September 30, 2025 • 26 mins
It's the hinge your entire story turns on—and one of the hardest story elements to identify and write.
Can I be honest? I struggled with turning points for years.
I knew they were essential. They’re the moment when everything changes. The moment that forces the character to face a crisis choice. The moment that reveals what the story is really, at its heart, about.
And yet . . . I couldn’t see them.
I found so many things that weren’t the turning point. I found inciting incidents, and midpoints, and climaxes.
The turning point, though? It eluded me.
Until I learned a simple framework that finally, finally unlocked them for me.
That framework:
- Reveals why the turning point matters so dang much within the story
- Ties the turning point perfectly to the inciting incident, climax, and every other element of story
- Is objective and straightforward, making it clear to measure (no more guessing at turning points based on gut feeling!)
- Is wonderfully simple (it’s kind of incredible how simple it is, considering how tough turning points are to spot)
That framework marked my turning point in the way I edit turning points.
If you have ever struggled to figure out what the heck the turning point is in a story, well, you’re not alone.
I hope this framework gives you a breakthrough. It certainly did for me!
Further listening:
- Inciting incident (qualities & traps)
- Progressive complications (qualities)
- Progressive complications (traps)
- Protagonist’s goal
- Content genres
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This story element is the momentthat changes everything.
(00:04):
The critical event.
Every part of your story hasbeen building up to the
catastrophe that sends yourcharacter reeling into their
calamitous.
All is lost crisis.
What is the turning point?
Or let's drop the jeopardyhomage and be honest here.
What the heck is the turningpoint?
(00:25):
It's fundamental to every unitof story.
It's the fulcrum between ourpremise and our ending, and yet
it's incredibly hard to see,ridiculously hard.
I really thought I knew whatstories were, and now I think I
know nothing at all level hard.
If you have ever struggled withturning points, identifying
(00:46):
them, writing them, figuring outhow to make them hit with all
the oomph you want your readersto feel.
Well, I have too.
I avoided creating this episodefor the better part of three
years because turning points arejust that tricky.
But I have good news.
There's a framework that reallydoes unlock the turning point.
(01:08):
It enables you to spot them inthe stories you read.
To write them in your novels andscenes and to pack them with an
emotional punch that yourreaders won't be able to stop
thinking about.
In this episode, I'm going toshare that framework with you
and maybe just, maybe this willbe your turning point to finally
(01:29):
grasp the turning point.
Only one way to find out.
(02:21):
Welcome to your next draft.
Can I be honest?
I struggled with turning pointsfor a really long time.
I have been studying the sixelements of story for eight
years now.
I was taught in week one whatturning points are and how and
why they're central to thestory, and I was given a bunch
of novels, movies, scenes andeven songs, and challenged to
(02:44):
find the turning point, whichresulted in some fascinating
debates.
Fill a room with story grideditors and hand us a story to
analyze and we'll discuss anddebate it for hours.
And yet I still found turningpoints really hard to see.
I was taught that the turningpoint is A, the moment the value
(03:05):
shifts, hence the name, thevalue turns.
B, the final progressivecomplication, which forces the
protagonist to face a crisischoice and see the most
disruptive event in the scene orstory.
So I would look for the valueshift, but I found that there
(03:25):
are two values that shift aninternal value and an external
value.
The external value shift is theshift in the action and the
world around the character andthe internal value is the shift
in the way the character thinksand feels.
And those don't shift at thesame time.
One tends to shift at theturning point and one tends to
(03:45):
shift in the crisis and climax.
Sometimes it's the externalvalue shift that happens first
and causes the internal valueshift, and sometimes it's the
internal value shift thathappens first and causes the
external value shift.
So I found a lot of values and alot of moments when they shifted
and some of those were theturning points, and some of
those were the crisis or climax.
(04:07):
So that strategy helped me some,but I still struggled with
turning points.
So I tried a new tactic.
I looked for the crisis first.
if the turning point is thefinal progressive complication
before the crisis.
The event that forces thecharacter to make a crisis
choice.
Then finding the crisis wouldlead me to the turning point.
(04:29):
I would spot the crisis and thenI'd look for the very last thing
that happened right before thecharacter made their choice.
And this works for scenes.
Scenes are such a small scale,one to 3000 words.
There's often not a lot ofdistance between the turning
points and the crisis.
Sometimes I'd be able to markthe turning point as precisely
as a specific sentence, the oneimmediately before the character
(04:53):
is racked within decision.
But this doesn't work so well onthe level of the entire novel.
The reality is at that scale, alot of stuff happens in between
the turning point and theclimax.
The turning point happens around70% through the story, And the
climax happens around 90%through the story, sometimes
even later.
(05:13):
That means a full 20% of thestory lies in between the
turning points and the climax,and only a little bit of that is
the crisis, and it's not alwayspercent 72, the sentence right
after the turning point.
I believe that this is one ofthe reasons why I got so good at
scenes while I continued towrestle with the global story
for years.
(05:35):
But all wasn't lost.
I had a third tactic.
The disruption, I envisioned theturning point as a ball of fire
dropped into the seam.
