155: All About the Midpoint

 

The midpoint of your novel is a pivotal moment in the story. Learn why the midpoint is so important, what purpose it serves, and how to make sure the middle of your book doesn't stall.  

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All About the midpoint

Hi friend. Welcome back to the podcast. It feels like it's been a while that I've recorded, since I've recorded some episodes, and I don't think it has, actually, but I don't know. It just feels like I haven't done it in a few weeks. I'm at home today. I was planning to record these episodes yesterday, but when I was at the co workingspace, but Audrey, unfortunately, is home sick again. This is something before I hada kid. I heard people talk about this like friends. And when I was working corporate,I, you know, had co workers who had kids and they got sick often when they were young, and, like, I didn't fully understand how often kids get sick. It's insane. And I feel like, the first six months, I was like, that she was in daycare. I mean, I was like, okay, you know, it's fine, it's all good. But now I'm to the point where I'm like, okay, this is getting to be a lot, and it's fall. We're getting into winter. It's just like, it's gonna be this is just the season for it. She's fine. She's just got a little bit of a fever, so they sent her home yesterday.

 

So anyways, I'm here, but my amazing mother-in-law is watching Audrey today, so I get to do some work and record some episodes for you, and I'm excited to talk about the midpoint. This episode was inspired by a conversation that I was having in the novel jumpstart group. This round, we're about halfway through, which is wild. This round of it. It's an eight week program, and we were talking about mindset this week, and particularly, we talked about some things like imposter syndrome and comparison and self doubt. And we also talked about writer's block, and how there's some information that I have in an online course that they get access to about the messy middles, which is what I call it, because the middle pointof the of the novel can be hard for a lot of people.

 

It's where a lot of people can feel stuck, they can stall. They feel like they're losing the momentum that they had in the beginning. And so it can be a tricky place froma mindset perspective, and that just led me to thinking about the midpoint and how I don't think we've really talked about that as a kind of pillar of a storytelling framework on the podcast. Now there are dozens, probably hundreds of different frameworks that you can use for your novel in terms of structure, right? Different outlining methods, different approaches to telling stories that will tell you, Oh no, you have to hit this beat here. And at the 25% mark, this has to happen. And then at the 60% mark, this happens. We're not going to get into any of that here.

 

What I just want to focus on is the roughly 50% mark of your book, whether you are following something very structured that does have a lot of those beats and points that you have to hit along the way, or whether you are a complete pantser and you're just figuring out your story as you go. Either is fine. I don't follow a specific outlining structure or framework. I tried using Save the Cat for my second book, Save the Cat as a book and a way of telling stories where it is more. There's a lot more beats that you have to hit in this story. So at the 25% mark, this thing happens. 10% mark, this thing happens. 80% mark, this thing. Thing happens, etc. Sorry, if you hear Audrey fussing in the background, She's downstairs, and just not she's just really tired. Poor girl.

 

So anyways, this is going to be helpful for you, whether you are a panter or someone who follows a certain type of structure and framework. So benefits of the midpoint, the purpose of the midpoint. We're going to talk about those things. And then I'm also going to give you an example from my own writing. I'm not as familiar with like examples from books. I guess I could find some, and maybe I should have researched that before this episode. But if you want examples, I'm sure that you can just research that on Google and figure out, like midpoint of a popular book that you like to see what people have determined, as long as it's a reputable, reputable resource, obviously, what they've determined is the midpoint of the book, so that you can get some more examples. But I'm going to give you one and tell you the context to illustrate the point, after we talk about the benefits and the purpose of the midpoint.

 

Okay, so, oh, I think I just deleted my notes which, oh, there we go. Okay, number one, the midpoint. And again. When, when I say 50% it doesn't have to be exactly 50% but just roughly 50% it prevents the middle from stalling. So I mentioned momentum when it comes to mindset. Like a lot of people are really excited to write a book, they get into it. They get first 1020, 30,000 words under their belt, they're feeling good. They're feeling motivated. Ideas are flowing, and then things really like grind to a halt in the 50% mark. And that can also happen from a pacing and a plot perspective, where you have the first half of the book figured out. You've got action happening, you've got your character doing stuff, there's conflict, the story is moving along, and then the middle just kind of stalls out. It's like your car has been going, going, going, and then it just kind of peters out and stops in the middle of this intersection, right?

