9. Midpoint (pages 166–178)
The morning after Jude and Georgia leave for their road trip, they stop at a Denny’s for breakfast. It’s their first public outing since the ghost came into their lives, and it doesn’t go well. In this false defeat Midpoint, after a waitress spills hot coffee on Georgia’s still infected finger, Georgia runs to the bathroom to tend to it. When Jude sees Craddock’s truck idling outside, he runs into the women’s bathroom and is just in time to stop Georgia from killing herself (she smashes the mirror and tries to use one of the shards of glass to slit her throat). They escape the Denny’s only to be chased by Craddock’s pickup truck through a tunnel under an overpass. The truck barrels toward them, just missing and hitting a wall. When Jude looks at the truck again, he sees it’s a Jeep with a dazed (hypnotized) man behind the wheel. The stakes are raised as Jude realizes that Craddock is powerful enough to manipulate strangers to try to kill them (Midpoint twist).
10. Bad Guys Close In (pages 179–265)
As they get back on the road, Georgia starts to ask Jude a ton of questions (something Anna used to do). A and B stories cross when Jude gets fed up and accidentally calls Georgia “Anna,” which makes her cry. Afterward, Jude recalls the night he broke up with Anna and sent her home. That same night, he’d gone to a strip club and met Georgia.
After the false defeat Midpoint, the Bad Guys Close In is an upward path as Jude and Georgia get closer to the truth about Anna’s death and an answer about how to defeat Craddock. They make a stop at the house of Georgia’s grandma, “Bammy.” There, Georgia gets out her old Ouija board and the two attempt to contact the ghost of Anna.
Through the Ouija board, Anna reveals that she didn’t kill herself. Craddock killed her! They ask if Anna can help them; she replies yes and asks Georgia if she will be “the golden door” (page 219). Georgia and Jude don’t yet know what this is (and neither do we!), but Georgia replies yes.
Later, Jude gets a message from his father’s nurse: Jude’s father (whom he hasn’t spoken to in years) has been unconscious for the past thirty-six hours, and he’s not going to last much longer (internal bad guys).
After leaving Bammy’s house, Jude pulls over at a used car dealership and beats up a man named Ruger. He remembered Georgia telling him once that Ruger had molested her when she was thirteen. This is one of the many signs that Jude is changing. He’s standing up for Georgia, protecting her instead of mistreating her. He’s becoming more sympathetic, which is evident in the growing closeness with her he’s been feeling ever since the Break Into 2. After this incident, Jude starts calling Georgia by her real name, Marybeth.
The two arrive at Jessica Price’s in Florida and break into the house. A fight breaks out, during which the truth about what happened to Anna is fully revealed: Craddock had been molesting both sisters since they were children. He’d been able to hypnotize them to make them forget. After Jude sent Anna home, Anna threatened to turn Craddock in. He killed her (with Jessica’s help) and made it look like a suicide. Craddock blamed Jude for changing Anna (after she’d been with Jude, Craddock could no longer hypnotize her), and that’s why Craddock is haunting Jude.
Jude realizes that the signs of Anna’s sexual abuse had been right in front of him but he never saw them (theme). It’s also revealed that Jessica, who worships Craddock, was letting him molest her own daughter.
Jude is about to strangle Jessica by pressing a tire iron against her throat when suddenly Jessica’s daughter, Reese, appears with a gun.
11. All Is Lost (pages 266–278)
A struggle ensues, and in a whiff-of-death moment, one of Jude’s dogs (his protection against Craddock) is shot and killed. Craddock persuades Reese to aim the gun at Jude; she does, and blows off Jude’s finger. As Jude and Marybeth (Georgia) try to get away, Jude’s other dog is hit by Jessica’s car (Craddock was manipulating her too). The dog is in bad shape, and Jude’s finger is bleeding profusely as the two finally manage to get away. Marybeth wants to take Jude to the hospital but he refuses. Instead, he tells her they’re going to Louisiana (Jude’s childhood home).