I remember Sean Coy explainingit once as a fear, P-H-E-R-E, a
ball of energy, a unit of powerthat jolts the seam.
(05:55):
And I took that concept and madeit super literal in my mind.
There's a scene from the movieChildren of Men, which we
studied at that story gridtraining.
If you've been around your nextdraft for a while, you've heard
me reference it before.
In that scene, a car full ofpeople is driving down a forest
road.
They're tense, but they'refriendly and laughing, and then
(06:16):
a car that is on fire rolls downthe hill to their right and
stops in the middle of the roadblocking their path, and a group
of attackers runs out of theforest and surrounds the car.
It's an ambush and they cannotgo forward anymore.
They literally can't.
They have to literally turnaround and literally run the
other way.
(06:36):
They are also not friendly andlaughing anymore.
They are terrified and they'rebeing shot at, and one of the
people in the car is hit anddies.
That visual is what's playing inmy mind.
When I envision the turningpoint.
I'm looking for the moment inthe story that feels like a car
on fire rolling into theprotagonist's path.
Something so enormous andcatastrophic and deadly that
(06:59):
they cannot continue forward,but must make a complete 180 and
sprint in the oppositedirection.
This is an energetic sense abouta story.
What feels in your gut mostchaotic, most disruptive, most
challenging, and it does help.
One of the things that I watchfor when I'm giving writers
(07:21):
feedback is, does the turningpoints of a scene feel that
level of disruptive?
Or does it feel like a weaklittle whisper?
A gentle nudge blinking.
You'd miss it escalating.
The turning point to this levelof chaos goes a long way towards
making every scene unputdownableand.
But there were some pitfallswith this approach.
(07:43):
It didn't work 100% of the time.
As my editor friends Brandon Srapoints out every time I bring up
this scene, our room full ofstory grid editors spends at
least an hour debating whetherthat moment when the car on fire
blocks the road is indeed theturning point, or whether it's
actually the inciting incidents.
(08:03):
And that's the challenge withmeasuring the turning points by
which moment is the mostdisruptive.
Sometimes I'd find the mostdisruptive thing, and it would
be the climax, and sometimes itwould be the inciting incident,
and sometimes it would be themidpoint.
All of those moments are meantto be disruptive.
That's not a mistake inmeasurement.
(08:24):
They weren't wrong to be sointense, and I wasn't wrong to
note how intense they were, butthat intensity alone, that level
of ball on fire disruptionwasn't enough to ensure that I
could correctly identify theturning point every time.
Also, I haven't said it in awhile, but this is one of my
(08:44):
mantras.
I'm all about making thesubjective objective and
analyzing a story based on a gutfeeling about its degree of
likeness to a ball of fire isnot objective.
I'll say it again.
All of these measurements helpedme master scenes.
With just these three ways ofthinking about turning points, I
was able to build a whole scenerevision philosophy that has
(09:07):
served me and all my writersvery, very well.
But I still felt a gap aroundturning points, especially on
the level of the big picturestory.
I was still missing something,still getting something
confused, Still identifying avariety of ball on fire, fears
that turned out to be othermoments playing different roles
in the story.
(09:28):
I have to imagine that Sean feltthis too, this gap in precision.
And if there's one thing thatSean can't stand, it is a gap in
precision because in the lastfew years, he's articulated
another way to measure theturning point.
It goes like this.
The turning point is the momentthat makes it clear it is
(09:49):
impossible for the protagonistto achieve their goal of X
without Y.
What does that mean?
Let's break it down.
Remember, the inciting incidentis a disruption to the
protagonist that sets them onthe pursuit of a goal.
That goal can be articulated asthe protagonist wants X without
(10:12):
Y.
They want to get something andthey want to get that without
something else, without havingto take an action that they want
to avoid or disrupt an existingstate that they want to
preserve.
They want their cake and theywant to eat it to.
The progressive complicationsare challenges that move them
farther from their goal orassets that move them closer to
(10:33):
their goal.
Every progressive complicationescalates the conflict.
That means they raise the stakesand make the pursuit of the goal
more complicated.
even when the complications arepositive and things are going in
the protagonist's favor, thoseprogressive complications still
escalate the conflict becausethey give the protagonist more
to lose.
And that brings us to theturning point.
(10:56):
The turning point is an event orrevelation that makes it
inarguably clear.
It is not possible for theprotagonist to achieve X without
y.
X, without Y is over.
X without Y is gone.
It's possible that X without Ywas an allusion to begin with.
(11:18):
wishful thinking, ungrounded Inreality, there may be a route
where the protagonist can stillachieve X, but that route is
going to require them to do Y.
The thing they at all costs didnot want to do in order to get
it.
In all the other progressivecomplications, there still
appeared to be a viable routefor the protagonist to get X
(11:41):
without Y.
Sure, maybe there wereroadblocks, but it still seemed
possible with some optimism,grit, and dug a determination.
But the turning point utterlydestroys that hope Once the
turning point happens, there isno way for the protagonist to
get X without Y.
