Introduction
After our hero hits rock bottom in the All Is Lost beat, we’re almost at the end of Act 2. All the hero has to do now is reflect on the situation created in the All Is Lost and have an epiphany that leads them to form a new goal that will carry them through Act 3. These functions are taken care of in the Dark Night of the Soul.
According to the Save the Cat! Beat Sheet, the Dark Night of the Soul should start at a novel’s 75% mark and end at 80%, but this isn’t rigid. Also, there's no need to worry if you can’t stretch this beat out to the recommended length of 5%. As Blake Snyder explains in the original Save the Cat! book, the Dark Night of the Soul can last as little as five seconds in a film, which equates to a single sentence in a novel. In fact, as we’ll see later in this article, you can even get away with omitting the Dark Night of the Soul altogether.
But before we get to that, we’ll first clarify the purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul, look at a list of elements that storytellers often include in this beat, and highlight this beat’s connection to theme. This article will also show you how to transition from the Dark Night of the Soul into the Break Into 3.
The Purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul
As I mentioned above, the functions of the Dark Night of the Soul are to show the hero reflecting on the events of the All Is Lost and then having an epiphany that motivates them to overcome the problem they're facing. But why is it important for readers to see the hero do these things?
To answer that question, we need to remember that the purpose of the All Is Lost is to force the hero to temporarily give up, as this enhances the positive emotions the reader feels at the emotionally charged Break Into 3 and Finale beats.
However, the desire to give up doesn’t facilitate plot development, and things can get melodramatic really fast if the hero mopes around for too long. Therefore, we need to flip the hero’s goal from “give up” to “keep going” relatively quickly.
But we can’t just flip the goal willy-nilly. It’s not realistic for such a drastic change of heart to just happen. For this change to be logical, meaningful, and impactful, it must occur through a deep, soul-searching experience.
With that in mind, the underlying purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul is to show the cognitive and emotional processes that lead the hero to change their mind about giving up in a way that is believable and resonant.
Now that we’re clear on the purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul, let’s look at what you might have your hero do to accomplish this purpose.
Actions Heroes Take in the Dark Night of the Soul
As Jessica Brody states in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, “I like to call the Dark Night of the Soul ‘the wallowing beat.’ Because that’s pretty much what heroes do here. They sit around or walk around, feeling hopeless and sorry for themselves.” She adds that “most revelations in stories happen in this beat, during what I call the Dark Night epiphany. The final clue falls into place, the hero sees something in a new light, the truth they’ve failed to see all this time suddenly becomes clear.”
Based on Brody’s explanation, we can say that the Dark Night of the Soul has two components: the wallowing component (“the darkness,” in which the hero looks back on their previous mistakes) and the epiphany component (“the dawn,” in which the hero realizes they must fix the mess that they’ve created or keep fighting despite seemingly insurmountable odds).
Both components are important to driving the story forward after the All Is Lost caused the hero to give up. Let’s look at each in detail.
Wallowing
The main reason a hero wallows is to emphasize the magnitude of the All Is Lost catastrophe by showing how devastated the hero is. If your life’s going anything like mine, you know there are a ton of ways in which a person can wallow. Here, I present five ways in which heroes often wallow in stories.
The hero rejects their allies
When a hero sees that their actions have harmed others, they may very well worry that they’ll keep hurting people if they keep pursuing their primary goal. Therefore, you’ll often see heroes push other characters away in the Dark Night of the Soul because they think other people are better off without them.
For example, in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Pip pushes away Ravi, who has been helping her find out who murdered Andie Bell, because she believes Ravi will get hurt if she keeps him close. We’re told that “she had to hurt him. It was the only way. The only way to make him give up. To keep him safe. Whoever murdered Andie and Sal, they’d shown her they were prepared to kill again, and she couldn’t let it be Ravi.”
So, Pip tells Ravi that she’s giving up on their investigation and lies to him, saying that she destroyed the evidence proving his brother was not Andie Bell’s murderer. And this causes Ravi to push her away in turn, as he tells her, “You’re just as bad as everyone else in Fairview, everyone who painted the word ‘scum’ on our house, who smashed our windows, everyone who tormented me at school, everyone who looks at me that way they look at me. No, you’ll be worse. At least they think he’s guilty.”
