried to make this as much like the shootout in a Western as I could, but having it set in an English village in the north(ish) of England. If you’re British and of a certain age, you might guess that I may have gotten this idea from The Bunfight at the OK Tearooms episode (5.12) of The Goodies.
This final battle is only part of a larger criminal/magical conspiracy in which the blood and life energy of the wounded vampires are syphoned away to power the ritual being used by Maxim Jarratt to resurrect the vampire sorcerer.
8. The Battle Begins Badly for the Hero
Again, in The Vampire’s Skull, I use the technique I used in Sequence 6. I have Theo and Frankie trying to set up peace talks between the vampire clans. If the two clans unite, Jarratt’s ritual for resurrecting the vampire sorcerer can be stopped. It looks like they might succeed, until [spoiler alert] Vadim Fredek sabotages their efforts and triggers the gunfight the sequence has been building up to. To make things even worse, while the battle rages, I have Fredek capture Frankie and Theo and march them off to the villain’s lair, the catacombs under the abbey where the ritual is taking place.
9. The Hero Learns of the Increased Threat
This ‘pays off’ the set-up in (5) above. I didn’t use it in The Vampire’s Skull, except in that Frankie and the reader learn at the same time that Vadim Fredek is the real villain and that the ritual has begun.
10. Hero Discovers a Way to Fight Back
In The Vampire’s Skull, I delay this until Sequence 8. Frankie and Theo, trapped in the catacombs, use a combination of their abilities to delay and then stop the ritual and save Roca from being sacrificed as part of the ritual. I also have a final confrontation between Theo and Fredek which lays to rest the conflict between them – the thing that made Theo hire Frankie in the first place.
11. Outcome of the Battle
Again, I have this occur in Sequence 8, delaying it as long as I can because I want my story to end as soon as possible after this battle is complete.
In Plot Basics I write in more detail about types of endings – positive, negative and two types of ironic. I also discuss ways to build your climax. And I have a section on what not to do when coming up with the ending of your story.
Sequence 8: Resolution and Denouement
I list only six possible functions for this sequence.
As mentioned above, I carry a lot of the action that normally appears in sequences six and seven into Sequence 8, because I want to have the climax of my story occur as late as possible. It is here that the ritual reaches its climax, draining energy from Roca and taking him to the brink of death. And it is here that Frankie has to find a way to save him. My two villainous characters, Vadim Fredek and Maxim Jarratt each receive a sort of poetic justice without my characters having to do anything morally questionable.
1. Reaction to the Climactic Events
When it is all finally over, how do the protagonist and their team react? Laughter? Tears of joy? Do they collapse, exhausted? Is there a celebration?
In The Vampire’s Skull, I keep Frankie’s reactions relatively low-key. There has been death and destruction, so a big party isn’t appropriate. There is an acknowledgment that something even more terrible has been avoided. I also hint that the implications of Frankie’s actions, particularly in relation to her saving Roca’s life, are not yet clear. The reason for this is that I’m not sure what those implications are – that’s something I would want to explore in a future story.
2. Resolution
The ending of your story must clearly answer the ‘major dramatic question’ you asked at the beginning. Or the question that was reworded or completely replaced the original question at the midpoint. Did the protagonist achieve their goal? Have you demonstrated this – shown it – in a way that the reader can clearly see? In genre fiction, readers do not like vague, unsatisfying endings.
Your ending doesn’t have to be a happy one. Your protagonist can fail – fully or partially. This is more likely in a series than a one-off novel. But if you do leave major events unresolved, there does need to be some clear resolution to current events. The villains must be defeated for now, if not for all time. There must be an ending.
Cliffhanger endings are risky, and this is a discussion for another time. Readers often say they don’t like them. What they really don’t like is having to wait a year or more to see a cliffhanger ending resolved.
3. Validation and Closure
What this refers to is someone other than the protagonist and her team validating their success. There is an element here of showing that the protagonist’s success isn’t something personal and selfish, it is something that is of benefit to others. Almost everyone likes the feeling of being told ‘you have done well’ or ‘you have succeeded.’ It’s one of the reasons why we give out awards and medals.
I grouped this with closure because if someone else tells you that you’ve succeeded in completing a task or quest, this is more concrete proof than if you decide for yourself. If someone else tells you it’s over, there’s less risk of you deluding yourself.
The fact that the two vampire clan leaders accept the truce Frankie negotiates between them is proof that she has succeeded and that she is doing something for someone other than herself.
4. New Equilibrium
The actions of the villain – the criminal/magical conspiracy – upset the balance of the protagonist’s ordinary world and were the inciting incident for the story. In the last sequence of the story, you will probably want to give the reader some idea of what the protagonist’s world looks like now the conspiracy has been resolved.
In a one-off novel, you may want to show the equivalent of ‘they lived happily ever after.’ If you’re planning a series, you might want to hint that the protagonist’s new equilibrium will be upset again before too long, so you only give them a ‘happy for now.’
5. Denouement
‘Denouement’ is French and means ‘unravelling,’ the idea being that you unravel any loose ends and make sure everything is explained as far as it needs to be to give a satisfying ending. We often think of endings as being where loose ends are tied up. Mark Twain referred to it as marryin’ and buryin’ – and you sometimes see it in movies as a final montage where the fates of various characters are revealed.
If you’re writing a series, you may want to tie off loose ends that you know won’t feature in any future story. But you’ll also deliberately leave some questions open in the reader’s mind so they’re expecting – and hopefully eagerly anticipating – future stories.
6. Final Image or Paragraph
This is an idea I learned from screenwriting texts. What is the last image the viewer sees on screen? It should in some way symbolise an idea you want the viewer to take away with them. Is it something that shows a new equilibrium has been achieved and that the world is safe again – at least for now? Is it the heroine and hero at their wedding, the beginning of their ‘happily ever after’? Or is it something less reassuring? If a story is part of a series, the last image may imply that we’ve only come to the end of a chapter in a much longer tale and there is more to come. Horror movie franchises often do this by showing – or implying – that the villain is not as dead as everyone thought.
In a novel, you can write something that shows or implies that there are still loose ends that leave the way open for future stories.
I leave a few loose ends in The Vampire’s Curse. Roca has been exiled by the Blood Kin – has he redeemed himself enough to be welcomed back? Is Theo embarking on a new romantic relationship? Will Frankie and Roca become a couple? And a couple more that I won’t mention because they’re ones I may want to explore in the next novel in the series. The last image I plant in the reader’s mind is of Frankie and Roca continuing to work as partners in her detective business, and I have her say that she’ll let the reader know how that turns out.
I should probably note here that while I have deliberately written and published books in a number of genres, with urban fantasy being the latest, this is not a good idea for an author today. If you are a new author, you are likely to achieve more success if you stay with one particular genre. I’ve seen it suggested that five books in a genre are required to establish you as a genre author and ideally those books should all be in the same series. I think online bookstores and the readers who use them like to know where you belong genre-wise.
Even if you’re an established author, ‘genre-hopping’ can hurt you, and I would advise sticking to two genres and no more.
This advice is based on discussion among authors and gut feelings, so your mileage may vary. But I didn’t want to give the idea that my flitting from genre to genre was good for book sales – it isn’t.
It’s also worth pointing out that most successful fiction authors, self-published or traditionally published, are making their money from twenty novels or more. And most of them stick to one or two genres. So, series are good, genre-hopping is bad.
If you’re still reading at this point, thanks for sticking with me. I hope you gained something useful from my self-absorbed ramblings.
PAUL TOMLINSON 