I put up a brief notice on Twitter and Facebook recently which said, simply, 'David Hewson has entered the twilight zone of the second act and will not be glimpsed much until he emerges on t'other side.'

This naturally prompted a couple of people to ask, 'What?'

Well, on a very basic level what it means is something very simple: I'm a bit too engrossed in writing to spend/waste my time on Twitter and Facebook for one thing. But more importantly the book I'm working has entered the fictional equivalent of the Bay of Biscay or Bermuda Triangle (choose your own nautical metaphor). Dangerous, stormy waters that are both the most fun and the most frustrating phase of any book. Let me endeavour to explain...

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<p style="clear:both;">Like many writers, consciously or unconsciously, I subscribe to the three-act theory of storytelling. You can read long and endless and occasionally very wordy tomes on this subject elsewhere. What it means to me is something really quite simple. Stories tend to break into three separate phases. In a tiny nutshell..</p>
<p style="clear:both;"><strong>The first act</strong></p>
<p style="clear:both;">In this your protagonists and antagonists are introduced. Your protagonist is faced with a problem. The end of the first act is the moment at which he or she realises the problem is theirs and they will deal with it since they have no alternative -- that's what the book is about.</p>
<p style="clear:both;"><strong>The second act</strong></p>
<p style="clear:both;">In this your protagonist wrestles with the problem. What exactly is it? How can he or she tackle it? If this is a love story the problem may be... I love you, you don't love me, how can I change that? If it's a crime story, the problem will be a crime. In the area where I work the problem is usually a little more subtle than simply whodunit. It's why it was done. And what exactly was <em>it</em> anyway? The end of the second act is signalled by the moment at which your protagonist thinks he can see a solution to the problem you've set him.</p>
<p style="clear:both;"><strong>The third act</strong></p>
<p style="clear:both;">This is simple. It's the path from seeing the solution to putting it into the place. Catching the bad guy. Winning the girl. Solving the conundrum, although mostly in adult fiction the ending will involve some kind of resolution rather than a simple solution that ticks off every box in perfect order.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">Each of these steps of a work of fiction has its own challenges. I spend a lot of time on the first act principally trying to make sure I have two things right. One is the problem itself. It's at the core of the book and needs to be fitting and interesting. The other is the cast. In a series book you know your protagonists well. But you will need to make sure the antagonist -- the guest star if you like -- is equally intriguing too.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">The third act usually writes itself. That was a joke by the way. <em>Of course it doesn't write itself. </em>But it is often the easiest part of the book because you know what's happening and you can feel yourself riding down the hill to the inevitable climax.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">But the second act. The bloody second act...</p>
<p style="clear:both;">Let me try to explain this by reference to Shakespeare. <em>Hamlet</em> to be precise. In story terms (and please note I am <em>not </em>referring to dramatic acts here) <em>Hamlet</em> breaks down this way.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">The first act ends when Hamlet sees his father's ghost, realises his old dad was murdered by his own stepfather, and accepts he must do something about this terrible crime.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">The second act involves Hamlet trying to work out what that something is. Go mad? Commit suicide? Wander round being a perennial pain in the arse to anyone willing to listen? You see the problem. The second act is discursive, fickle, uncertain. It's about people wandering, searching for a solution. It needs dead ends, but not too many. It demands, in some books, red herrings and other such stuff. It's got the potential to turn into a flabby middle of unresolved doubts, cul-de-sacs and wimpish philosophising about the meaning of 'it all'.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">For Hamlet the second act ends when he sees a bunch of actors turn up at Elsinore and he utters those wonderful lines, 'The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.' He knows he can set up the players to expose his uncle Claudius. Cue mayhem, bloodshed and a tragic resolution. I bet Shakespeare didn't take long writing that last bit, and had a ball too.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">But second acts are difficult. They're where great books turn into less great ones, a dangerous place to venture, though venture there we must.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">Anywhere, that's where I am now, forty five thousand words into this story, wrestling with all those second act issues. And that's why you won't hear much of me on Twitter and Facebook for a while, not until I surface on the other side clutching the idea that takes this tale to its conclusion.</p>