LISTEN UP, you pathetic recruits. You seem to be GREAT at coming up with excuses. Creative and imaginative--you wimps. CHANNEL THAT into your book instead. Don't write me notes about why you couldn't write. Just do it.
Today we're talking about the Midpoint of your novel, or the scene I call its soul.
I never thought about this concept. It wasn't mentioned in most of my writing books. So I have to credit Alexandra Sokoloff for telling me about it on her blog and in her corresponding book. Our approach to the subject is different from hers, but I want y'all to read her informative post on the subject--and maybe her book. I'll put a link to her blog down below and suggest you read that post as homework--YES, Sunflowers, you get to do homework in boot camp.
You're in the second half of your second act and your characters have become real people to your readers. You've taken them out of their comfort zone and banged their conflicting goals up against each other. The backstory has peeped out between their actions, and the reader is fully engaged in this story. You're setting up a final confrontation in Act 3--but we need to do something else first.
We need to LAUNCH our readers into that river-rapid stream-of-events that will carry them to the end of your book. And we have to do it in a way that yanks their heartstrings.
That's right, Flowers, a good book should wrench your readers' gut--they were looking for that when they first read your cover blurb. It doesn't matter if this is deep, interpersonal novel material or lightweight, make-you-roll-on-the-floor humor, your book needs to touch their insides. If they want shallow, logical, or good-looking drama, they'll watch TV. (Yep, you can send me hate mail on that.)
So how the HECK are you supposed to do that?
Think about it.
You've built a connection between the reader and your characters--now utilize it. With stealth and planning, SHANGHAI those readers. COMMANDEER their blood vessels.
Do it by slamming your Lead's inner goals--their literary soul--against their need to confront the main plot problem of your book. In my case, that's solving a murder mystery. In a YA, it might be putting on the prom. Whatever that main problem, it has to have at least one head-on collision with the Lead's innermost goal. Maybe it's a romantic conflict, the potential lover is a major suspect or got himself banned from that prom. So how's the Lead supposed to open up her soul when her soul-opener is either a possible killer or a no-show? Maybe your realtor's million-dollar customer looks a lot like a drug lord--and the realtor would rather sell the house first--BEFORE figuring out if he's the thug who sold smack to her son--but can she profit off a killer?
You've got to start this collision right now--in the middle to second half of Act 2. It can start slow or it can go ahead and EXPLODE--since explosions are fun--but it HAS to get started. And the scene where it starts should blow away all sense of normalcy--your readers should NOT be able to set the book down.
At least not without getting furious with the person who made them set the book down.
And not unless they're constantly THINKING about your book, just yearning for that moment when they can get back to the action.
So give us a scene that WOWS us at the same time it sneaks into the reader's cardiovascular pump to execute clandestine maneuvers in their arteries. That WOW factor is a diversion. BIG things are happening in the main plot. We're nearing the major break, setback or turning point of the second window. This Midpoint scene is like a dramatic right jab to the chin just before a brick left-punch to the groin. They're getting senseless and their face starts bleeding. They'll get breathless. They will NEED to keep reading--to find out what happens. Then we'll hit them with the second window.
In the meantime, we're working on the insides at the same time that we're numbing their outer senses. Your Midpoint scene might be beautiful, horrible, stinky, or overwhelmingly huge--to distract our senses while we start our real work:
--the undercover infiltration of the soul.
Now get out of my sight and write it.
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