Shape of a Tale; Turning Point
Everything is about to change.
Well, in a story at least. The introduction brought the audience into the world, and exploration let them learn and build a connection to the story world, but now it’s time to focus in on the plot.
The main idea about the turning point is it creates a noticeable shift in the characters goals. Something happens in the turning point that opens the path toward the stories resolution, or at least makes the heroes aware of it.
The way this usually plays out is to split the turning point into two segments which mimic the scene/sequel pattern I mentioned in the previous post of this series. So let me take a quick detour to outline what that pattern is and why I’m a huge fan of it.
Scenes & Sequels
This is a technique I first learned about from watching some talks from Jim Butcher, and was covered more in Fantasy Fiction Formula by Butcher’s own teacher Deborah Chester.
First there’s a scene of action. The hero has an immediate goal, like “get out of this room alive”, and an obstacle, like “this room is full of ninja’s”. The scene is all about action, the character might have an occasional thought or reaction in the moment but the immediate goal is pressing enough that they can’t dwell on anything. Adrenaline is pumping, that shuriken to the shoulder might hurt but all the hero can do is push it from their mind for now.
The sequel then - literally in this case “the bit that comes after” - is the opposite. It gives focus to the characters emotional reactions and processing time. First immediate gut impulses, like “holy crap I just survived a bunch of ninja’s and my shoulder is on fire!”. Then more rational reflection, like “That burning is because I have a shuriken sticking out of me, I’m otherwise ok, why did ninja’s attack me?”. The sequel then ends with the characters making a choice that sets a new immediate goal, like “I should find a doctor to patch up this shoulder, and then find out why ninja’s were after me”.
The Big Middle Event
Another technique I learned from reading Butchers advise like an obsessed madman which plays heavily into this overall structure. A middle event, some easily identifiable moment in the midpoint of the story that acts as an external turning point for the stories world. It could be one side launching an all out attack on the other. It could be the heroes think they’ve cornered the bad guy and won, but that’s exactly what the villain wanted.
It can be anything really, but what makes this different from the previous exploration scenes or skirmish battles with the enemy is the opportunity for complete victory. Going in, the characters need to believe this is an opportunity to completely resolve the story. The audience will be savy enough to know the heroes will still fail here, but the closer it seems the heroes are to winning the more satisfying it will be in the end.
The closer to victory the heroes can get at this point, before missing out on it, and the harder they’ve had to work to get there, the more power the rest of the story will have. Assuming it stays plausible that is - going too far and making the heroes sudden defeat feel forced for the plot will undermine everything.
Rock Bottom
Of course, the story isn’t done yet. So it’s not the finale. Something goes wrong, horribly wrong, and sends the heroes to their lowest point. Hitting rock bottom is then what triggers the internal turning point, where the heroes turn themselves around. This is usually in the form of some realization, or reminder that there’s still one last hope. Often this low point is kept pretty short or skimmed over, because nobody really wants to spend too much time watching the hero wallow in pity. Skipping it entirely is extremely rare though, and it tends to be something that fans pick on as odd afterwards - how many jokes have you seen about how quickly Luke and Leia seemed to get over Obi-Wan’s death and Alderaan’s destruction before being back in the action?
You can see how the scene/sequel technique plays out on a larger scale here. A particularly big event happens that likely takes up several scenes if not multiple chapters to play out, and it’s followed by it taking an emotional toll on the characters and them dealing with that fallout. Done badly this can end up feeling like they’re just moping around, but done well it gives weight to the story and makes the last two phases really hit like they should.
The moment of reprieve
Something that isn’t always included in these sequences but makes a big difference when it is, is to give the hero a chance to walk away after hitting rock bottom.
In a lot of cases when this is done, it’s also used to show how much they’ve hit that low point. The characters actually do give up and return home for a time after licking their wounds. They might get news of something happening, or another character might come along to find them. But where in the introduction events may have conspired to give them no other option, at this point, there’s nothing that can force the hero back into action. It has to be them making a choice.
If they haven’t actually left the fight, they should be presented an opportunity to do so. They encounter someone who can give them a ride to safety. Or one of the other heroes IS taking the chance to leave and offers for them to come with. Or they’ve reached safety could just stay there, while others charge off into the final battle. It could even be the villain themselves offering a truce, telling them if they stay out of it from now on they’ll be left alone.
It doesn’t need to be a difficult choice. Hell, the character doesn’t even need to be consciously aware of it, though I’d say it works best if there’s at least one mention of “you could just stop here you know”. Just a situation where it’s clear to the audience that the hero doesn’t personally have to keep going at this point, but is choosing to do so.
The reason to give the hero this opportunity to just walk away is to enforce their own agency. Giving them a chance to quit shows that this isn’t the only path available to them at this point, but it’s the one they’re deciding to take. It might be a moment that forces them to reconsider their own why, and maybe find new resolve. It might be a moment of profound character growth. Might be they made that choice back at the start and now they’re insulted at the suggestion they wouldn’t see it through. Mostly, it’s just to highlight that the hero is taking charge of events from here onwards.
It also gives the audience a moment to catch their breath. The turning point is a moment of emotional whiplash most of the time, going from a high peak of “they might actually pull this off” to the lowest point of the whole story. Having a scene or two after the characters have dealt with their grief and started to regroup, where everyone can catch their breath for a moment before the excitement kicks in for the next sequence of events, isn’t a bad idea. It doesn’t matter how good the climax of the story is if the audience is too emotionally fatigued to keep up.
So to recap. After introducing and then exploring the world, something happens that gives the heroes an opportunity to resolve the story now, an external turning point. They fail, and hit their lowest point, driving an internal turning point. Then they have to make an active choice to keep things going or give up.
Naturally, the heroes will make the choice to keep going - there’s a story to be told after all. Which brings this phase of the story to an end and dives straight into the next one.