And then he walks away, leaving Pip in an even deeper state of despair than before, feeling like her life has been ruined.
The hero reflects on their mistakes
If the hero’s actions in the Fun and Games or Bad Guys Close In have hurt someone they care about, they will probably spend some time in the Dark Night of the Soul thinking about their mistakes and wishing they were a better person.
Returning to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, after patching things up with Ravi, Pip admits that she stupidly ignored several threats to stop her investigation. She tells Ravi, “That’s why Barney’s dead. Because of my arrogance. Because I thought I was invincible…. I thought they were just threats. I thought I could beat them. I was so stupid.”
Such an admission of guilt is suitable for the Dark Night of the Soul because it shows that the character is growing. And this kind of character growth tends to emphasize theme and allow the hero to form a goal that they would have been unwilling to form earlier in the story, as will be discussed later.
The hero refuses a call to action
The Dark Night of the Soul often sees the hero receive encouragement from another character that includes a call to action. Sometimes, this is enough for the hero to snap out of their depression, and they accept the call to action right away. But you can also have the hero initially refuse this call to action to heighten the stakes.
After Pip explains to Ravi about the ignored threats and that she stopped the investigation to keep him safe, Ravi tries to convince her to continue the investigation anyway. But she refuses at first, pointing out that whoever murdered Andie Bell and issued the threats is still out there watching them. She can’t help but think who they might hurt next if Pip and Ravi don’t stop. And even though Pip didn’t really destroy the evidence proving Sal’s innocence, she doubts what they have is enough for the police to take the case seriously.
This refusal accomplishes two things. First, it reminds the reader of the high stakes—people could die if Pip and Ravi continue pursuing the killer. Second, it explains why Pip and Ravi must take matters into their own hands in Act 3. (As will be explained in the next article, the hero should almost always take matters into their own hands in Act 3.)
The hero tries to return to their old life
One way to emphasize that the All Is Lost catastrophe has caused the hero to give up on their goal is to have them return to the status quo world of Act 1. Brody calls this technique the “return to the familiar,” which “essentially shines a giant spotlight on how much your hero has already changed.” A spotlight that “points out to the hero (and the reader) that they don’t belong [in the status quo world] anymore. That they can’t go back to the way things were.”
An example of the return to the familiar appears in Zootopia. In the film’s opening, a young Judy Hopps is told by her parents that she shouldn’t follow her dream of being a police officer and should instead be a carrot farmer like them. In the film’s Bad Guys Close In beat, Judy’s attempts to make a difference in the world as a police officer backfire, leading her to turn in her badge in the All Is Lost. Then, the Dark Night of the Soul begins with a cut to Judy’s hometown, where she’s working the carrot stand for her parents’ farm.
However, if anything, Judy is more unhappy on the carrot farm than she was when she turned in her badge. Her nature requires her to do something that makes a difference in the world, and this prevents her from ignoring everything she’s been through. Like with other types of wallowing, this shows character growth by clarifying that the hero has outgrown their old life.
The hero gets what they thought they wanted
In Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel, Brody provides an additional type of wallowing that you can include in the Dark Night of the Soul: “A variation on the return to the familiar is to have your hero get something they’ve been wanting (possibly from the start), only to find they don’t want it anymore.”
She uses Warcross to provide an example of this technique: “Hideo gives Emika the ten-million-dollar bounty she’s been chasing since the Break Into 2—the whole reason she’s even here—but after everything that’s happened, it doesn’t feel important anymore.”
Again, the main point here is to display character growth by showing that the hero’s priorities have shifted since the beginning of the story.
Regardless of how your hero wallows, the wallowing should be followed by an epiphany. Like I mentioned earlier, we can’t keep the hero wallowing for too long without boring or annoying the reader.
So, let’s look at the second crucial part of the Dark Night of the Soul: the Dark Night epiphany.
The Dark Night Epiphany
The Dark Night epiphany is essentially the opposite of the wallowing part of the Dark Night of the Soul. Whereas the wallowing bit depicts the story’s emotional rock bottom and sometimes takes up several scenes, the epiphany shows the hero lifting themselves out of the pits of despair and springing to action with a sudden burst of inspiration. Below, I explain four common types of Dark Night epiphanies.
