Where Do Key Scenes Go?
“Inciting incident.” “Midpoint.” “All is lost.”
Maybe you’ve heard of these key scenes that must be in your novel, but do you know where they go?
Months ago, in revision hell, I sent my work-in-progress to a writer friend. When I got her comments back, I saw that she’d made a note: “Isn’t it a little late for the meet-cute to be happening?”
She was right, of course. But then I had a thought. Even Save the Cat uses percentages to indicate how far into your book key events should happen.
Could I use the scroll bar on my Word document to make sure my key incidents were in the right place?
Sure enough, this is a tip I’ve given many clients since using it for my own story.
Scroll down to about 25% into your novel; this should be your inciting incident, or the moment where your character starts their journey.
Scroll to 50% in; this is the midpoint of your story, or the moment where, as Jessica Brody writes in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, “[t]he hero experiences either a false victory or false defeat, the stakes of the story are raised, the A [the external] and B [the internal] stories intersect in some way” (50).
75% in? The “all is lost” moment: “Your hero must be worse off than they were at the start of the book,” Brody writes (60).
The next time you’re reading, or even watching a movie, pause and note how far along you are when something pivotal happens. I’ll give you an example from the Netflix movie “To All the Boys: Always and Forever” (which, of course, is an adaptation from the book, but I watched the movie an embarrassing number of times to get inspiration for my own book!).
SPOILER ALERT. You’ve been warned. Also—watch the movie.
25% in: Lara Jean, who has been waiting to hear back from Stanford, whose hopes and dreams are pinned on getting in, finds out she was rejected. Cue the montage of her future disappearing. Now, viewers wonder, what will she do?
50% in: Lara Jean finds out she’s gotten into NYU! Which, she’s discovered, is what she really desires. She has to have a conversation with Peter. Note how this discovery shifts her story from wants to needs: she wants this future where she and Peter go to the same, or nearby schools, but she needs to discover herself on her own terms in New York.
75% in: And, of course, what could be more “all is lost” then a breakup?
Hopefully, this tip is helpful when you are writing or revising, especially if you are feeling as clueless about plotting as I was! You’ll even notice when you’re reading that you start to look for these key incidents as you near those markers.