12. Dark Night of the Soul (pages 279–309)
At the very end of the All Is Lost, Marybeth asks Jude, “How do you see this all endin’?” (page 278). Jude doesn’t have an answer. That’s what this Dark Night of the Soul is all about. It’s a preparation for the end. As they head back to Jude’s childhood home, Jude knows he will have to confront more than his current ghost. He’ll have to confront his past ghosts as well—namely, his father.
As Marybeth drives, Jude has more dreams (visions) about Anna. He sees the night of her death play out (Dark Night epiphany). Anna threatened to turn Jessica in after finding out that Jessica was letting her own daughter be molested by Craddock. Then Jessica helped Craddock kill Anna by drugging her. In Jude’s dream, right before Craddock slits Anna’s wrists with a razor, Jude tells Anna that he loves her, and she says she loves him. Jude’s transformation is nearly complete.
By the time they reach Jude’s childhood home, the other dog is dead in the back seat. Which means Jude has nothing left to protect him against Craddock.
Arlene, the nurse, leads Jude to his childhood bedroom, where his unconscious father sleeps, and gives him morphine for the pain in his finger.
13. Break Into 3 (pages 310–314)
Arlene is scared off by the ghost, leaving Jude alone in the house with Georgia, Craddock (the real ghost), and his father (the metaphorical ghost of his past). Jude watches as Craddock climbs out of the heart-shaped box on the floor, and Jude greets him: “What kept you?” (page 314). Jude is finally ready to face his ghosts.
14. Finale (pages 315–354)
Craddock tries to manipulate Jude to strangle Marybeth, but Jude finds he’s able to resist by humming a song he’d written earlier. Craddock is able to take over Jude’s father’s body, and Jude’s two ghosts are now one.
A ghastly fight between Jude and Jude’s father/Craddock follows, in which Craddock tries to cut Jude with his razor blade. Marybeth enters in the nick of time and stabs Jude’s father in the neck and back. But then Marybeth slips in his blood and falls, and Craddock is able to cut her throat with his razor. As she bleeds out, she tells Jude that Anna is calling to her and asks him to make the golden door (referenced earlier). As Craddock pulls himself out of Jude’s father’s body and rises again, Jude uses Marybeth’s blood to paint a door on the floor. Marybeth manages to roll over the door just as it falls open. She floats over it in a bright light and soon transforms into Anna. Anna grabs Craddock and pulls him through the door with her. He is gone for good.
Jude crawls to the door, looking for Marybeth, and falls through it.
Jude finds himself in his restored Mustang with Anna, who quickly transforms into Marybeth. Marybeth explains to Jude that they are on the “night road” where the dead travel. It’s nice and bright, and Marybeth speculates that “maybe it’s only night here for some people” (page 334).
When Marybeth tells Jude she has to go and it’s time for him to get out of the car, he won’t let go of her hand. He doesn’t want to leave. He says, “We. Where we get out. We. We” (page 336).
Jude’s transformation is now complete. He’s no longer selfish and emotionally disconnected. He’s now capable of love, and he’s proving it. He’s grabbing hold of that shard of glass that was planted by his father way back when he was a child and removing it for good.
When Jude wakes up in the hospital, he discovers that Marybeth was dead for a few minutes but came back to life. He saved her.
15. Final Images (pages 355–374)
Joe Hill ends his story with several quick “after” snapshots to sum up how life has changed for his hero, Jude Coyne. In a series of short, paragraph-long chapters we see Jude and Marybeth attending Danny’s memorial, Jude finally recording a new album, Jude restoring another old car, and Jude and Marybeth getting marrie
d. Then we learn that the police found photo evidence that Craddock was molesting Jessica Price’s daughter, Reese, and that Jessica, who allowed it to happen, was arrested for child endangerment. In the final chapter, five years later, Reese comes to visit Jude and Marybeth, apologizing for shooting him. When Jude looks at Reese, he sees Anna in her. He helps Reese, giving her money and buying her a bus ticket, redeeming himself as best he can for what he did to Anna.
