the-body-and-understanding-turning-points

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the tv. series, dealt with death. It dealt with death in every episode. But it wasn’t until the 5th season where it made Death hit home. Dying, no longer being here on this Earth, is on my mind due to my current WIP, but either way someone passing is on my mind. Also a little tidbit about me, once my mind gets to working everything is somehow connected in the scheme of things.

Back to the fifth season of Buffy…Well, it’s The Body episode that gets me every time. An important character dies and every one is reeling. The death is so normal—in a world where no one dies a natural death. The series is never same afterward. It’s almost a forewarning that no one is off limits. A very important twist, but it’s heart wrenching.

In every sense of the word the old Buffy is dead and a new Buffy will have to come out of the ashes of the old. At some point of every season this HAS to happen. But I don’t think it’s more poignant than in this episode because it’s more than someone dying, it’s someone we all thought was SAFE, someone we all believed, on some level, that harm would never touch them. When in fact they were not SAFE and everyone can be harmed.

lightningIt makes the world Buffy believed in that much scarier. It makes her want to curl and hideaway from it even more. The change Buffy and the viewers can’t see this death makes her hell-bent on protecting those she loves. Even in the midst of all her grief she protects her sister Dawn and kicks some vampy butt.

The connection may seem odd, but this makes me think of turning points in a novel for a character. Those scenes in the story where the heroine or hero changes. Not of their own will. Not of their own choosing. But it’s due to the circumstances they now face. It is in fact a death of the old hero/heroine. It’s a scene where the gloves come off. They are harmed in an irrevocable way, usually it’s a hit to a belief that they will fight to keep no matter what. More importantly it changes the hero/heroine introduced on the first page.

They will never be same.

No matter what they do to recapture their old selves it won’t jive. That death may not come with fanfare or balloons nor any marker they have changed, but it happens nonetheless. They may not have someone make an eloquent speech, but it’s there on the page. The essence of the turning point is to show it. Before that TP it’s happened little by little and when the character gets to “Do Not Pass Go” that next step is inevitable. It’s the part where you see your loved one deceased on the couch and you just act—You call 911, you do CPR—but you make the step because at that point that’s all you know how to do. It never really crosses your mind MY LIFE HAS CHANGED even though it has.

Are turning points still a mystery? If not tell me about your characters turning points. Tell me about your own turning point if you want. Did you see that episode of Buffy? Did you cry buckets? Let me know in the comments.