So Excited

I am strangely excited about this but I have written the midpoint for  my work in progress. I am

ridiculously excited about this.

The midpoint of your story has to be explosive. Not necessarily literally explosive, but something your main character cannot recover from. It's a bit like the Step into Act 2, or the First Plot Point. There is no going back from the midpoint. 

Your hero should face a false defeat or a false victory. It has to be something that changes the mood of your novel from exploration to action. Story Engineer calls this Wanderer to Warrior. Instead of learning about the Act 2 world, your hero needs to be doing something about it. They need to be taking action, although ultimately, their flaw is still holding them back because they don't solve their flaw until the ah-ha moment in Act 3. 

My hero has just suffered a false defeat. She has been promised her A-Story goal. It's what she thinks she needs to be happy. All she has to do to get everything she's ever wanted is to not act on her flaw, the B-Story goal. 

Well, my hero acts on her flaw and because of her actions, she misses out on her A-Story goal, she disappoints her friends, she reveals some fairly chunky secrets she's been hiding and she learns some information she'd rather not know. 

If this isn't changing from wanderer to warrior, I don't know what is. There's no going back from this midpoint. She has literally destroyed everything because my midpoint is literally explosive. 

It's not perfect and it's not the polished product by any means but I think I'm so excited about this because I know where my story is going now. It has a good shape. There's a lot of editing to be done. I've already decided I want to move a scene forward in the book. 

But now, I think my main character is relatable. I think (hope, with fingers and toes crossed) that when a reader reads the midpoint, they'll be telling her not to do it. They'll be telling her to follow the A-Story goal, not to act on her flaw. 

At 37,000 words, my midpoint is waaaay too late for it to be the actual middle. I might have to move some scenes later in the book, change some scenes to paragraphs. 74,000 words (which it would be if this was the numerical middle) is a bit long for debut middle grade novel, even if it is a science fiction. I'm working on it though. 

But hey! Midpoint! Yay!