WHY IS THIS A MONSTER IN THE HOUSE?
Heart-Shaped Box contains all three elements of a successful Monster in the House story:
A MONSTER: Craddock McDermott, the evil hypnotist ghost who can persuade people to kill themselves and others, is Joe Hill’s creepy invention and a worthy advocate for arrogant rock star Jude Coyne.
A HOUSE: Although the monster can technically go wherever he wants, he is tied to Jude because Jude purchased his suit on the internet, and because Craddock, who practiced dark occult arts in life, linked his spirit to Jude before he died, thus making Jude the house in which the monster is enclosed.
A SIN: Jude is responsible for bringing this monster into existence. His flaws of insensitivity, arrogance, and inability to love are the sins that created Craddock’s ghost. When he kicked Anna (aka Florida) out of his house and sent her home, it directly led to Anna’s death and Craddock’s plan to haunt Jude from beyond the grave. And only in dealing with this sin is Jude able to rid himself of the monster.
Cat’s Eye View
For quick reference, here’s a brief overview of this novel’s beat sheet.
OPENING IMAGE: Aging rock star Jude Coyne buys a ghost on the internet, introducing us to his obsession with the macabre.
THEME STATED: “You’re a sympathetic son of a bitch, you know that?” Georgia, Jude’s current girlfriend (in a long string of brief relationships), asks sarcastically, hinting at Jude’s ultimate transformation journey: to become more sympathetic, learn to connect, and become capable of loving someone.
SETUP: After the purchased ghost arrives (linked to a funeral suit shipped in a heart-shaped box), strange things start to happen around Jude’s house. We learn about Jude’s relationship with his abusive father, his past as a rock star, and that he hasn’t recorded an album in years.
CATALYST: Jude sees the ghost for the first time, sitting in a chair in his hallway.
DEBATE: Is the ghost real? Jude goes into research mode, contacting the seller, Jessica Price, who tells him the ghost is stepfather to her and to Jude’s previous girlfriend, Anna, who killed herself after Jude cast her aside. Jessica claims the ghost is haunting him to avenge his stepdaughter.
BREAK INTO 2: Jude accepts that the ghost exists and decides to investigate. He learns the ghost is Craddock McDermott, a skilled hypnotist.
B STORY: The dead Anna McDermott represents the B Story and the theme (Jude’s inability to love). Resolving his past with Anna (and the callous way he dismissed her when she needed him most) will eventually also resolve the A Story—being haunted by Craddock’s ghost.
FUN AND GAMES: In Jude’s new, upside-down world of living with a ghost, we learn that Craddock can hypnotize people and persuade them to kill themselves. He’s trying to get Jude to kill Georgia and himself. Jude’s dogs seem to be his only protection.
MIDPOINT: The stakes are raised when, after leaving to confront Jessica Price in person, Jude and Georgia are almost killed by a stranger under Craddock’s control. He can now manipulate almost anyone to do almost anything.
BAD GUYS CLOSE IN: Jude and Georgia (now referred to as Marybeth) stop at her grandma’s house; they contact Anna with a Ouija board and learn that Anna didn’t really kill herself.
ALL IS LOST: In a fight with Jessica Price and her daughter, one of the dogs is shot and killed, and the other is badly injured. Jude’s protection against Craddock is almost gone. Jude decides to go to his childhood home, where his father is dying.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL: On the drive, Jude “sees” a memory of the night Anna died and realizes that Craddock killed Anna after she threatened to turn him in for sexually abusing her, her sister Jessica, and Jessica’s daughter, Reese. He’s coming after Jude because he believes Jude turned Anna against him. Jude’s other dog dies.
