Regardless of their opinions on a variety of subjects, nearly every person in my life sees us as living in dark times. One of my mentors, Sarah Aronson, shared that she has been inundated lately with writers asking how we are supposed to write in the midst of all this darkness.
I realized today that we don’t write in spite of the darkness. We write because of the darkness.
There is something called the three act story structure. We see it in every culture and every period of history. And it includes a moment, usually at the end of act two, when all hope seems lost.
This is when the hero we were all counting on dies, when the couple you’ve been rooting for breaks up badly. This is the moment when the main character has to make an impossible choice, or the good guys are so badly outnumbered, their defeat is inevitable.
This is the moment when the theater goes silent. When the reader feels like there is an anvil on their chest. When the grandson in The Princess Bride exclaims, “What did you read this to me for?”
We writerly types call this the dark night of the soul.
Why is such a dark moment so universal in story? Because it is so universal in human experience. If we live long enough, we will have moments when defeat is inevitable, when love is lost, when dreams die.
We will have to contend with discouragement and even despair.
Which is why we need story.
Because in that classic story structure, the main character faces a dark night of the soul, just like we do. On occasion, the story’s darkness wins. We call that a tragedy. Or the second installment in a trilogy. But far more often, the main character discovers they are stronger than they realized, or that they are not alone, or that they are willing to make that sacrifice.
They press on through the darkness. And that pressing on gives us some of the absolute best moments in story.
This is when Captain America, standing battered, exhausted and alone against legions, hears, “On your left.” And the portals begin to open.
This is when Westley, who has been mostly dead all day, rises up from near paralysis to say, “Drop. Your. Sword.”
This is when Elle Woods, who has been told from day one that she can not succeed, walks into the courtroom anyway.
This is the moment when we break into act three, where we have the final battle or the new beginning, or life on the other side of the unimaginable.
We come back to story time and time again because story gives us hope that the darkness will not last forever. And that as we press through that darkness, we will discover our own strength, and that we are not alone.
As writers, we can allow this current darkness to consume us and smother our creativity. Or we can lean into what we are feeling and channel those emotions into our characters’ dark night of the soul moments.
The best part of choosing option b is that we then get to write what comes next. Those astoundingly beautiful moments of inner strength, of resilience and comradery, when our main characters refuse to give in to despair, when they fight back against monsters and walk into courtrooms in their signature pink.
We can write what we want to see happen in real life.
We can write the kinds of books that help writers and readers become people full of hope and resilience and a desire to stand together.
Otherwise known as the kind of people who press back against the darkness and win.