From the course: Write a Bestselling Novel in 15 Steps

Dark night of the soul: Examples

From the course: Write a Bestselling Novel in 15 Steps

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Dark night of the soul: Examples

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- [Instructor] Let's take a look at some examples to see how these Dark Nights of the Soul have pushed their heroes into the final act of the story. In Legally Blonde, after Elle's professor hits on her, first she wallows in an elevator because it's the wallowing beat. Then she quits law school. She packs up her Porsche, says goodbye to her twin B-story characters, and gets ready to return to the familiar, her status-quo world of Beverly Hills. As she says to Paulette when she's leaving, "No one's ever going to take me seriously. "Turns out I am a joke." In The Hunger Games, both the book and the movie, Katniss reacts to Rue's death by burying her in flowers. It's her first big act of rebellion as no one has ever done this kind of thing during a games before. She even pays tribute to Rue's district by raising three fingers into the air in a sign of solidarity with Rue's people. In Me Before You, after Louisa realizes that despite her best efforts to save him, Will still plans to take his own life. That's when Louisa quits her job, moves back in with her family, and wallows in her room for days. Even Jane Eyre spends a decent amount of pages wallowing in the English moors after she finds out Mr. Rochester is married to someone else. In fact, she nearly dies out there in her Dark Night of the Soul. And in Confessions of a Shopaholic, after Becky has lost her credit and all her accounts have been frozen, she returns to the familiar by going home to her parents. And it's there that she gets her Dark Night Epiphany, while talking to some of her parents friends and realizing that the evil financial institution, Flagstaff Life, has been scamming innocent people. When that final puzzle piece falls into place for Becky, it pushes her out of her Dark Night of the Soul, and into her act three where she will finally prove her worth as a financial journalist and fix things the right way.

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