 

So that is something that's very common in, well, I wouldn't say very common. It's somewhat common in the manuscripts that I work on, that I edit, where I give feedback to writers that, hey, first chapters are amazing. We get into this story. Things are moving along, but things just kind of fall flat in the middle. Things get shaken up at the 50% mark, roughly the 50% mark, okay, this is really the purpose of the midpoint. Things get redirected. Your rug gets pulled out from under your main character, something big shakes up the plot.

There's a twist, etc, so something big happens. In order to continue that momentum that I mentioned, to prevent things from stalling out in your plot, this does not have to mean when I say action, twist, something shaking things up. It doesn't have to mean something earth shattering. If you are writing a thriller or a mystery or even something like fantasy, I could see it being something big, a big twist, a big reveal, a big conflict. But it doesn't have tobe. It can just be some the main character finding out something that completely throws them off the path they were on when they realize that things are not the way that they seem. So so when I say action or shaking things up, just remember that it doesn't have to be something massive in terms of action.

 

But to continue on this, my next point something to consider when we talk about shaking out the plot and all of that, the stakes needs to be raised for your character. So I think it's in the W outline, which is an outline that I actually tried for the book that I just finished writing in 30 days a couple years ago. I had the idea for this book, and I found the W outline, and I did some TikTok videos about it, and I even did a podcast episode about it, I believe, a couple years ago, talking about the structure. And I liked the W outline in theory because it was more simple. It wasn't a very structured outlining process, which does not work for me, I have discovered, but I ended up not using it.

 

So anyways, I think it's the W outline where they talk about, okay, so your character is, or maybe it's not the W outline. I might be falsely attributing that. Anyways, your character, if you're watching the YouTube video, you can see my hand kind of moving up here, but it's like your character from the opening pages tothe 50% mark, your main character might have been on an upward trajectory, right? Things are going well. They're moving along. They're accomplishing the thingthat they want. Everything's going well. Some tension points, obviously you still need to have conflict in the first 50% but like overall, things are, things are going well for them.

 

50% mark hits and completely flips that so that now, after the 50% mark, my hands going down in a downward trajectory, right? Things are suddenly just not going to go well for your character. It's going to be obstacle after stumbling block after sabotage, just things are not going well for them. Okay? Now, the opposite can also be true, where maybe your main character starts out pretty high, or, I'm sorry, pretty low, and things are really not going well for them. They're struggling inthe early chapters. They're getting thrown curve ball after curve ball after curve ball, and then they get to the 50% mark, and that downward trajectory they were on suddenly reverses. And then around the 50% mark, things start to get better and better and better, and they progress upwards. Does not mean it's smooth sailing after the 50% mark.

 

Again, just like the opposite, there has to be conflict in the second half of the book.They're still approaching the climax. It's just that in terms of of how your character is progressing, things are overall getting better. So you can think about one of those two options in terms of your characters. I have approached this with my main characters, and stuff that I've written differently, I will have some main characters where things seem pretty good, like it's a slight trajectory upwards, like things aren't great, but like, yeah, they're moving along, accomplishing things whatever, and then the 50% mark hits, and things really go downhill.

 

Or with this book that I just finished writing, it was interesting because I had three point of view characters, and so I gave each of my three characters a different trajectory. So I've had two characters who were starting off and things were pretty good. They were on kind of a high. Things were going really well. They were excitedfor their plan. They had a lot of motivation to work towards something. And then around the 50% mark, things just go haywire, right? And then I had one character, my third point of view character, who things started out really shitty for her and continued to be shitty for her until the 50% mark. And then she kind of, like, pickedherself up and like, things just got a little bit better. Now it's a thriller.

 

There's still tension, there's still suspense. None of these characters emerge as unscathed from the things that happen, but it's just that things were looking a littlebit more, slightlymore rosy for her, until the end, when she finds out some information that throws her, you know, throws her a huge curveball in the form of atwist. But you know, you got to do that in a book. You got to do that in a thriller. Okay, so I'm going to give you an example now of a midpoint from the book. My book called I Love you, Miss you, that I wrote that was out on submission to publishers to hopefully get published, and then we pulled it, and it's not back out yet, but I'm hoping it will be soon. I know I've been saying that for months. Y'all, it's just I don't have any updates, unfortunately. But anyways, this is a thriller, and I'm gonna give you the midpoint from the old version.

