I’ve read a lot of craft books. I find them to be useful in my writing pursuits, but lately, this beat from Save the Cat! Writes a Novel has been echoing in my head.

STASIS = DEATH

The stasis = death beat comes early in the novel. It’s the one where we, the readers, look at this life that the character has and realize that something’s gotta give. Staying where they are is no longer an option because if they stay, they lose something. Maybe it’s their life, maybe it’s their home, maybe it’s an artifact upon which the fate of the world rests. Whatever it is, we know that it’s at risk unless the character DOES something.

The funny thing is that the stasis = death moment, though, is that the character doesn’t see it. We see it, the readers. We want to point it out, but the characters are always stubborn and never listen to the readers.

This moment usually happens right before the inciting incident, the one that prompts the character to see what we see and forces them to take action, setting them on a journey of change. By the end of their story, they won’t be making the same mistakes. They won’t be the same person. They will, hopefully, be better.

But sometimes I wonder what would happen if the character didn’t miss that stasis = death moment.  What if they saw what we saw, then changed their ways, then and there? Would the inciting incident have occurred? Could the character find their way to being a better person without the journey?

Of course, then we wouldn’t have literature. We wouldn’t have those stories that guide us and show us how to be better people. How to change with grace, admit when we’re wrong, and get ourselves out of muddy, sticky situations.

What I do know is that we have these stasis = death moments in real life, too. Just like those story beats, we don’t see them when we’re stuck in them — but those who are close to us do. They try to warn us, advise us, guide us toward changing something, anything to avoid the inciting incident and trouble to come.

But we never listen to them. We know better, don’t we? It’s not like we’re some characters in some book, making the same mistakes that others before us have made a hundred thousand times in a hundred thousand iterations. And besides, we can manage. We’re smart, and strong, and capable of more than any of them realize. We can deal.

…until the inciting incident. Once that hits, all hell breaks loose and we find ourselves facing a choice, a journey that has the capacity to change us for better or for worse. We can say we didn’t see it coming, but when we look back at interactions with friends, families — the readers in our own lives — that we realize they saw it the whole time. We were just stubborn, and stuck, the same way our characters are.

There’s a world of change ahead of me. My readers have seen it coming. I knew it was coming, eventually. But I’ve only just made this choice, and the road ahead is muddy and covered with softly rolling fog.

I hate the fog. Can’t see anything, can’t be prepared for anything. But my husband loves it. It’s mysterious and full of possibilities.

So I’ll take a step forward into that fog, unknown monsters be damned. Because stasis = death.