And so the result of the turningpoint is that the protagonist is
(12:05):
faced with a binary choice.
Now that their goal has failed,what will they choose to do
next?
They have two options.
Will they give up Y in order toget X, or will they give up X in
order to maintain?
Y.
Weighing that choice is thecrisis of the story.
(12:28):
It's what the whole entire storyis about, but more on that in a
future episode.
This framing of the turningpoint is so much more measurable
Then all the other qualities Idescribed before.
Once you identify theprotagonist's, desire their
goal, a specific conditionalGoldilocks dream of X and Y, you
(12:50):
can search for the moment when Xwithout Y is eradicated.
What happens to make itincontrovertibly clear that X
without Y is not possible?
What forces the character tomake a choice, both X and Y or
neither X nor y.
(13:11):
That's the turning point.
All those other qualities that Idescribed still hold true.
By the way, the turning point isa progressive complication.
That means that it too is achallenge to the protagonist's
goal that raises the stakes andmakes the pursuit more
complicated.
It is the final progressivecomplication.
(13:31):
Once this happens, we are nolonger in the progressive
complication space of the story,The turning point catapults us
into the crisis, and it is themost disruptive, progressive
complication where all the othercomplications were navigable.
This one is like a total systemfailure.
It is still a ball of firethrown into the story.
(13:54):
We've just gotten much morespecific about what that ball of
fire actually is.
The fire is no X without y.
The 180 degree turn is, Will youchoose to do Y to get X or
sacrifice X to preserve Y?
Which part of your goal are yougoing to abandon?
(14:15):
The turning point is also themoment when the value shifts.
But again, there's nuance hereabout the internal and external
values shifting at differentmoments.
So I have found it more usefulto imagine that the turning
point crisis and climaxaltogether are the crucible in
which both values shift.
So all the original measurementsthat I used are still useful.
(14:37):
It's the moment the valueshifts, hence the name, the
value turns.
It's the final progressivecomplication which forces the
protagonist to face a crisischoice.
And it's the most disruptiveevent in the scene.
But the master measurement, theone that I'm using now to begin
and end my analysis is this.
The turning point is the momentthat makes it clear it is
(15:01):
impossible for the protagonistto achieve their goal of X
without Y.
This is fantastic in theory,right?
But the real test is putting itto work in a story.
Lemme tell you a story of twoyoung people who fall in love
but cannot keep that lovewithout y.
The story is called Pride andPrejudice.
(15:24):
You might have heard it before.
Elizabeth Bennett's incitingincident is meeting Mr.
Darcy at a ball.
He's an extremely wealthyeligible bachelor, which makes
him a wonderful match by mostmeasurements.
But Elizabeth discovers quicklythat he's also extremely
unpleasant, proud andstandoffish.
She dislikes him immediately andjudges that despite his swoon
(15:47):
worthy wealth, he would be amiserable man to marry.
And she takes pride in herability to so quickly get a read
on him and write him offentirely.
This inciting incident kicks offher goal to marry for love
without changing her judgment ofpeople.
in fact.
At that very ball, her friendCharlotte tells her, I dare say
(16:07):
you will find him veryagreeable.
and Elizabeth's response is,heaven forbid that would be the
greatest misfortune of all tofind a man agreeable whom one is
determined to hate.
Do not wish me such an evil.
She really does not want tochange her mind.
We're going to get sharperclarity on that goal in a
moment.
(16:28):
But if you asked Lizzie rightnow, right after that ball, what
her goal is, this is what shewould be able to see exactly
what she told Charlotte.
so her goal is to marry for lovewithout changing her judgments
of people.
The goal gets a big boost whenshe meets Mr.
Wickham, a charming, handsome,agreeable man who gives her lots
(16:49):
of attention and whom she likesimmediately.
She judges him a wonderful man,and he lives up to that
splendidly.
Her goal does take a slight hitwhen Wickham stops flirting with
her in order to start flirtingwith a woman who just inherited
10,000 pounds after a relative'sdeath.
But when Elizabeth's aunt pointsout that this seems a bit like
(17:10):
gold digging, Elizabeth defendshim.
It's not a red flag, but totallyreasonable.
Her goal takes a much bigger hitat the midpoint.
When Darcy proposes much toElizabeth's astonishment, she
misjudged that one, andElizabeth rejects him.
And then Darcy delivers a letterexplaining everything that she
has misunderstood about him.
(17:31):
The letter also reveals thatWickham beneath his charming
exterior is in fact a golddigging dirt bag.
Just as everyone said, sheexclaims as she reads.
Till this moment, I never knewmyself, which shoot.
Now her judgments start tochange.
That why is starting to crack,but.
(17:54):
It's not fully cracked yetbecause now we can see what y
truly actually is.
The thing Elizabeth couldn't seeon page one.
The thing she wants to avoidisn't simply changing her mind
about people.
What she really doesn't wanna dois admit that she was wrong.
Her ex without Y actually isMarry for love without admitting
(18:19):
that she judged wrong.
While Elizabeth now sees thingsmore clearly, she's not yet
ready to admit her error in thesecond half of the story.
