Why Your Novel Needs An "All Is Lost" Moment

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Birch House Press). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.


(This post is part of the Writing A Novel From Beginning to End series. You can find other posts from this series on the Looking For Something Specific? tab.)

This will be my last post until late November since by the end of this week, I'll have a baby. (Yikes!) We'll hit the pause button on talking about first drafts until I return on November 23rd. Between now and then, Jill and I have lots of great guests lined up, so I don't think you'll even notice I'm gone.

If there's one scene you need to set up a satisfying conclusion for your story, it's your main character's "all is lost" moment. This is a scene that goes by many names—the black moment, a whiff of death, the dark night of the soul, and probably many others—but whatever you call it, the feeling you want to evoke is that the character has lost what mattered most and they can't carry on like they were.

Let's look briefly at a few examples of All Is Lost moments. I've purposely picked older or extremely popular stories because sharing the black moment often gives away a lot about the story, and I don't want to ruin anything.

In Frozen, the All Is Lost moment is when Anna discovers Hans's true motives and that what she thought was love really wasn't. He leaves her in the room to freeze to death.

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth comes to realize how good of a man Mr. Darcy actually is and what a mistake it was to turn down his proposal. This realization comes right as her family's name has been destroyed and there's now no hope that a man like him would stoop to marry her.

In the romantic comedy You've Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly loses the bookstore she inherited from her mother, which is what she fought the entire movie to save.

In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, it's when Buckbeak is executed.

Even Charlie Brown Christmas has a black moment—when Charlie's Christmas tree fails and everyone laughs at him.

Why is this scene so vital? If the reader doesn't feel like things have truly gone bad, they won't be as excited when things turn out good for the character at the end. Making things bad for your character needs to be in the context with the genre and target audience. We don't need to feel like Charlie Brown's life is in jeopardy, right? It's sufficient that he fails yet again and is publicly humiliated.

In order for the All Is Lost moment to work well, there are a few elements it needs to have:

A death of some kind.

That's why some people refer to this scene as the "whiff of death." For some stories, a death of a character is a very fitting black moment. Or the threat of death to the main character, like in Frozen.

But the death of something else—a dream, a belief, a relationship, a purpose—can be just as effective. Again, it's dependent on the mood of your story.

Your main character is depleted.

Whatever happens needs to knock your character flat. They can't carry on like this. The road is too hard, too costly. They're giving up—they just can't see any other way.

Maybe it's a loss of physical strength. Like in Frozen, where Anna is locked in a room, freezing to death.

Or in the case of You've Got Mail, Kathleen has spent the entire movie fighting for her bookstore only to lose it. She has nothing to fight for and no clear direction moving forward.

It's bigger than your character.

The All Is Lost moment is most effective when the event is something too big for your character to solve on their own. Someone else needs to reach out and provide the tools to give the character hope. (This is sometimes referred to as "Bringing in the cavalry.")

Sometimes the character knows exactly what they need. Think Charlie Brown crying out, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?" He realizes he's at the end of himself and that he needs someone to step in and help.

This is different than Frozen where Anna is too weak to find help and Olaf finds her instead. Or Pride and Prejudice where, in an odd turn of events, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, accidentally sets the wheels in motion for Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to be together.

If the All Is Lost moment has been done well, you wind up with a character who is strong enough to fight through to the end of the book. They've survived what they thought they couldn't. They've even managed to—with the help of someone else—find enough strength to carry on.

That makes for a very formidable opponent as we head into the final chapters of the story!

If you've written the All Is Lost moment in your book, what is it your character loses, and why did you choose that? If you haven't, what's something your character thinks they could never survive losing? How can you convince them they've lost it?