Read Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure for Free Online Page A

hidden at all costs. Now there is no way out until one or the other dies. There can be no return to normalcy. Grisham’s
The Firm
is an example.
    Professional duty can be the doorway. A lawyer taking a case has the duty to see it through. So does a cop with an assignment. Similarly,
moral
duty works for transition. A son lost to a kidnapper obviously leads to a parent’s moral duty to find him.
    The key question to ask yourself is this: Can my Lead walk away from the plot right now and go on as he has before? If the answer is yes, you haven’t gone through the first doorway yet.
    Book I of
The Godfather
ends with that transition. Michael shoots the Don’s enemy, Sollozzo, and the crooked cop, McCluskey. Now Michael can never go straight again. He’s in the conflict up to his eyeballs. He cannot walk away from his choices.
    For Nicholas Darrow, the charismatic minister in Susan Howatch’s
The Wonder Worker
, the inner stakes are raised when he receives a shock to his upwardly spiraling ministry — his wife and the mother of his two sons leaves him. It’s a blow that sends him reeling and forces him to confront his own humanity. He definitely cannot walk away.
    The First Doorway
    Lead’s normal world, a place of safety and rest, is on one side of the doorway. Problems may happen here, but they don’t threaten great change. Lead is content to stay here. Something has to happen to push him through the door.
    On the other side of the door is the outside world, the great unknown, the dark forest. A place where the Lead is going to have to dig deep inside and show courage, learn new things, make new allies, etc.
    It’s crucial to understand the difference between an initial disturbance (sometimes called an “inciting incident”) and the first doorway of no return (sometimes called a “plot point” or “crossing the threshold” in mythic terms).
    In the movie
Die Hard
, for example, New York cop John McClane has come to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his estranged wife, Holly, and their children. He meets up with her at high rise building where she works for a large company. While McClane is washing up in a bathroom, a team of terrorists takes over the building and all the people there. Except McClane, of course. He escapes to an upper floor.
    We are now about twenty minutes into the film. This is definitely a disturbance. But it is not yet the transition into Act II.
    Why not? Because McClane and the terrorists are not locked in battle yet. They don’t know McClane is in the building. He might open a window, climb out, and scurry away for help. Or figure out a way to get a phone call out. While McClane is trying to figure out just what to do, he secretly witnesses the murder of the CEO of the big company.
    So McClane gets to an upper floor again and pulls a fire alarm. This is the incident that sets up the conflict of Act II. Now the terrorists know someone is loose in the building. There is no way for McClane to resign from the action. He’s through the first doorway, and there’s going to be plenty of confrontation to come. This all happens at the one-quarter mark.
Through Door Number 2
    To move from the middle to the end — the second doorway of no return — something has to happen that sets up the final confrontation. Usually it is some major clue or piece of information, or a huge setback or crisis, that hurtles the action toward a conclusion — usually with one quarter or less of the novel to go.
    In
The Godfather
, the Don’s death is a setback to peace among the mafia families. It emboldens the enemies of the Corleone family, forcing Michael to unleash a torrent of death to establish his power once and for all.
    These doorways work equally well in literary fiction. Leif Enger’s
Peace Like a River
has two perfectly placed transitions. The first occurs when Reuben’s older brother, Davy, shoots and kills two people and