Good morning, and welcome to Day 4. We’re four days in, so we’re almost there.
You’ve been doing such a great job with your scenes! I’m still getting loads every day, which tells me how many of you are showing up and writing.
If you’re behind, send today’s anyway. Even if I missed the earlier days, I can still give you feedback on this one, and it might be the nudge you need.
Where we are: Day 1 was your Destabilising Moment. Day 2, Crossing the Threshold. Day 3 took your Hero up to their Midpoint high, the moment they thought they’d won.
Today we bring them crashing down. This is the Collision.
What the Collision is
Some people call this the dark night of the soul. I call it the Collision, because that’s what happens. Everything comes crashing down and crashing together at once.
Your subplots converge, your Hero can’t hold anything up, and it all lands right before the everything-is-awful sequence.
Structurally it usually falls in the fourth trial. It’s the last big test, and the one where your Hero fails completely.
They fail because they haven’t transformed yet. They’re still running on what they want instead of what they need, still clinging to the flaw that carried them this far.
Here’s the turn: That flaw worked at the Midpoint. It got them to the top…but this is where it stops working.
The belief breaks. The villain (a person, a fear, a system, or a part of them) is at full strength and almost wins. And something your Hero loves has to die.
This is the hinge your whole book swings on, so your reader has to feel there’s no way out.
Name what dies
The most important thing today is this: name what dies.
All week your Hero has run on one misbelief. Here it fails, completely and publicly, and something physical dies with it. An ally, a mentor, a home, a precious object, a version of themselves.
That outer death is the symbol of the inner one. The belief, the identity, the old self, all of it dying at once.
So before you write, know the belief that’s dying, and choose what dies with it.
How other stories do it
Watch how every thread lands at the same time:
Barbie: she brings her high back to Barbie Land, but it’s gone. The Kens have taken over, everything she built is lost, and she collapses believing she isn’t good enough.
Toy Story: Woody is stranded at the petrol station, watching the truck carry Andy away without him.
The Matrix: Morpheus is captured, Neo is told he was never the One, and everything they fought for looks lost.
One note on The Matrix: Morpheus is the mentor, and this is often where the mentor dies, because the student no longer needs the teacher. If you have a guide, this may be where they go.
Notice each one ends on a devastating image, not an explanation. One to two pages, ending on the worst moment.
How to write your Collision scene
1. Line up your threads. Bring every subplot and planted seed together so they collide at once. (Think of Princess Mia at the ball: her best friend, her love interest, and her grandmother all fall away in one night.) Your tension devices detonate here too.
2. Let your Hero act from want one last time. The final time they face a trial from their flaw instead of their need.
3. Make them fail completely. No cushion. The villain is at full height and your Hero is flattened.
4. Kill the belief. Whatever they were sure still worked, it doesn’t. This is a death scene, so we can resurrect them later.
5. Take them all the way down. End on the devastating image or line: the truck pulling away, “I’m not good enough,” “you’re not the One.”
A few things to avoid
Don’t soften the fall. Let them fail devastatingly, or we won’t believe there’s no way back.
Don’t fix it here. It’s tempting, because you love them. Resist it. We fix things later.
Don’t miss the belief. If the crash doesn’t break what they’ve clung to all book, it just reads as a bad day.
Don’t explain the despair. Show the car driving away. Don’t tell us it’s devastating.
Your homework
Write your Collision scene.!
Keep it messy. Truly. Put that sticky, gross clay on the wheel so we can shape it later.
I’d far rather read something you’re not proud of than nothing at all. I do this for a living, and I just want you writing.
To submit:
• Write in a Google Doc and open the permissions (a few people have missed feedback because I couldn’t get in).
• Hit the button below, fill in the form, and paste your link. In by midnight.
• Comment on this post to tell me you’ve submitted.
• Close your doc and don’t peek until I like your comment. That like means your feedback is ready.
In by midnight, feedback back by 8am. I’m up early with my coffee all week.
Before I go
Tomorrow is Day 5: the Ordeal. The big boss. The final battle.
And there’s a little bonus on Day 6 over the weekend. I won’t spoil it.
I’ll be in the comments all evening, right up until I go to bed, so ask away tonight.
Can’t wait to see your Collision scenes.
See you in the comments,
Xx Shelly
