What O’Connor Designed: Torque in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
A writer’s perspective on A Good Man Is Hard to Find, showing how O’Connor orchestrates structure to bend belief—and build classic emotional purging
Catharsis: The Ultimate Goal of Fiction
Catharsis—Aristotle’s term for the purging of pity and fear—is the emotional earthquake that follows a masterpiece. It’s what makes stories feel alive. Readers aren’t supposed to analyze it. They’re supposed to feel it. That’s what means “classic.”
Writers, however, need to see how it’s done. That’s what this series does. We don’t just feel the emotional arc of A Good Man. We follow the sequence design that earns it.
Defining Torque, Rupture, Exposure—and Nested Craft
What’s Torque?
In physics, torque is rotational force—tension applied off-axis. In fiction, it's the plot events pushing a character past façade into truth, turning plot into transformatory story.
Plot vs. Story
Plot is what happens—the sequence of events that move a character from A to B. Story is what those events mean—how they shape a character’s beliefs, values, and identity. Torque lives in that space between plot and story. It’s not just about getting through the plot; it’s about twisting plot into story.
Rupture & Exposure
Rupture: A crack in what the character believed or relied on—a moral or emotional fall.
Exposure: A moment when something true comes into view—what they were hiding, denying, or covering.
Nested Design of Craft
Think of craft like Russian dolls:
Scenes are the basic unit of drama (Goal → Obstacle → Escalation).
Sequels digest the events of Scenes (Reaction → Review → Anticipation → Decision).
Sequences stack scenes/sequels. (Escalate→ Metabolize → Torque).
Acts: String sequences (Torque → Climax).
Story: The largest dramatic unit of 3 to 5 Acts (Culminates in catharsis).
Torque happens at the sequence level, just under Acts. Scenes escalate tension, sequences torque it, Acts release it.
Torque in A Good Man: Sequence as Moral Funnel
O’Connor doesn’t kill for shock. She kills to reveal what was always inside—the grandmother’s false performative faith. Each scene compounds her need to be seen as moral until she can’t pretend anymore. That cumulative twist is pure torque.
She begins aiming for control, unfolds manipulations—lying, cat-smuggling—and centers each moment on believing. And as each scene escalates, the pressure turns her inside out.
When the Misfit appears, tension is expected. But what binds us is how O’Connor structures the collapse. The grandmother doesn’t just panic. She unravels, structurally:
The grandmother pleads. He sees through her. She resorts to sentiment. He deflects. Then comes her final admission—“You’re one of my own babies.” It isn’t frantic. It’s a soft, dark unraveling—her façade dropped, her belief opened—and then she dies.
We feel the catharsis because we’ve walked with her through that twist. The story didn’t just escalate—it turned her. Her final act of recognition purges pretense, exposing her soul as the story’s moral center. That is craft.
When The Misfit arrives, we expect violence. But what O’Connor delivers is twisting collapse.
Every scene builds invisibly toward the final sequence that delivers rupture, exposure, and catharsis.
Goal: The grandmother pursues control and moral authority.
Obstacle: Her family indulges her but subtly resists.
Escalation: Her manipulations—route lie, cat smuggle—compound into the car crash. Each scene is structurally sound in itself but also tightening the moral frame.
Sequel: She freezes in the moment after the crash—emotionally unprocessed, guilty, still lying.
Turn: With the Misfit, she shifts. She stops performing and reaches into moral truth: “one of my own babies.” That moment exposes her belief construct, and ruptures her ego—it’s structural torque. And there is the catharsis.
Case Study: Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
Few writers know Rite of Passage anymore, but it's a Nebula-winning SF novel published in 1968. It’s about Mia Havero, a teenage girl raised aboard a giant spaceship. At fourteen, she must undergo a month-long Trial on a harsh colony world—testing her survival, values, and ability to become an adult.
Here’s how torque plays out:
Goal: Mia wants not just to survive—but to prove moral and intellectual worth.
Obstacle: The wild planet’s dangers—and her own emerging prejudices—political assumptions.
Escalation: She methodically survives attacks and hunger, but realizes the assumptions she brought with her don’t hold.
Sequels: In silent nights, she replays moral choices—racism (“mudeaters”), the justification of violence on foreign worlds Reactor.
Turn: She emerges, not just intact, but transformed: she rejects her culture’s ethnocentrism and commits to new moral ground. Her Trial ends not in survival, but in self-fracture and re-orientation.
Her victory isn't physical—it’s moral. That torque turns her just like the grandmother, and the story erupts with catharsis.
How To Build Torque In Your Writing
If you want genuine catharsis:
Write escalated scenes with clear goals, obstacles, and meaningful escalation.
Use sequels to let your character reflect—not wander.
Stack them deliberately into sequences, aiming for a twist of belief or exposure at the end.
End the sequence with rupture or exposure, so the reader feels the shift—not has to pull it out.
When you do, your reader doesn’t just turn the page. They become the character—for a moment. That connection is catharsis. That connection is craft. That connection is why A Good Man Is Hard to Find endures.
Want to learn the design of torque sequences?
Download the Torque Development Guide for escalation patterns, sequence scaffolding, and the structural tools to write story—not just plot.
Want to see what I’m explaining in action?
You can read Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find here.