Elizabeth more open-minded isexamining the evidence before
her to see what's actually true.
and she's not entirely sure whatto do with what she finds.
(18:40):
She chooses not to tell herfamily what she's learned about
Wcan because he's leaving townanyway, so that problem has
solved itself, and then it'squite a surprise to discover
that Darcy is a generous andgracious host when she
accidentally runs into him atPemberley.
It seems like they could getalong pleasantly if given the
chance, but then.
(19:01):
Lydia runs off with Wickham.
It becomes public knowledge, notonly in her family, but in the
entire dang town that Wickham isin fact a dirt bag and has been
one all along, and that he'sdisgraced Lydia and by extension
all of the entire Bennettfamily.
This is our turning point X.
(19:24):
Marrying for love without y,admitting she was wrong is now
impossible.
There is no more hiding that shewas wrong.
When her wrongness is publicknowledge, there is only the
question of whether she willface it and admit it or continue
to deny reality.
And once this dam breaks thefloodgates open, she admits to
(19:47):
herself that she was wrong abouteverything.
She was wrong about Wickham.
He is trash.
She was wrong about Darcy.
He is wonderful.
She was wrong about herself.
She's fallen in love with Darcyand her unwillingness to this
point to admit her error hasplaced her family in a position
of such disgrace that it'slikely that no eligible
(20:09):
bachelor, much less Darcy willconsider her or her sisters ever
again.
So when Lady Catherine shows upon her doorstep in a rage
demanding that Elizabeth promiseshe will never marry Darcy
Elizabeth is grounded in thetruth, her own admission to
herself of her own love.
(20:30):
she refuses to take up thedefenses that she would have
jumped at at the beginning ofthe story.
That is she refuses to save herpride by telling lady Catherine
that Darcy is a jerk she wouldnever consider marrying.
and it's lady Catherine'sfoolishness to imagine that
Darcy could be a man she'd want.
In fact, she refuses to make anypromise that she won't marry
Darcey.
(20:51):
Though her heart is broken andshe considers Darcy lost to her.
She stands aligned in her truth.
She does in fact love him, andif given the chance she would
marry him.
And when Lady Catherine reportson Elizabeth's speech to Darcy
himself, it is that alignedhonesty within Elizabeth that
(21:12):
gives Darcy the hope that shemight still consider him.
and so he comes back to longborn to make things right.
And when he proposes again thistime, she accepts.
Elizabeth has now achieved hergoal, marrying for love, and
found that it was only possiblewith Y only possible by
(21:32):
admitting when she is wrong.
Did you catch the turning pointin all of that?
When Lydia runs away withWickham X, without Y becomes
impossible.
Elizabeth cannot marry for lovewithout admitting she is wrong.
The only possible path to a lovemarriage is through admitting
her wrongness to herself, to herfamily, and to Darcy.
(21:57):
And let's check that turningpoint against all our other
metrics.
Lydia runs away about 70%through the story.
Her elopement is for sure themost disruptive event in the
story in Regency England.
It's the societal equivalent ofthrowing a ball of fire into
your marriage prospect's,financial, future, and social
standing.
Lydia has just basically burntit all down.
(22:20):
It shifts a number of values.
The truth about W is hidden torevealed.
The Bennett family is respectedto disgraced.
Elizabeth and her sisters arehopeful to distraught, and
Elizabeth and Darcy are togetherto apart, and it forces
Elizabeth to her crisis choice.
Will she admit that she has beenwrong and change her judgments
(22:42):
of herself and everyone else, orwill she hold on to the
prescriptive defensive walls ofbelieving herself to be in the
right?
Which by the way, is whateveryone else in town does.
As soon as Wickham is revealedto be a dirt bag, everyone is
like, man, I knew that allalong.
I never liked that guy.
(23:03):
So the town is upholding thatprotective defensive claim to be
right, But in order for Lizzieto find love, she must choose
the other way.
She must choose why admittingshe is wrong.
So by all our othermeasurements, we can spot that
Lydia's elopement is the turningpoint, but most importantly, the
(23:26):
X without Y framework revealswhat Lydia's elopement is doing
within the story.
It shows us the exact pressurethat Turning point places on
Elizabeth, the exact choice thatshe's then forced to grapple
with in the crisis.
I hope that example helpedillustrate for you something
that can be really hard to see.
(23:47):
Like I said, right at thebeginning, turning points are
tricky.
I spent a long time getting themconfused with so many other
parts of the story before theyfinally started to click for me.
But this framework has helped metremendously, and I hope it
helps you too.
Will I win the game spot, theturning point with 100% accuracy
(24:08):
now that I'm using X without Y?
Probably not.
Story structure is so simple.
We know it in our bones, havebeen steeped in it since
childhood, and yet it is also socomplicated and nuanced that I
think I'll still be learning howit works when I studied it for
decades, certainly that was thecase for Sean.
(24:28):
He'd been studying and using andteaching the structure for 30
years before he articulated Xwithout y.
So if you still struggle to spotthe turning point in your story,
don't feel bad.
