Something happened yesterday, something I hadn't been expecting for a few weeks. The work in progress suddenly changed character. At around the 70k words mark I realised I could map out pretty much the exact line from where I was to the end of the story. Ye gods. The Third Act was upon me. The nature of the beast had changed.
<p style="clear:both;">A little less than a month ago <a href="http://www.davidhewson.com/2009/09/entering-the-twilight-zone/" target="_blank">I wrote here about the Second Act</a>. The floppy middle. That, regulars will recall, begins at the point where your protagonist accepts the problem at the heart of your story and flounders away trying to come up with some way in which he or she can actually fix the blasted thing. The Second Act ends, and the Third naturally begins, when he or she sees a way in which the situation can be resolved. Cue the events that lead to the climax/solution/resolution, whatever you wish to call it.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">For most of a book I work with a loose outline in my head. I have specific staging posts or waypoints in mind. These go into the folder I have in Scrivener called Unplaced Scenes (<a href="http://www.davidhewson.com/2009/09/the-best-scrivener-tip-ever-maybe/" target="_blank">read more about that here</a>). But this isn't outlining in the conventional sense. The scenes that go into this folder are simply ones I feel need to go in the story somewhere along the way. I've dreamed them up but I don't know where they fit. They can help me find some direction if it's needed but they're stopping points along the journey, not a route map from A to B to C. And some fall by the wayside too. Not every idea is a bright idea.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">I always have an endpoint in mind when I start a book (and it always, always changes along the way. I'd be damned worried if it didn't). But the final choreography that gets us there is something that has to emerge from the characters and the storyline as I write the first and second acts.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">What happened today is that I finished a scene and realised that I could map out the sequence of following scenes that would take me to the conclusion. So I simply set them down as scene headings in Scrivener and, where necessary, made a brief synopsis note or general note for each, detailing what was going to happen and to whom. There are twenty two scenes. It took around thirty minutes to get them all down. That sequence will change, I'm sure. But not much. It appears to make sense when I set it against what's gone before and with the conclusion I had in mind for the book from the beginning. I'm happy with it.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">Great. But am I happy all round? Here's the odd thing. I can see the end of the book in sight. I'm pretty sure it will be wrapped up in first draft by December. Maybe even finished, <em>finished</em> not long after. But actually I feel a bit down in the mouth. Why? Shouldn't I be jumping up and down for joy?</p>

<p style="clear:both;">Oddly enough I never am when I reach this stage. The whole nature of the project changes once I set down that final lineup of scenes. Up to that moment I'm an explorer, an adventurer navigating a sea that's dimly charted but full of surprises and twists and scary moments. Once I see land all that disappears because <em>I know what's going to happen. </em>I'm just the captain of the ship, wheel in hand, navigating us into port. Important but I know all the secrets. There is nothing more to be discovered.<em>
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<p style="clear:both;">And there you have, I think, the great peril of the Third Act. This is supposed to be the summation of your story. The climax. The bit that grips the reader most of all and makes them realise the effort they put in to reading your work was actually worthwhile. But in authorial terms it's the most workmanlike, predictable and, if you're not careful, boring bit of all to write. You've got to keep your enthusiasm up otherwise it will all come out a little pat and meh... You have to pretend you're still as much in the dark as the reader, and frankly that's quite hard.</p>
<p style="clear:both;">So the nature of the challenge has changed, as it always does. Back to it.</p>

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