Timing Plot Points 101
Structuring Your Novel: Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)
Plot points and their placement is a subject for a much more lengthy exploration (such as in my book Structuring Your Novel or this series), but for now, here’s a quick overview of the major plot points within your story’s structure, as well as their optimal placements.
1. The First Act (in which you’ll introduce characters, settings, and stakes) will take up the first 25% of your book.
2. The Hook belongs in your first chapter.
3. The Inciting Event belongs halfway through the First Act, around the 12% mark.
4. The First Plot Point will occur at the 25% mark in your book.
5. The First Half of the Second Act (in which your character will react to the First Plot Point) will span from the 25% mark to the 50% mark in your book.
6. The First Pinch Point will occur around the 37% mark.
7. The Midpoint will occur at the 50% mark in your book.
8. The Second Half of the Second Act (in which your protagonist will begin to take definitive action) will span from the 50% mark to the 75% mark in your book.
9. The Second Pinch Point will occur around the 62% mark.
10. The Third Act will span from the 75% mark to the end.
11. The Third Plot Point will occur at the 75% mark in your book.
12. The Climax will begin around the 90% mark in your book.
13. The Resolution belongs in your last chapter(s).
From the book Structuring Your Novel: Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)
If you’re unfamiliar with any of these important moments within the structure of your story, I highly recommend taking the time to learn about them. You can read more in my book Structuring Your Novel.
How Precise Must the Timing of Plot Points Be?
This is where structure can get sticky. In screenwriting, each of these plot points must be timed down to the minute. This makes movies a wonderful tool for learning and studying structure, since we can spot all the major structural moments simply by keeping an eye on the time. Divide a movie’s total running time in quarters, and you’ll know exactly where the major plot points will show up.
Timing plot points within a novel or other long-form fiction is more flexible than it is in a screenplay. This opportunity for flexibility is available to novelists for a couple of reasons:
1. Novels Are Longer Than Screenplays
A 120-minute screenplay has little room for maneuverability. Every scene, every word of dialogue, and every event has to count. All these elements count in a novel too, but novelists have more room in which to explore subplots and flesh out scenes. For instance, if the Midpoint happens a couple dozen pages to either side of the 50% mark, readers probably won’t even notice, and your story won’t suffer at all.
2. A Novel’s Size and Introspective Nature Allow for More “Flow” Between Scenes
While a screenplay’s plot points often revolve around very specific and compact scenes, a novel will create long segments of scenes that build. Timing of plot points may slip to one side or the other of the suggested mark simply because they’re part of a sprawling scene segments, in which one related event snowballs into another to create that major plot point.
***
Keep the optimal timeline for your story’s structure in mind. But don’t feel as if you have to get the plot points timed down to the precise page numbers at the 25%, 50%, and 75% marks. This balance of structured fluidity is what allows us to meld our craft and our art into a novel that is truly memorable.
