Behind the Black Moment

As a writer starts to learn her craft, she’ll start hearing certain catch phrases – the inciting incident, the point of no return, the black moment.  Those are the beats, the story moments we have learned are commonly part of satisfying plot arcs. Something will to happen to disrupt our character’s life, they will have to make a choice they can’t turn back from, and then toward the end there will to be a moment when all seems to be lost, when it looks like they won’t succeed and the happy end...