Why We Need A Third Act Breakup

This craft rant is brought to you by talk floating around the internet about the need for a third act breakup in a genre romance, and how we shouldn’t have to have one.

No, you don’t have to have one, not if you don’t want one. Some readers don’t like reading about it, some authors don’t like writing about it, and that’s fair enough. I’m not going to tell anyone what they should read or write.

BUT my opinion is that a romance without a third-act breakup is a cop-out, and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of craft on the author’s part.

A third-act breakup AKA black moment isn’t there purely because it’s a convention of the genre. It’s not there to torture readers or to torture your characters, or to provide a moment’s uncertainty in a genre where everyone knows it’s going to end happily anyway.

It has a purpose and a reason for being there.

Most genre fiction has a narrative structure and part of this structure is the ‘all is lost/dark/black’ moment. The moment where the protagonist loses everything they have worked for, their lives are under threat, or they’re failing to achieve the goal they set at the beginning of the story.

This isn’t limited to books. There are ‘all is lost’ moments in TV, movies, and games too — anything that has some kind of narrative structure.

In a romance, we know they’ll survive. In romance we have the reassurance of the happy ending, so that is never in doubt. And maybe this is why authors/readers don’t want to write a third-act breakup. They don’t want the happiness of the book to be disrupted, even though they know it’ll end happily. Again, fair enough. Sometimes all you want is happy.

The problem is, the black moment isn’t there purely for angst and drama. It’s also there to challenge the protagonists, to test what they’ve learned about themselves during the course of the story, because that’s what a happy ending is all about. It’s about the protagonists overcoming the challenges they face and achieving everything they fought for. And if you never challenge your characters, then they’ll never grow. They’ll never discover their true potential or see what they’re truly made of. You’ll never get a happy ending that truly means something emotionally.

Character growth is all part of the character arc — which is a whole thing in itself and really another post — and the black moment is needed to complete the character arc. It’s a metaphor for the challenges that life can and will throw at the characters, and we need that metaphor because a happy ending isn’t static. It’s dynamic. We know the protagonists in a romance will continue to grow and change because that’s what a journey through life is about. There will be loss and grief and unhappiness, not just sunshine and roses

So what’s the function of the black moment and why is it important for the happy ending?

The function of the black moment is to give the characters an opportunity for personal growth. Where a pattern of behaviour they’ve got into and successfully used in their lives beforehand doesn’t work anymore. Where they have to choose wrongly in order to make the right choice afterwards.

It’s the moment of challenge, of testing, that they need in order to grow. So the reader is shown that no matter what other challenges life throws at the protagonists going forward, they’ll get through it together and with their love intact.

It’s the moment when they’re slapped over the face by their life choices and realise that if they want to have the love of their lives, they’ll have to change a behaviour or way of thinking that might have protected them in the past, but is now keeping them from what they truly want.

A black moment ISN’T about the protagonists changing themselves to suit another person, or becoming someone they’re not. It’s about them dropping the masks or armour they wear to protect themselves from hurt, and accepting who they truly are down deep.

However, a black moment only becomes a moment of growth and change if the writer has put the work into the character. You need to have backstory and conflict, goal and motivation, if you want the black moment to work as the challenge it should be.

Writing a black moment is really, really difficult, no joke. It shouldn’t be about misunderstandings or evil exes returning. Those might be the catalysts, but at heart, the black moment is about the characters’ inner lives and how they’re shaken to their foundations, and if you don’t have all the character building blocks in place to do that, then it’s hard.

I think it’s so hard that some authors just don’t bother with them, because they don’t know enough about craft to write one well enough.

That’s fine. But if you want readers to be invested in a couple’s happy ending, you need to show the moment they are both tested. You need to show them getting angry with each other, perhaps hurting each other emotionally, and then still choosing each other in the end, because that’s how a happy-ever-after relationship works.

If I don’t see the characters getting angry and sad, yet managing to work through their difficult emotions with each other and still choosing their love for one another in the end, how will I know they’ll stay together forever? How will they get through the challenges of life? When it gets tough, will they give up? If they never experience each other’s difficult emotions then how are they ever going to have a life together?

I get the urge to only want the happy — who doesn’t? But if we want happiness, we also have to acknowledge sadness and anger, and all those tough emotions we don’t like and yet everyone has.

And so do our characters.

The best, most emotionally fulfilling happy endings are the ones that are hard fought for. The ones that test the characters, prove their mettle and make them born for each other.

But to have that, you need a third-act breakup. It’s not easy, but it makes the story so much better.

Fight me. :-)