The hero realizes they have done some good
Some heroes are lifted out of their despair when they realize that the All Is Lost catastrophe wasn’t the only outcome of their previous actions. Seeing that they've also had a positive impact on others can make them feel better.
In Zootopia, while Judy is working at the carrot stand in her return to the familiar, she learns that her parents have a business partnership with a fox. In Act 1, it was established that Judy’s parents did not trust predators at all—especially foxes. But in the Dark Night of the Soul, they tell Judy that she’s made them open their minds about predators.
This makes Judy less distraught because it contrasts the belief Judy adopted in the All Is Lost: that she had made the world a worse place by inadvertently turning predators and prey against each other. But if she was able to change her parents’ minds and get them to accept predators, then maybe there’s still hope she can fix the problem she created.
The hero receives a crucial piece of missing information
Another way to bring the hero out of the dumps is to reveal information that convinces them that they can solve what seemed like an unsolvable problem in the All Is Lost.
Returning to Zootopia, Judy’s despair ends when she learns that "night howlers" aren’t wolves but a kind of flower that makes animals “go savage.” This information makes Judy realize that predators are attacking prey in Zootopia because someone is using these flowers to infect them. This fills a critical gap in the mystery she was trying to solve throughout Act 2 and enables her to see a way to repair the rift between predators and prey that she caused. She is suddenly very excited, and her despair has been obliterated.
The hero suddenly sees the importance of existing information
This is a twist on the previous case. Instead of the epiphany coming from brand new information, it can come from the hero’s reflection on things they already know. They might put information together in a new way, or they might suddenly recognize the importance of previous events that seemed inconsequential at the time.
In Tangled, Rapunzel’s epiphany comes when she’s lying in bed and notices that she unknowingly painted the king’s symbol into the artwork on her bedroom walls. This stirs up a series of memories, which make Rapunzel realize she’s the lost princess and that Mother Gothel isn’t her real mother. All of a sudden, her deep sadness is replaced by shock, followed by intense anger for Gothel.
A secondary character convinces the hero to keep fighting
A pep talk from a secondary character is another classic way to get a hero to quit moping. Perhaps this character makes the hero see that the risk of giving up is greater than the risk of continuing their journey. Or they might remind the hero that no one else will fight the antagonist if the hero doesn’t.
Getting back to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, even though Pip is not quite so sad after patching things up with Ravi, she still refuses to take down the murderer. But Ravi’s not having it, and he talks some sense into her in the following passage:
“For such a clever person, you’re being a real idiot right now.” He leaned his elbows on the back of the chair, chin against his knuckles.
“They murdered my dog,” she said.
“They murdered my brother, and what are we going to do about it?” He straightened up, a daring glint in his eyes. “Are we going to forget everything and hide, live our lives knowing a killer is out there watching us? Or do we fight, find them, and punish them for what they’ve done to us? Put them away so they can’t hurt anyone ever again?”
And this is just what Pip needed to hear to get back on track. She sees that the consequences of giving up are even worse than the potential consequences of continuing to pursue the killer.
This finishes our look at the purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul in terms of plot progression. But this beat is also fertile ground for exploring theme, which we’ll tackle in the next section.
The Importance of Theme in the Dark Night of the Soul
Theme is often an important component of the Dark Night of the Soul because this is where the hero finally vocalizes or otherwise displays their full, unwavering agreement with the story's theme. When the hero first has the theme stated to them in Act 1, they either ignore it or argue against it, but now they agree with it wholeheartedly, highlighting how much they've grown. In this way, as pointed out by Naomi Beaty on the official Save the Cat! website, the Dark Night of the Soul is a mirror version of the Theme Stated beat.
An example of how the Dark Night of the Soul mirrors the Theme Stated can be seen in Interstellar. In the Theme Stated, Cooper is reminded by his daughter that “science was about admitting what we don’t know.” This hints at the theme Cooper must learn—that having faith in the unquantifiable things that make us human (e.g., love) will do more good than having faith in logic and science alone.
In Acts 1 and 2, Cooper routinely chooses science over the unknown, showing his ignorance of the theme. By the time we get to the end of the Dark Night of the Soul, though, Cooper has learned that his choices have had devastating results. Inside the tesseract, he views a past event in his life in which he walked out on his daughter to embark on a space mission to save the world, choosing logic over love. His emotional reaction as he relives this event shows that he knows this decision was wrong, indicating that he has learned the theme.
