It is the fifth day of my book tour and things are going well so far. Praise God! But I don’t want to stay too long away from the regularly scheduled topic…. So on with the show.
We last dealt with the trouble, or rather, the necessity of the plan. In this post we will deal with the Battle. {Think of a large echoing voice…Darth Vader in a concrete hallway}
Can you imagine Star Wars ending without the epic space battle around the Empire’s dreaded Death Star? It would have been a very flat movie and so will be your manuscript without the necessary conflict.
This final conflict, between the hero and the opponent, where it is determined who will possess ultimate control of the goal: in the case of Star Wars, the control of the known galaxy.
Whether a battle of force or words, it has to be Epic…the ultimate: no one last thing needing to be done. For my older readers, think back to the summer of 1975 and Jaws. Remember Chief Brody barely floating in the wreckage of the Orca? As far as we knew he was the last survivor. The music builds. The shark attacks. Brody fires his rifle and misses. The music gets louder. Brody shoots again just as the shark is about to have him and the rest of the boat for dinner and… and… and…BOOM! The shark explodes. Wow!
Now imagine, after Brody killed Jaws he still lost control of Amityville’s beaches. People were still dying and the waters were still not safe for swimming. Not so good. He fought the shark, the shark lost. End of story. The ultimate battle for who would control the ocean waters off the shore of Amityville settled.
So as you work your way to the climax of your manuscript, think big. Think ultimate. Think BATTLE. Make it a battle worthy of control of whatever universe you’ve created. Oh, and to borrow from another well known space community, “Live long and prosper.”
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