If you analyze a story one wayon Monday and you come back on
Tuesday and analyze it again andsee something different, don't
feel bad.
That is the nature of this work.
That is the nature of story.
(24:50):
I encourage you to practice byplaying around with every
measurement I've laid out here.
Pick up a story you love andchallenge yourself.
Can you spot the goal?
What is X without y?
what makes it clear that Xwithout Y is impossible?
Is that event disruptive?
Does it cause the core value ofthe story to shift?
(25:13):
Does it force the protagonistinto the core choice of the
story, both X and Y, or neitherX nor y?
If all of those things are true,then congratulations.
You found the turning point.
I have often found that Igravitate towards a goal of
being an expert without making amistake.
(25:34):
So all of those times when Itried to use my original
measurements of turning pointsand found them still missing
some layer of position werereally frustrating to me.
But being an expert withoutmaking a mistake is an illusion
if there ever was one.
And so we can all take a tipfrom Lizzie Bennett and
recognize the truth we weremissing and grow and change.
(25:55):
Realizing that X without Y isnot possible was a turning point
in my own understanding ofturning points.
Perhaps it will be for you aswell.
I have much more to say aboutturning points, where they
appear in the story, what I lookfor when I'm editing them, and
where writers fall into commontraps.
All of that will be coming infuture episodes.
(26:17):
For now, be on the lookout foreverywhere.
Protagonist must face the truththat X without Y simply is not
possible.
it's as uncomfortable as all getout to be forced to realize.
But it gives us the gift ofseeing reality clearly.
Until next time.
Happy editing.
This story element is the momentthat changes everything.
(00:04):
The critical event.
Every part of your story hasbeen building up to the
catastrophe that sends yourcharacter reeling into their
calamitous.
All is lost crisis.
What is the turning point?
Or let's drop the jeopardyhomage and be honest here.
What the heck is the turningpoint?
(00:25):
It's fundamental to every unitof story.
It's the fulcrum between ourpremise and our ending, and yet
it's incredibly hard to see,ridiculously hard.
I really thought I knew whatstories were, and now I think I
know nothing at all level hard.
If you have ever struggled withturning points, identifying
(00:46):
them, writing them, figuring outhow to make them hit with all
the oomph you want your readersto feel.
Well, I have too.
I avoided creating this episodefor the better part of three
years because turning points arejust that tricky.
But I have good news.
There's a framework that reallydoes unlock the turning point.
(01:08):
It enables you to spot them inthe stories you read.
To write them in your novels andscenes and to pack them with an
emotional punch that yourreaders won't be able to stop
thinking about.
In this episode, I'm going toshare that framework with you
and maybe just, maybe this willbe your turning point to finally
(01:29):
grasp the turning point.
Only one way to find out.
(02:21):
Welcome to your next draft.
Can I be honest?
I struggled with turning pointsfor a really long time.
I have been studying the sixelements of story for eight
years now.
I was taught in week one whatturning points are and how and
why they're central to thestory, and I was given a bunch
of novels, movies, scenes andeven songs, and challenged to
(02:44):
find the turning point, whichresulted in some fascinating
debates.
Fill a room with story grideditors and hand us a story to
analyze and we'll discuss anddebate it for hours.
And yet I still found turningpoints really hard to see.
I was taught that the turningpoint is A, the moment the value
(03:05):
shifts, hence the name, thevalue turns.
B, the final progressivecomplication, which forces the
protagonist to face a crisischoice and see the most
disruptive event in the scene orstory.
So I would look for the valueshift, but I found that there
(03:25):
are two values that shift aninternal value and an external
value.
The external value shift is theshift in the action and the
world around the character andthe internal value is the shift
in the way the character thinksand feels.
And those don't shift at thesame time.
One tends to shift at theturning point and one tends to
(03:45):
shift in the crisis and climax.
Sometimes it's the externalvalue shift that happens first
and causes the internal valueshift, and sometimes it's the
internal value shift thathappens first and causes the
external value shift.
So I found a lot of values and alot of moments when they shifted
and some of those were theturning points, and some of
those were the crisis or climax.
(04:07):
So that strategy helped me some,but I still struggled with
turning points.
So I tried a new tactic.
I looked for the crisis first.
if the turning point is thefinal progressive complication
before the crisis.
The event that forces thecharacter to make a crisis
choice.
Then finding the crisis wouldlead me to the turning point.
(04:29):
I would spot the crisis and thenI'd look for the very last thing
that happened right before thecharacter made their choice.
And this works for scenes.
Scenes are such a small scale,one to 3000 words.
There's often not a lot ofdistance between the turning
points and the crisis.
Sometimes I'd be able to markthe turning point as precisely
as a specific sentence, the oneimmediately before the character
(04:53):
is racked within decision.
But this doesn't work so well onthe level of the entire novel.
The reality is at that scale, alot of stuff happens in between
the turning point and theclimax.
The turning point happens around70% through the story, And the
climax happens around 90%through the story, sometimes
even later.
(05:13):
That means a full 20% of thestory lies in between the
turning points and the climax,and only a little bit of that is
the crisis, and it's not alwayspercent 72, the sentence right
after the turning point.