Connecting Theme and Plot in the Dark Night of the Soul
Theme and plot are naturally connected in a well-written Dark Night of the Soul. This is because the hero’s acceptance of the theme is what allows them to finally form a goal according to their theme-based need, as opposed to whatever it is they thought they needed back in Act 1 and for most of Act 2. And because this goal is based on the hero’s need, it’s the goal that will finally lead the hero to true happiness.
For example, the plot of Divergent could not have moved forward past Act 2 if Tris had not embraced the theme of self-acceptance. In the Dark Night epiphany, she finds out that the evil Erudite faction leaders are going to use mind control to make the Dauntless faction kill the innocent Abnegation faction. It’s here that Tris realizes her Divergent status is a strength, not a weakness, because it means she can’t be controlled.
This creates a shift in her mindset and, as a result, in her primary goal. She spent Act 2 trying to hide her Divergent status so she could avoid becoming factionless. But she wouldn’t have been truly happy had she succeeded since she would have been accepted for being something she’s not.
But after Tris has her Dark Night epiphany, her desire to stop the Erudite faction overrides her desire to be accepted by the Dauntless. And this desire aligns with the story’s theme since it requires her to expose herself—and she’s only willing to expose herself because she finally accepts herself for who she is, regardless of what other people will make of her Divergent status. As a result of this, in the Break Into 3, she will form a goal that will lead to happiness because she has accepted the story’s theme.
When the hero has a flat arc
Things are a little different if your hero has a flat arc. In this case, the Dark Night of the Soul won’t be the first time the hero vocalizes or displays their agreement with the story’s theme. However, if you’ve created your character effectively, they will have had some doubt about the theme from the beginning of the story. Maybe they believed the theme with only 90% of their heart in Act 1. Then, after some fluctuation throughout Act 2, their belief in the theme will have plummeted at the All Is Lost. But once they have their Dark Night epiphany, their belief in the theme will be unshakable.
Getting back to Zootopia, from the very beginning, Judy believed the theme that anyone can be anything—or, more specifically, that she could have a positive impact on the world as a police officer despite being a bunny. The events of Act 2 made it clear that she had her doubts about this, and in the All Is Lost, she came to believe the opposite of the theme: that her efforts to shake the status quo could only have a negative impact on the world.
But by the end of the Dark Night of the Soul, her belief in the theme is stronger than ever for everything she’s been through. She’s now 100% certain that she can solve the mystery that has baffled the police force throughout Act 2 and make Zootopia a better place.
Writing the Dark Night of the Soul in Stories without a Prominent Theme
Above, I explained how the purpose of the Dark Night of the Soul is to give the hero a theme-based epiphany that drives the plot forward in the Break Into 3. But then how does the Dark Night of the Soul play out in stories that don’t have a strong theme? Or what if you're writing Book 1 of a trilogy and don’t want your hero to embrace the theme until Book 3? And what about heroes who want to catch a killer throughout Acts 1, 2, and 3 without wavering in their commitment to doing the right thing?
In these kinds of stories, the Dark Night of the Soul is most likely going to be pretty short and sweet. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, it might be as short as a single sentence. You’ll still have your All Is Lost beat, where it appears that the hero has no chance of overcoming the antagonistic force. Then, after a very brief reflection on the failure, the hero sucks it up, grits their teeth, and tries again to get whatever it is they want.
That is, the hero bypasses the “give up” decision that typically results from the All Is Lost and jumps ahead to the “keep fighting” decision that characterizes the Break Into 3. In terms of plot progression and goal formation, the All Is Lost and Break Into 3 are essentially smooshed together.
For example, as Act 2 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone nears its end, Harry’s attempt to stop Snape from getting his hands on the Philosopher’s Stone goes all wrong, creating the story’s All Is Lost moment. This would normally be the time for Harry to wallow his way into an epiphany and then declare his intention to keep trying to stop Snape.
But that’s not what Harry does. Instead, immediately after the AIL catastrophe, he tells Ron and Hermione that he’s going through the trapdoor, and he’s going to get the stone before Snape. And, just like that, we’re in Act 3.