BREAK INTO 3: Finally ready to confront the ghost (of his present and past), Jude asks Craddock, “What kept you?” (page 314), signaling he’s ready for the final showdown.
FINALE: Craddock takes over Jude’s father’s body; now Jude has to fight the father who abused him (directly facing his past). A bloody battle ensues, in which Marybeth is mortally wounded. Marybeth opens the “golden door” so that Anna can come through and take Craddock back to the “night road” (where the dead go). Jude and Marybeth fall through the door as well, but Jude pulls Marybeth out, saving her and proving that he’s learned the theme and is capable of love.
FINAL IMAGES: Jude records a new album and marries Marybeth. The two are visited by Jessica Price’s daughter, who looks a lot like Anna. Jude’s final act of redemption for what he did to Anna is helping her niece.
Pitch It to Me!
How to Write Killer Loglines and Dazzling Synopses
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
—Albert Einstein
Regardless of what stage of the novel-writing process you’re in—writing, revising, outlining, banging your head against the wall trying to come up with a great title—I can guarantee you that at some point along the way, someone is going to ask you the dreaded question:
What’s your book about?
Whether your goal is to traditionally publish your novel (get represented by a literary agent and sell your novel to a major publisher) or self-publish it (either online or in print) or perhaps just to post it on Wattpad to see what happens, you still face the same challenge: you have to sell it. You have to tell someone (a literary agent, a publisher, a potential reader browsing through Amazon eBooks, or even the meandering Wattpad user!) what your book is about.
In short, you have to be able to pitch it.
What Is a Pitch, and Why Is It Important?
Think about the summary on the back cover or online sales page of your favorite novel. That summary is the book’s written pitch. If you meet your favorite author and ask them what they’re working on next, they’ll most likely give you a verbal pitch, summarizing their new project in a few short sentences. A pitch doesn’t tell you the whole story (because then what would be the point of reading the book?); it tells you just enough of the story to lure you in and leave you wanting more.
And that right there is why it’s important.
If you want someone to read your novel—whether that be agents, editors, movie producers, or readers—you first have to hook them. You have to paint a picture of this story that is so compelling, so interesting, so primal that they can’t wait to rip it out of your hands, shouting “GIMME! I NEED! I NEED!”
A pitch is your bait. And here’s the good news: if you’ve already crafted your Save the Cat! fifteen beats, then your pitch will be a cakewalk (cat walk?).
The reason most authors struggle with pitching their novel is that it’s not typically in our nature to take a step back and try to see our novels from a high-level, more sales-oriented point of view. However, I’m happy to report that the process I’ve been guiding you through in this book is, by its very nature, designed to force you to think about your story from this macro level.
In this chapter, I’m going to walk you through the process of creating two different kinds of pitches: the logline and the short synopsis. Both will be instrumental to you and your novel-writing career regardless of what path you choose to follow. But they will be especially important if
you choose to pursue the path of traditional publishing (selling your novel to a major publisher). Because on this path you, the author, are the first link in a long chain of people who have to be able to effectively sell your novel to someone else.
I call this the chain of awesome.
Basically, the chain of awesome consists of multiple levels of people who have to convince other people that your book is awesome.
To get your book published by a major publisher, you first have to get a literary agent. And to get a literary agent, you have to convince an agent that your book is awesome so they’ll represent you. The agent will then have to convince an editor at a publishing house that your book is awesome so they’ll buy it. But to buy the book, the editor has to convince a whole bunch more people at the publishing house—sales team, marketing team, publicity team—that the book is awesome.
But the chain of awesome doesn’t stop there. Once the book is sold to a publisher and getting ready to be released, the sales team has to sell the book to the bookstores. The booksellers in the bookstore have to sell the books to the readers.
Then on the promotional side, the publicity and marketing teams have to sell the book to people like reviewers, bloggers, and the media.
And let’s not forget about your agent, who’s still out there selling your book to foreign publishers and movie producers!
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel Page 28