Your Writing Crowning Moment of Awesome

What's your writing CMOA? Is it a classic Crowning Moment, when one of your characters delivers an epic physical or verbal beatdown? Or some masterpiece of plottery so carefully foreshadowed, hidden, distracted from and then brought out to achieve a ridiculously high HSQ? The thing that cemented your status as a Badass Author.

Mine's a toss up between a classic Reason You Suck speech I wrote years ago, and the moment a year's worth of haphazardly written webcomic/sitcom scripts brings all the throwaway jokes, random lines and hanging plot points together in an epic showdown in which I shamelessly reused said speech.

I have no idea how to judge this for myself. Wouldn't it have to be my audience who decides that?

This isn't so much about the CMOA as viewed by the reader, more the technical ability, effort or personal investment in your own work that makes you, the writer, worthy of a CMOA, and not just your characters.

I gotta go with Ettina on this one. Even if I trusted myself to judge my own work by anything but my own subjective standards, what I post of it could very well completely off-kilter from what others see of it.

Not sure if you get to assign your own C Mo As

I can't judge myself, because I depreciate all of my efforts. However if someone says that something I did is a Crowning Moment of Awesome on my part, then it is a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Plus if I were to attribute something I did a Crowning Moment of Awesome, then I would be arrogant. I am a humble person, therefore I will not attribute something I did a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

edited 10th Feb '11 9:03:30 AM by EldritchBlueRose

Really a character's MOA is dependent on their character development and their motivation for that action. Just having a guy sweep through a room of zombies is awesome. What makes it more awesome is if he decided to get rid of all the zombies in the room because he had finally had enough of being scared and running away that he just decided to get rid of them.

You really shouldn't write a scene intending it to be an awesome moment. Just write the scene that flows naturally from the story before it.

I'm with Etti. I remember a scene that I thought was a bit of foolish self-satisfaction on my part, ended up being hailed as a CMOF by my good friend.

You just don't know. I know what scenes I think are cool, but I have no way of knowing which is the best, or if they're actually cool or not.

I was more getting at those moments when you, the writer, do something awesome with your writing. Not when you write your character delivering a beatdown, which can be well-received or not - when you as a writer hit that point where, say, all your careful plotting pays off. I don't care what your readers think, though if your CMOA is tied into getting a good reaction, that's understandable.

Sure, it's hard to judge, but this is the TV Tropes Writing Forum, Land Of Ultimate Happy Thoughts. Buck up.

EDIT: @Alk: Of course you should write scenes that are awesome. The CMOA (from the reader's perspective) is the thing that makes the protagonist, be he/she good/evil/wavering/indifferent, worthy of being the protagonist. It's the All Important Fuck Yeah Moment, and every good piece of fiction has one. If letting things flow isn't making things badass enough, kick it up.

edited 10th Feb '11 2:42:55 PM by Hedgewolf

Not every story needs things to be badass. Slice of Life runs fine without badassery (although lots of What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome? may let it slip in occasionally). Horror often works because of the lack of badassery. A tragedy doesn't need badassery to work.

It seems to me plenty of people have tried to make this one scene "badass" — it shows, and not in a good way. Trying to shoehorn something into a context makes it feel laboured, and artifical. No two people have the exact same reaction; what seems like badass to one, might look like Narm to the other.

edited 10th Feb '11 3:57:17 PM by QQQQQ

I'd argue that a lot of horror has some badassery, it just may not work if it's the protagonist attacking the eldritch abomination with a flamethrower. Still awesome, just not effective. Slice of Life is a strange genre in itself... but if you look at sitcoms, it's clear that Awesome is entirely determined by the genre you choose. Nobody has to blow anything up, it could be as simple as a speech or decision that is entirely mundane but which is life-changing for that character. Even Slice of Life needs that, unless you're intentionally trying to write the dullest, least interesting cast of all time. Everyone has little victories that could qualify.

Wait, now something awesome needs to be badass? When did this happen? Why wasn't I informed?

Not saying that. In fact, saying the opposite.

I don't experience very many C Mo As in my general-fiction writing, but I would like to proudly toot my own horn to a Crowning Moment that resulted not IN my writing but FROM my writing—my promos for my fantasy wrestling character Axl Evermore actually garnered me some actual legitimate fans for him in real life (including, early on, a guy who was actually considering BUYING the name "Axl Evermore" from me outright to use as his wrestling name). Hell, one of those legit fans was even my BROTHER, who I HATE!

That's what I'm talking about. Kudos, that's excellent.

Wow. That is something truly special, I think. Though I doubt you'll get many examples like that from the rest of us. Just how the hell did all that happen?

I am constantly surprised by the parts that my readers attach themselves to, in full inversion of my expectations.

Humorously, it's the parts I work on the most that my readers tell me to revise. One never gets entirely used to it.