Act 2 Part 1 - A Brave New World

Yes, that is what this first section of Act 2 consists of...

Your Hero's new world with new rules, new players, and of course, new pain.

This section should take up about 62 pages or so.

And trust me, you are going to need every last one.

Also remember your Hero's 'taking' of the Opportunity is a big deal, usually with some action, so right at the beginning of Act 2, you have a little room to 'breathe.'

A little time to scene set, after all you just dumped your Hero in a completely different world (sometimes literally if we are talking sci fi or fantasy). You need to orient us to this new landscape.

And you have some time to go deeper into your Hero's character because how he responds to this new world provides a ton of very valuable insight.

However, you can't linger or lose narrative drive since you also need to be building towards the Tentpole.

Your villain has to be dogging your Hero. Your Magician, Love Interest and/or SideKick need to be building him up, prodding him to become the Hero he is meant to be.

And of course, your Hero must be declining the mantle of Heroism over and over again, coming up with lamer and lamer excuses, yet revealing his inner wound, more and more.

In this section of Act 2 he can even be in denial that there is a problem at all. He may minimize the Villain's power or influence. He may even try to return to his old life, but the universe simply won't let him.

See? What did I say, those 62 pages are hardly enough to do all of this!

Your assignment:
If you ran long in Act 1, take a look at your character work with your Hero. How much of it can you pull down from Act 1 and move to this section?

Unless the character work was SPECIFIC to his old life, you should be able to easily move it :-)

And again, leave a comment to be in the drawing for a free turn of Act 1 evaluation! :-)