I believe that this is one ofthe reasons why I got so good at
scenes while I continued towrestle with the global story
for years.
(05:35):
But all wasn't lost.
I had a third tactic.
The disruption, I envisioned theturning point as a ball of fire
dropped into the seam.
I remember Sean Coy explainingit once as a fear, P-H-E-R-E, a
ball of energy, a unit of powerthat jolts the seam.
(05:55):
And I took that concept and madeit super literal in my mind.
There's a scene from the movieChildren of Men, which we
studied at that story gridtraining.
If you've been around your nextdraft for a while, you've heard
me reference it before.
In that scene, a car full ofpeople is driving down a forest
road.
They're tense, but they'refriendly and laughing, and then
(06:16):
a car that is on fire rolls downthe hill to their right and
stops in the middle of the roadblocking their path, and a group
of attackers runs out of theforest and surrounds the car.
It's an ambush and they cannotgo forward anymore.
They literally can't.
They have to literally turnaround and literally run the
other way.
(06:36):
They are also not friendly andlaughing anymore.
They are terrified and they'rebeing shot at, and one of the
people in the car is hit anddies.
That visual is what's playing inmy mind.
When I envision the turningpoint.
I'm looking for the moment inthe story that feels like a car
on fire rolling into theprotagonist's path.
Something so enormous andcatastrophic and deadly that
(06:59):
they cannot continue forward,but must make a complete 180 and
sprint in the oppositedirection.
This is an energetic sense abouta story.
What feels in your gut mostchaotic, most disruptive, most
challenging, and it does help.
One of the things that I watchfor when I'm giving writers
(07:21):
feedback is, does the turningpoints of a scene feel that
level of disruptive?
Or does it feel like a weaklittle whisper?
A gentle nudge blinking.
You'd miss it escalating.
The turning point to this levelof chaos goes a long way towards
making every scene unputdownableand.
But there were some pitfallswith this approach.
(07:43):
It didn't work 100% of the time.
As my editor friends Brandon Srapoints out every time I bring up
this scene, our room full ofstory grid editors spends at
least an hour debating whetherthat moment when the car on fire
blocks the road is indeed theturning point, or whether it's
actually the inciting incidents.
(08:03):
And that's the challenge withmeasuring the turning points by
which moment is the mostdisruptive.
Sometimes I'd find the mostdisruptive thing, and it would
be the climax, and sometimes itwould be the inciting incident,
and sometimes it would be themidpoint.
All of those moments are meantto be disruptive.
That's not a mistake inmeasurement.
(08:24):
They weren't wrong to be sointense, and I wasn't wrong to
note how intense they were, butthat intensity alone, that level
of ball on fire disruptionwasn't enough to ensure that I
could correctly identify theturning point every time.
Also, I haven't said it in awhile, but this is one of my
(08:44):
mantras.
I'm all about making thesubjective objective and
analyzing a story based on a gutfeeling about its degree of
likeness to a ball of fire isnot objective.
I'll say it again.
All of these measurements helpedme master scenes.
With just these three ways ofthinking about turning points, I
was able to build a whole scenerevision philosophy that has
(09:07):
served me and all my writersvery, very well.
But I still felt a gap aroundturning points, especially on
the level of the big picturestory.
I was still missing something,still getting something
confused, Still identifying avariety of ball on fire, fears
that turned out to be othermoments playing different roles
in the story.
(09:28):
I have to imagine that Sean feltthis too, this gap in precision.
And if there's one thing thatSean can't stand, it is a gap in
precision because in the lastfew years, he's articulated
another way to measure theturning point.
It goes like this.
The turning point is the momentthat makes it clear it is
(09:49):
impossible for the protagonistto achieve their goal of X
without Y.
What does that mean?
Let's break it down.
Remember, the inciting incidentis a disruption to the
protagonist that sets them onthe pursuit of a goal.
That goal can be articulated asthe protagonist wants X without
(10:12):
Y.
They want to get something andthey want to get that without
something else, without havingto take an action that they want
to avoid or disrupt an existingstate that they want to
preserve.
They want their cake and theywant to eat it to.
The progressive complicationsare challenges that move them
farther from their goal orassets that move them closer to
(10:33):
their goal.
Every progressive complicationescalates the conflict.
That means they raise the stakesand make the pursuit of the goal
more complicated.
even when the complications arepositive and things are going in
the protagonist's favor, thoseprogressive complications still
escalate the conflict becausethey give the protagonist more
to lose.
And that brings us to theturning point.
(10:56):
The turning point is an event orrevelation that makes it
inarguably clear.
It is not possible for theprotagonist to achieve X without
y.
X, without Y is over.
X without Y is gone.
It's possible that X without Ywas an allusion to begin with.
(11:18):
wishful thinking, ungrounded Inreality, there may be a route
where the protagonist can stillachieve X, but that route is
going to require them to do Y.
The thing they at all costs didnot want to do in order to get
it.
In all the other progressivecomplications, there still
appeared to be a viable routefor the protagonist to get X
(11:41):
without Y.