 

So when I wrote this book, it was about a podcaster. It was a woman named Jamie, who was late 20s, and she lived in Atlanta, and she had a podcast for millennials, that was like her job, right? And she was part of a sorority. She grew up in Georgia, in a small college town, and she went to that college, was in a sorority, and some things went down. Someone died, and so now, years later, she gets an opportunity to go investigate that same sorority for some other things that have been happening. So she goes to this town, she investigates, she's recording this sorority president, following her around, trying to, kind of, it's like half exposing, buthalf just, you know, putting a microscope on, like, what's going What is it really like to be a sorority in this day and age. What is it? What is the function of it? And just profiling this particular sorority right now, it's a thriller.

 

There are twists, so obviously, there are things that the point of view character, my main character, doesn't know this podcast hosts. There's stuff going on behind the scenes. Someone has a revenge scheme against her for some things that happened in the past. It's yeah. So anyways, things are going pretty well for Jamie,like she's recording, she's managing to kind of be back in the same sorority house that she was in all those years ago. She's feels like she feels like she's handling it well. She's doing her job. They're getting a lot of good footage for the podcast, a lot of good tape, and things are going pretty well for her right then around the 50% mark, things go downhill fast because someone ends up dead. This is, like a classic example in a thriller or suspense or a mystery, that someone there's a body found at the midpoint, because it shakes things up. Again.

 

I talked earlier about the spectrum of like, yes, you can have something big happenin terms of action, but it doesn't have to be. Finding a body is a great, great way todo it. So they she thinks that she's done recording the podcast. She thinks she's off on her way to Atlanta. She's like, job well done. Pats herself on the back. Then she gets a call to find out there's been a body discovered, and she has to go back into the sorority, back into investigate to figure out what happened. And then everything falls apart. Everything unravels. The stakes get higher. It's it's just things could really go downhill for her, poor girl. So that's an example of a midpoint where things are going pretty well for her. Something big happens at the 50% mark, and then boom, things really start to go downhill.

 

This big event, this finding this body, helps to prevent the middle of the book from feeling like it lags and there's really not much happening, because this changes everything. To have this person die, and for Jamie to have to go back into this environment. It's not, it's like the story's not done yet for her. Now, that's the old version. I had to take out the podcast completely, because the reason we sent it out to a round of editors and and got feedback that there were too many books about podcasts on the market, so unfortunately, we had to pull it or not had to, butdecided to pull it, and I made some changes. So the podcast is no longer in the book. So I don't want to share too much about the new version, because I'm hoping, fingers crossed someday might be published, and obviously I'll be sharing more about it then. But yeah, so that's, that's the old version, kind of the midpoint of that. And like I said, if you want some more examples, you. Help you understand this.

 

I'm sure that there's there are resources online that can give you examples. If you want to look at classic books that you love, that you feel like you You know well, even story structure. Books like save the cat. Save the cat has a ton of examples. I can't remember if they talk about the midpoint specifically, but I'm surethey do. Maybe they don't even call it the midpoint. Maybe they call it something else, but that's an option too. To check that out, even if you don't use all of the other structure, like allof the points that you have to hit for your book and your characters. It might be worth looking at that to see if you want some more information or examples of the midpoint. So this is essential again.

 

Let me know if y'all have if you want, if you want me to do, like, a more mindset focused episode about the midpoint, or, like, not even the midpoint necessarily, butjust the middle of the book. Let me know. I think that might be a good follow up. Maybe I can do a part two in a couple of weeks about the mindset portion of it. Because, again, like I mentioned, there are some tricky things that can come up with the mindset, because it's so exciting to have gotten 50% through, but then it can feel like, oh shit, I still have half a book left. That was my experience with my first book. I got close to halfway through, and then realized I didn't know what to do with one of my point of view characters. I had initially planned it as three point of view and then I was like, I don't know what to do with this person. Nothing fits, and I don't know how this book ends. And so I spiraled and put it down for a while when I reached the halfway mark, or almost halfway mark.

 

So that was really challenging. So anyways, maybe we can do a mindset focused episode in December about the midpoint, because this will come out. Yeah, maybe that can happen in December. So I hope this is helpful as you're thinking about themidpoint and how to shake things up and raise the stakes and make things messy and complicated for your characters. I mean, we just, you know, we can't make things too easy for them. We really gotta. We really gotta throw a lot of wrenches in in their path, because it makes for a good story. All right, thank you for listening. Hope this was helpful, and I will see you next week.

 

 

Katie Wolf