The first
plot point in your novel commences the beginning of Act II of the three-act structure. Act II is divided
into two parts. The first part can best be described as When the Hero Has No
Clue. The second
part is best described as The Hero Gets a Clue.
Sometimes someone will refer to the four-act structure of a novel. Chances are they are referring to the three-act structure, except that they have divided ACT II into two acts.
These two parts are separated by the midpoint of the novel. The midpoint is a pivotal event in which the hero makes a major realization or there is a breakthrough in understanding. The hero gets a clue.
I was recently watching Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. For those of you who are not familiar with the movie, Cruise plays Charlie Babbitt, a hustler in Los Angeles. Charlie’s estranged father dies and he returns to Ohio to claim his inheritance. In Ohio, Charlie is walking through his childhood home and casually mentions to his girlfriend that when he was a kid he had a make-believe character called Rain Man.
Charlie is left very little in the estate. Most of the money is left to care for an older brother, Raymond, that Charlie never knew he had (the discovery of Raymond is the first plot point). Raymond is autistic and lives in an institution. Charlie kidnaps Raymond and takes him on a road trip back to Los Angeles, hoping to get custody of Raymond and the fortune. Raymond is an autistic savant with a photographic memory and the ability to compute large numbers—an ability that provides much of the drama.
One evening in a motel room Raymond is babbling and Charlie makes a realization: Raymond is Rain Man, the make-believe character of his childhood. The grew up together until Raymond was shipped off to an institution, his father fearing that he would unintentionally harm Charlie, who was only two or three.
This realization is the midpoint. Before the realization Charlie was the Hero Without a Clue, stumbling around with a brother he never knew he had (NOTE: In the first part of Act II the hero stumbles a lot). The connection of Raymond to Rain Man opens his eyes. The hero gets a clue and it creates an emotional vulnerability he has not had in a long time. It sets in motion the rest of the events of the story, including the second plot point.
I have one other piece of advice. The farther you go into the novel, the less leeway you have to introduce new characters and facts. Major characters and plotlines should come into the story, or at least be foreshadowed, in Act I, and surely no later than the midpoint.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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