But the transition into Act 3 isn’t usually that quick. The next section will show you how to transition into the Break Into 3 at the end of a proper Dark Night of the Soul.
Transitioning into the Break Into 3
The final job of the Dark Night of the Soul is to transition into the Break Into 3, the moment at which the hero forms a new goal that will carry them through the upcoming Finale.
The Break Into 3 vs. the Dark Night Epiphany
Before discussing how the Break Into 3 unfolds, I want to clarify how this beat is different from the Dark Night epiphany since Brody describes them similarly in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.
According to Brody, the Break Into 3 is where “your hero finally realizes what they must do to not only fix all of the problems they’ve caused in Act 2 (and there are plenty!) but also, more important, how to fix themselves.”
But that sounds an awful lot like what she says of the Dark Night epiphany: “Most revelations in stories happen in this beat.... The final clue falls into place, the hero sees something in a new light, the truth they’ve failed to see all this time suddenly becomes clear.”
In short, the Break Into 3 contains a realization, while the Dark Night epiphany contains a revelation. But what’s the difference between a realization and a revelation, exactly?
The Dark Night epiphany can be thought of as an insight that gives the hero a new, enlightened understanding of a problem, themselves, or life as they know it. But this new understanding does not provide the hero with a clear direction for what to do next. It doesn’t give them a specific goal.
The specific goal emerges from the realization the hero has during the Break Into 3. It’s here that the hero sees exactly what steps they should take in light of whatever they learned from the Dark Night epiphany.
In short, the difference between these two parts of a story is that Dark Night epiphany provides clarification about the nature of the hero's problem, while the Break Into 3 provides a specific solution to this problem.
Now that we’ve clarified the difference between these two elements, let’s look at how you can blend the Dark Night epiphany into the Break Into 3.
Two Types of Goals for the Break Into 3
In general, heroes form one of two types of goals in the Break Into 3. First, the Dark Night epiphany can motivate the hero to keep trying to accomplish a previous goal using a new method or with a newfound sense of determination. This type of transition tends to occur when the Dark Night epiphany takes the form of a discovery about an external problem.
For example, in Zootopia, after Judy learns that night howlers are flowers that make animals “go savage,” (Dark Night epiphany) she realizes she must return to Zootopia and find out who’s using the night howlers for this devious purpose (Break Into 3).
Second, the Dark Night epiphany can motivate the hero to accept a call to action that they rejected earlier in the story or that they couldn’t have even pondered before their epiphany because of their flaws. This type of transition is more suitable when the Dark Night epiphany involves an internal discovery that motivates the hero to change.
We get this kind of Break Into 3 in The Lion King. In Act 2, Nala presents Simba with a call to action: to return to the Pride Lands and fight Scar. But Simba refuses because he still blames himself for his father’s death and is unwilling to face his past. But once Simba accepts that he can’t run from his past forever (Dark Night epiphany), he knows that Nala was right and that he has to go home and fight Scar (Break Into 3).
Summary
Given everything discussed above, here are the main takeaways from this article:
The main purposes of the Dark Night of the Soul beat are to (1) show the hero wallowing in response to the catastrophe that occurred in the All Is Lost and (2) give the hero an epiphany that convinces them to keep fighting despite the catastrophe.
The first of these two purposes can be accomplished, for example, by having the hero reject their allies, recognize their past mistakes, refuse a call to action, attempt to return to their old life, or get what they thought they wanted only to realize it doesn’t make them happy.
The second purpose can be accomplished through a pep talk from another character, the realization that some good has come from the hero’s previous actions, or the discovery of a crucial piece of information, among other things.
The Dark Night of the Soul often mirrors the Theme Stated beat by highlighting that the hero now agrees with the theme that they rejected back in Act 1.
The hero’s Dark Night epiphany informs the goal they will create in the Break Into 3. This may be a new goal that the hero would never have considered before accepting the theme. It could also be an old goal formed in a previous beat that the hero is now more determined than ever to accomplish given their reinforced belief in the theme.
Now that we’ve broken into Act 3, we’re almost done with this series. The next article will cover the last two beats of the Save the Cat! Beat Sheet: the Finale and the Final Image.
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