MILK RUN- The Story’s First Act Turn

Here’s the second of the seven skeleton bones for my new novel MILK RUN—a science fiction space battle tale about a young captain fresh out of space command school on his first assignment as captain of the USS Princeton, an old destroyer class spacecraft.

Earth is losing the war against the Telrachnids and our young captain is chosen to deliver a new weapon to a secret starbase far from the front line fighting.   But what our hero thought would be an easy first mission turns out to be a test of his ability to lead a crew much older than he against a superior enemy.

Click here to see the story action behind the first bone–the Inciting Incident.

The second bone is called the First Act Turn.  This is the point at which our hero (Captain Toby) realizes what he must do (his GOAL) and sets out to do it and typically takes place about 25% of the way into the story.

Story Action:

Captain Toby soon realizes that the Telrachnids found out about his mission to deliver ‘the crowbar’ and his relationship with Smriti (his fiancée).  Now, he knows that the Telrachnids have sent a drugged and telepathically brainwashed Smriti and her gunship to intercept him and defeat his mission.

Toby doesn’t use the full firepower of the USS Princeton to destroy the Telrachnid gunship commanded by Smriti, fearing she will die as a result. He decides to save her from the Telrachnids. But his actions results in heavy damage to his ship and now the crew begins to doubt his ability to lead.

I’ll cover the story’s Midpoint bone in my next blog entry.