One of the most emotional moments in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the scene where Peter Parker dies. I was lucky enough to be able to watch that moment happen in theatres, and when it did, the entire atmosphere of the room shifted. The scene left an almost tangible impact on the audience.
That’s the kind of emotional scenes we want to write as authors.
As we’ve already touched on before, it isn’t just the content of a particular scene that gives it weight and impact, but more often the context around it. This week’s principle for writing emotional scenes is no different, and it’s one that the writers of Infinity War absolutely mastered.
So this week, we’re diving into one of the most tragic moments in the entire MCU to see what it did right and how you can imitate it in your own work.
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Infinity War is the first installment in the two-part culmination of a battle over ten years in the making. Since the very first movie in the MCU was released in 2008, it was clear that the characters’ stories would build toward something massive, even if it took 22 movies to get there. Infinity War is the start of that battle.
And it ends in disaster.
Thanos is an incredibly powerful being from another planet set on erasing half of all life. That way, whoever’s left will never have to worry about having enough resources to survive, which Thanos assumes will end all poverty, pain, and struggle. To do this, he plans to collect all six of the Infinity Stones: gems that each control a critical part of the universe, like time or space. The Avengers have to find the stones and destroy or hide them before Thanos has them, or else he’ll be able to make his plans a reality with just a snap of his fingers.
But they’re scattered and uncoordinated, far from being an efficient team. Conflicting interests and personal issues complicate things more than once, giving Thanos just enough of an edge for him to ultimately take all six of the stones. In a blink of an eye, half of the Avengers begin disappearing, turning into dust in front of their friends and family.
Peter Parker is one of them. He’s only 16 and wasn’t meant to come along at all, but he insisted on helping his idol Tony Stark and refused to stay behind even when it didn’t make sense for him to come. He wanted to earn his place as an Avenger and do his part in helping to save the world. Now, on a distant planet after losing a fight with Thanos, Tony is forced to watch as Peter begins to realize he’s about to die. Although he begs to stay and can’t fully grasp what’s happening, eventually he is turned to dust in Tony’s arms.
This moment is one of the most emotional scenes in the MCU. It encapsulates the weight of losing half of all life across the universe in just a few seconds of dialogue. Like the “little pictures” we talked about last year, it works as a small image of a far greater issue.
And it also illustrates our next principle for emotional scenes: Placement gives emphasis.
Placement Gives Emphasis
If emotional moments are like gems like we talked about in the very first article in this series, then where they’re placed truly matters. Rather than scattering them whenever there’s a dull moment or between action scenes, make sure where you place your emotional scenes truly matters and works to support both the emotions within the scene and the story as a whole.
One of the clearest ways emotional moments lack depth is when their placement isn’t significant — a character broke down crying just because they didn’t have anything else to do, or two others got into a shouting match because, well, why not?
Every emotional moment should have a clear reason in your mind for why it is where it is. Whether it’s at the climax or the beginning, marks the midpoint or closes your novel off, it should have a reason for being there and not just a few pages before or a few pages after. You can have your characters grapple with the full weight of what they’ve been through at almost any time or place. In the meantime, allow them to bottle up their feelings or become unable to confront them. Withhold certain information if it makes the timing of these moments work best for the structure of your overall story. Ultimately, make sure the moment your characters explode in anger or sadness, joy or despair, supports the rest of the narrative.
Infinity War is a really good example of this. It is obviously the first of two parts, ending in a massive cliffhanger that desperately needs to be resolved. And despite the sequel’s nearly three-hour runtime, a reduced cast that allowed the writers to cut unnecessary subplots, and the singular goal of the entire movie, the writers simply didn’t have time to dwell on the state of the world following Thanos’s snap. They had only a few minutes to establish five years of grief for our main cast before they were plunged into a mission to save everyone. The writers evidently knew this to be the case even as they were wrapping up Infinity War, because they recognized the need to establish the character’s grief and suffering before Endgame even began.
They couldn’t show every character grieving or illustrate five whole years of a world functioning without half of its population. And without that weight, the stakes simply couldn’t seem as high as they truly were. With the weight of half of the population on the character’s shoulders, it was absolutely essential that the audience understand the grief they had been through in a short amount of time. Otherwise, we wouldn’t understand the height of the stakes, the motivation of the characters, or the actions they took out of complete desperation.
So they condensed all of those concepts — the stakes, the grief, the desperation — into a short conversation between Peter and his mentor as he dies. The emotion that is captured in this moment isn’t just a result of the events that came before it. It’s absolutely crucial to the rest of the story. Its placement is intentional in a way that both gives the moment itself weight (since we as the viewer get an expression of the grief the characters are already wrestling with) and gives the rest of the story an added layer of realism that wouldn’t be there otherwise.
Your emotional moments aren’t just valuable in themselves — where you place them can be just as important. Don’t just place an emotional moment in the first place you think of. Truly consider the weight, the impact, the emphasis that it can have on both your audience and the rest of your story if you place it somewhere else. Have your characters wrestle with silent grief or refuse to give full vent to their feelings until the very best moment, when their emotions burst out in full force and truly leave an impact on both your readers and your story.
Happy Fourth of July!
Let us know the significance of where you placed your emotional moments in the comments section, or just what you’re doing to celebrate today!
Hi! My name is Mara, and I’m a Christian artist, violinist, and blogger. I remember the day that I decided that I would learn something new about what makes a good story from every book I picked up — whether it was good, bad, or a mixture of both. I use this blog as a way of sharing some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned, and highlight which books, cartoons, and movies have taught me the most about writing an awesome story.