How To NAIL Your Story's Midpoint
Plot Twist!
You've reached the middle of your book!
If you've made it this far, it means you're serious about this story and you have the grit to follow through. And if you wrote a strong setup (first chapter, hook, inciting incident) you should have plenty of story fuel to carry you, your characters, and the conflict through the middle with flying colors.
This is where it's extremely important to pay attention to character development and internal conflict. You don't want to write 'filler' (pointless scenes where nothing moves forward) here, and you REALLY don't want to lose the reader's interest with a weak midpoint.
But what separates a strong midpoint from a weak one? Is it just luck? Or do people throw these terms around randomly, because the whole thing is a joke?
Well, it's not a joke, and there are ways to make sure that your midpoint is more than just 'stuff happening'. Here are my favorite tricks - the ones I use to keep the reader from flipping to the last chapter.
The Plan Goes Haywire
Yeah, THAT plan. The stupid plan the MC cooked up in last week's post. We knew it was going to backfire at some point, because it's a ramshackle plan rooted in fear and a skewed worldview. It was doomed to fall apart from the beginning.
This is where the fun begins.
You get to decide how far your characters get with their bad plan; I like to lead them on for quite a while, letting them think this is actually going to work (the audacity!) Sometimes they even get close to what they think is success.
THAT'S when things take a sharp left turn.
New Information
Here's the thing: Your plot twist doesn't have to be a physical disaster, like a horrific car accident, or the death of a side character (although, I mean, what are side characters for?) What it DOES have to do is cause a shift in the MC's outlook and main goal. In order for this to happen, the plot twist needs to matter deeply to the MC and make them realize just how stupid their first plan was. In fact, it's better to have a seemingly subtle midpoint in which the MC realizes they're falling for someone they used to hate, than an explosion in which only the Dispensable Side Character is injured or killed.
For instance:
Main Character is on a rescue mission with a large team. MC has determined that the best way to succeed is to omit some of the *ahem* more gruesome details about where they're actually going. This gets increasingly harder, until finally someone finds out the truth and tells the whole team. After a heated argument, the team abandons MC. MC is forced to realize that while this mission is important on a personal level, they were going about it the wrong way.
Or another example:
Character A's plan has already fallen to shambles, as we knew it would. Character B approaches with dire news: The villain/antagonistic force is gaining strength, and is much closer than they first thought. Character A flips out and starts putting together a new plan, one based on stopping the villain.
Either way, something changes. Something raises the stakes. I know these are pretty vague examples, but there are hundreds of ways to achieve the same end: New information changes the goal and leads to a new plan.
Betrayal
It doesn't fit into every story, but when it does - and it's done well - the betrayal trope can be SO much fun to write and it can add a layer of intensity that keeps your reader up all night. Sometimes I use a betrayal for the midpoint; other times I wait until closer to the end, leading into the 'dark night of the soul'.
In either case, the two most important things to keep in mind when writing a betrayal sequence are:
1). Add the incentive for betrayal early on. Even if you don't do a lot of foreshadowing, there should still be enough for at least some subconscious suspense. Lace it into multiple scenes so that, when your reader goes back or rereads the entire book, they go "OOOH it was there all along how did I not see that coming???"
2). Stay in deep, deep point of view with your MC. Even if the betrayal is justifiable in some way, the MC still sees it as a personal affront. So how do they react, internally as well as externally? What's going through their head as someone they trusted stabs them in the back? Are they disappointed? Livid? Devastated? A combination?
Twist Villains
On that note, let's talk about villains that don't show up until the midpoint. The ones that have been lurking in the background, frighteningly close to the MC until the moment they choose to reveal themselves. This can often be paired with the betrayal trope to give it a powerful punch. What's more gut-wrenching than a character the MC relied on turning out to be the very force they're trying to defeat?
A lot of writers think that having a twist villain means you have to keep it a total secret until: SURPRISE! I'm actually evil, muahaha! But what if. . . Hear me out here. . . You could do surprise AND suspense at the same time?
My absolute favorite twist villains are the ones that, as a reader, I can see coming but the MC can't. This is why I like to write in third person; I can add non-MC scenes that allude to a twist villain as early as I want, without letting the MC in on all the clues.
Which goes back to the suspense I talked about last week. I know there's a villain in their midst, and you know it, but the MC doesn't have any idea. So when they do find out, it's too late - and they experience utter surprise, while we get the satisfaction of feeling like we got to put all the clues together.
There are dozens of other ways to construct a good plot twist; these are just some of my favorites. No matter what genre you're writing, a strong midpoint is simply a combination of new information and personal conflict, resulting in a new (or at least slightly different) end goal.
If you found this helpful, feel free to share it with your writing buddies! Subscribe if you haven't already, so you're notified as soon as the next post comes out. And congratulate yourself! You're on to the second half of your story!
Best of luck to you on your writing journey, mate!
- Lydia
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