All is Lost: Another Death Knell
O nce we have established what needs to be changed and the protagonist takes action toward that change, the death knells fall silent for a while. Throughout the second quarter of a book, there is almost no chance of death for the protagonist. It is during this time that he is successfully making change toward what he must become. We reach the middle of the book and he has succeeded. Things are going good, but we can’t leave it like this. That would be boring. We’ve got 45,000 more words to write. So, we listen closely and off in the distance we hear them. The death knells have returned. After crossing the mid-point, the antagonist regroups and begins pulling the protagonist back to what he was before. We’ve already established that what he was before will lead to death, so through out the third quarter of the book the death knells grow louder and louder. The protagonist fights it, but he is losing ground. We reach a point where he looks death in the face. He isn’t dead yet, but w...