Change is Storytelling: Act 3
How self-transformation is a story you tell through your actions.
Welcome to EFFIGIES, a weekly newsletter offering actionable insights from my journey through reading and writing comics, designed to inspire you toward building a better life. To become our best selves, we must burn away who we are today.
What’s Inside:
Exploring the final act of your self-improvement journey.
How to Rebound from the Dark Night of the Soul.
Reaching the Climax and succeeding or failing.
Moving forward into your New Status Quo.
Welcome to part 3 of 3 in this series exploring how growth and transformation are stories we live and tell. Last week, we delved into Act 2, examining the complications, reversals, and dark nights of the soul that test our resolve. This week, we’ll look at the final part of these journeys—Act 3.
Parts of Act 3.
Once the Dark Night of the Soul sets in, Act 3 is about bouncing back with revived energy into the climax and winning the day. The key components of Act 3 include:
From the lowest point, you need to find the strength to stand back up and keep going. If you can, you’ll reach the climax of your journey and your final test. Will your work and determination ultimately pay off? Or will you crash and burn?
The Rebound.
After the Dark Night of the Soul, we’re firmly into Act 3 and the protagonist must gather the strength to push forward. Some writers might group this into Act 2, and I wouldn’t argue with them. But for our purposes, the Dark Night of the Soul represents a new set of circumstances that need to be overcome with a new plan, which for me is born of this Rebound. This Rebound is where renewed determination kicks in, setting the stage for the climax.
In Rocky (one of my favorite movies), the titular Rocky hits his low point the night before his big fight with Apollo Creed. He knows in his heart of hearts he’s just not good enough to win. Later that night, he speaks with his girlfriend Adrian, and in the conversation, he realizes that he doesn’t have to win to “go the distance.”
Rocky realizes that “winning” means showing up and not getting knocked out by the toughest guy in the world, it means making it to the end of the fight. With this renewed perspective and added motivation, Rocky is ready to reach his Climax.
After falling into a pit of despair, imposter syndrome, and fear after completing GRIEF, I needed to bounce back too. To this day, I can’t really point to one thing that helped me out of the rut, though. I was surrounded by people who believed in me and encouraged me. That counted for a lot.
It was around this time, as well, that I was reading Stephen King’s pseudo-memoir On Writing. In the book he talks about getting rejected over and over when he was starting out. He’d hang every rejection letter on a nail and when the nail could hold no more rejections, he’d get a bigger nail and keep writing.
It also worked out in my favor that my fear of having wasted time was greater than my fear of failing (I can be stubborn sometimes). However it happened, I pushed through the negative thoughts and feelings and recommitted to putting GRIEF out into the world and starting my career. I didn’t come this far to fail.
The Climax.
The climax is the turning point where the protagonist faces their greatest challenge. This is the giant battle or the inevitable personal confrontation. In inspirational movies, this is where the hero’s work and growth pay dividends. In tragedies, it’s where all is lost.
To bring this idea full circle, consider the Climax of Avengers: Endgame. In Act 2, we talked about the Dark Night of the Soul in Avengers, which saw the team bruised, broken, and scattered. Like in the first Avengers movie, Endgame sees the team hit a low point, at Thanos’ mercy and on the edge of defeat.
It’s at that lowest point that Captain America hears the crackle in his earpiece. It’s followed by a slow-but-ramping succession of portals opening, through which scores of lost Avengers arrive. This Rebound culminates in dozens of heroes, with renewed vigor, rallying to the Cap’s perfect call to arms: Avengers…
What follows is a 30+ minute climactic sequence, where the combined forces of all the heroes, coupled with that renewed commitment to defeating Thanos and his army, results in victory.
One of the defining features of my personality is a “measure three times, cut once” mindset. I’m an over-preparer and, following my Dark Night of the Soul and Rebound, that energy went into building the best Kickstarter campaign I was capable of for GRIEF. That KS campaign would be my climax. In my eyes, either it would fund and I’d have succeeded, or it would fail and it’d be over. And so on April 4th, nearly a year to the day I had started the journey, I launched the Kickstarter campaign for GRIEF.
I don’t think I had ever been so nervous in my life. Minutes later, though, the funding goal was met and by the end of the 30 days, it had been funded three times over. I had done it. I’d learned to make a comic, done the work to create one, and put that work successfully out into the world.
New Status Quo.
After the climax, the protagonist emerges changed, and a new status quo is established. Now that you’ve (hopefully) overcome your climactic challenge, you are equipped to meet that challenge moving forward and forever. You have the knowledge and the skill to meet the goal. Period.
In Return of the Jedi, after long and hard training, as well as deep introspection, Luke has the knowledge and skill to bring down the Empire. He has become a Jedi Master and those skills will be with him for the rest of his life. Symmetrically, using those skills to redeem Vader and defeat Emperor Palpatine results in a new status quo for the galaxy — a post-Empire period of peace.
And the same was true for me. GRIEF was just the first of the comics I would write. I followed it up with Dead End Kids in 2019, No Heroine in 2020, and Unborn in 2021/22. Follow-ups to Dead End Kids and No Heroine are forthcoming, as well as a few new titles.
My point is, once I had struggled through my journey and came out victorious, the skills and knowledge I had acquired reverberated through the new, ongoing status quo that came out of the journey.
Putting it all together.
In a nutshell, Act 3 is all about picking yourself up and using what you’ve learned to, ultimately, achieve your goal. Act 3 of my journey to become a comic book writer is illustrative of the power in pushing through challenges, the triumph of achieving a significant milestone, and the establishment of a new normal that sets the stage for future growth.
By breaking down the journey into these three acts, we can better understand the process of growth and transformation. Each phase — Status Quo, Inciting Incident, Crossing the Threshold, Complications, Reversals, Dark Night of the Soul, Rebound, Climax, and New Status Quo — plays a crucial role in shaping who we become, regardless of the journey.
Reflecting on your own journey, consider how these elements have manifested in your life. What low points have you faced? Did you rebound and succeed? If so, what was your new status quo? If not, what could you have done differently? Understanding the underlying patterns of how you succeed (or don’t) will show you the blueprint for achieving your goals.
- Frank
I’m Frank Gogol, writer of comics such as Dead End Kids, No Heroine, Unborn, Power Rangers, and more. If this newsletter was interesting / helpful / entertaining…
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After credits scene.
People are sometimes surprised to learn that, though I am a comics and science fiction fan — aka a giant nerd, I like professional sports. Specifically those teams hailing from the great city of Boston. So, I’d like to offer a belated congratulations to the Boston Celtics on their 18th NBA championship!
I’d also like to congratulate the Florida Panthers on their first Stanley Cup championship in their 30-year history. As a Bruins fan, it’s hard for me to watch the team that has knocked Boston out of the playoffs back-to-back years win it all, but credit where it’s due.
In one of life’s weird symmetrical ironies, Jason Tatum (of the Celtics) and Matthew Tkachuk (of the Panthers) — who have both won their first championships this year — were childhood friends.
Sometimes, life will tell an interesting story all on it’s own.