Sure, maybe there wereroadblocks, but it still seemed
possible with some optimism,grit, and dug a determination.
But the turning point utterlydestroys that hope Once the
turning point happens, there isno way for the protagonist to
get X without Y.
And so the result of the turningpoint is that the protagonist is
(12:05):
faced with a binary choice.
Now that their goal has failed,what will they choose to do
next?
They have two options.
Will they give up Y in order toget X, or will they give up X in
order to maintain?
Y.
Weighing that choice is thecrisis of the story.
(12:28):
It's what the whole entire storyis about, but more on that in a
future episode.
This framing of the turningpoint is so much more measurable
Then all the other qualities Idescribed before.
Once you identify theprotagonist's, desire their
goal, a specific conditionalGoldilocks dream of X and Y, you
(12:50):
can search for the moment when Xwithout Y is eradicated.
What happens to make itincontrovertibly clear that X
without Y is not possible?
What forces the character tomake a choice, both X and Y or
neither X nor y.
(13:11):
That's the turning point.
All those other qualities that Idescribed still hold true.
By the way, the turning point isa progressive complication.
That means that it too is achallenge to the protagonist's
goal that raises the stakes andmakes the pursuit more
complicated.
It is the final progressivecomplication.
(13:31):
Once this happens, we are nolonger in the progressive
complication space of the story,The turning point catapults us
into the crisis, and it is themost disruptive, progressive
complication where all the othercomplications were navigable.
This one is like a total systemfailure.
It is still a ball of firethrown into the story.
(13:54):
We've just gotten much morespecific about what that ball of
fire actually is.
The fire is no X without y.
The 180 degree turn is, Will youchoose to do Y to get X or
sacrifice X to preserve Y?
Which part of your goal are yougoing to abandon?
(14:15):
The turning point is also themoment when the value shifts.
But again, there's nuance hereabout the internal and external
values shifting at differentmoments.
So I have found it more usefulto imagine that the turning
point crisis and climaxaltogether are the crucible in
which both values shift.
So all the original measurementsthat I used are still useful.
(14:37):
It's the moment the valueshifts, hence the name, the
value turns.
It's the final progressivecomplication which forces the
protagonist to face a crisischoice.
And it's the most disruptiveevent in the scene.
But the master measurement, theone that I'm using now to begin
and end my analysis is this.
The turning point is the momentthat makes it clear it is
(15:01):
impossible for the protagonistto achieve their goal of X
without Y.
This is fantastic in theory,right?
But the real test is putting itto work in a story.
Lemme tell you a story of twoyoung people who fall in love
but cannot keep that lovewithout y.
The story is called Pride andPrejudice.
(15:24):
You might have heard it before.
Elizabeth Bennett's incitingincident is meeting Mr.
Darcy at a ball.
He's an extremely wealthyeligible bachelor, which makes
him a wonderful match by mostmeasurements.
But Elizabeth discovers quicklythat he's also extremely
unpleasant, proud andstandoffish.
She dislikes him immediately andjudges that despite his swoon
(15:47):
worthy wealth, he would be amiserable man to marry.
And she takes pride in herability to so quickly get a read
on him and write him offentirely.
This inciting incident kicks offher goal to marry for love
without changing her judgment ofpeople.
in fact.
At that very ball, her friendCharlotte tells her, I dare say
(16:07):
you will find him veryagreeable.
and Elizabeth's response is,heaven forbid that would be the
greatest misfortune of all tofind a man agreeable whom one is
determined to hate.
Do not wish me such an evil.
She really does not want tochange her mind.
We're going to get sharperclarity on that goal in a
moment.
(16:28):
But if you asked Lizzie rightnow, right after that ball, what
her goal is, this is what shewould be able to see exactly
what she told Charlotte.
so her goal is to marry for lovewithout changing her judgments
of people.
The goal gets a big boost whenshe meets Mr.
Wickham, a charming, handsome,agreeable man who gives her lots
(16:49):
of attention and whom she likesimmediately.
She judges him a wonderful man,and he lives up to that
splendidly.
Her goal does take a slight hitwhen Wickham stops flirting with
her in order to start flirtingwith a woman who just inherited
10,000 pounds after a relative'sdeath.
But when Elizabeth's aunt pointsout that this seems a bit like
(17:10):
gold digging, Elizabeth defendshim.
It's not a red flag, but totallyreasonable.
Her goal takes a much bigger hitat the midpoint.
When Darcy proposes much toElizabeth's astonishment, she
misjudged that one, andElizabeth rejects him.
And then Darcy delivers a letterexplaining everything that she
has misunderstood about him.
(17:31):
The letter also reveals thatWickham beneath his charming
exterior is in fact a golddigging dirt bag.
Just as everyone said, sheexclaims as she reads.
Till this moment, I never knewmyself, which shoot.
Now her judgments start tochange.
That why is starting to crack,but.
(17:54):
It's not fully cracked yetbecause now we can see what y
truly actually is.
The thing Elizabeth couldn't seeon page one.
The thing she wants to avoidisn't simply changing her mind
about people.
What she really doesn't wanna dois admit that she was wrong.
Her ex without Y actually isMarry for love without admitting
(18:19):
that she judged wrong.
While Elizabeth now sees thingsmore clearly, she's not yet
ready to admit her error in thesecond half of the story.
Elizabeth more open-minded isexamining the evidence before
her to see what's actually true.
and she's not entirely sure whatto do with what she finds.
(18:40):
She chooses not to tell herfamily what she's learned about
Wcan because he's leaving townanyway, so that problem has
solved itself, and then it'squite a surprise to discover
that Darcy is a generous andgracious host when she
accidentally runs into him atPemberley.
It seems like they could getalong pleasantly if given the
chance, but then.
(19:01):
Lydia runs off with Wickham.
It becomes public knowledge, notonly in her family, but in the
entire dang town that Wickham isin fact a dirt bag and has been
one all along, and that he'sdisgraced Lydia and by extension
all of the entire Bennettfamily.
This is our turning point X.
(19:24):
Marrying for love without y,admitting she was wrong is now
impossible.
There is no more hiding that shewas wrong.
When her wrongness is publicknowledge, there is only the
question of whether she willface it and admit it or continue
to deny reality.
And once this dam breaks thefloodgates open, she admits to
(19:47):
herself that she was wrong abouteverything.
She was wrong about Wickham.
He is trash.
She was wrong about Darcy.
He is wonderful.
She was wrong about herself.
She's fallen in love with Darcyand her unwillingness to this
point to admit her error hasplaced her family in a position
of such disgrace that it'slikely that no eligible
(20:09):
bachelor, much less Darcy willconsider her or her sisters ever
again.
So when Lady Catherine shows upon her doorstep in a rage
demanding that Elizabeth promiseshe will never marry Darcy
Elizabeth is grounded in thetruth, her own admission to
herself of her own love.
(20:30):
she refuses to take up thedefenses that she would have
jumped at at the beginning ofthe story.
That is she refuses to save herpride by telling lady Catherine
that Darcy is a jerk she wouldnever consider marrying.
and it's lady Catherine'sfoolishness to imagine that
Darcy could be a man she'd want.
In fact, she refuses to make anypromise that she won't marry
Darcey.
(20:51):
Though her heart is broken andshe considers Darcy lost to her.
She stands aligned in her truth.
She does in fact love him, andif given the chance she would
marry him.
And when Lady Catherine reportson Elizabeth's speech to Darcy
himself, it is that alignedhonesty within Elizabeth that
(21:12):
gives Darcy the hope that shemight still consider him.
and so he comes back to longborn to make things right.
And when he proposes again thistime, she accepts.
Elizabeth has now achieved hergoal, marrying for love, and
found that it was only possiblewith Y only possible by
(21:32):
admitting when she is wrong.
Did you catch the turning pointin all of that?
When Lydia runs away withWickham X, without Y becomes
impossible.
Elizabeth cannot marry for lovewithout admitting she is wrong.
The only possible path to a lovemarriage is through admitting
her wrongness to herself, to herfamily, and to Darcy.
(21:57):
And let's check that turningpoint against all our other
metrics.
Lydia runs away about 70%through the story.
Her elopement is for sure themost disruptive event in the
story in Regency England.
It's the societal equivalent ofthrowing a ball of fire into
your marriage prospect's,financial, future, and social
standing.
Lydia has just basically burntit all down.
(22:20):
It shifts a number of values.
The truth about W is hidden torevealed.
The Bennett family is respectedto disgraced.
Elizabeth and her sisters arehopeful to distraught, and
Elizabeth and Darcy are togetherto apart, and it forces
Elizabeth to her crisis choice.
Will she admit that she has beenwrong and change her judgments
(22:42):
of herself and everyone else, orwill she hold on to the
prescriptive defensive walls ofbelieving herself to be in the
right?
Which by the way, is whateveryone else in town does.
As soon as Wickham is revealedto be a dirt bag, everyone is
like, man, I knew that allalong.
I never liked that guy.
(23:03):
So the town is upholding thatprotective defensive claim to be
right, But in order for Lizzieto find love, she must choose
the other way.
She must choose why admittingshe is wrong.
So by all our othermeasurements, we can spot that
Lydia's elopement is the turningpoint, but most importantly, the
(23:26):
X without Y framework revealswhat Lydia's elopement is doing
within the story.
It shows us the exact pressurethat Turning point places on
Elizabeth, the exact choice thatshe's then forced to grapple
with in the crisis.
I hope that example helpedillustrate for you something
that can be really hard to see.
(23:47):
Like I said, right at thebeginning, turning points are
tricky.
I spent a long time getting themconfused with so many other
parts of the story before theyfinally started to click for me.
But this framework has helped metremendously, and I hope it
helps you too.
Will I win the game spot, theturning point with 100% accuracy
(24:08):
now that I'm using X without Y?
Probably not.
Story structure is so simple.
We know it in our bones, havebeen steeped in it since
childhood, and yet it is also socomplicated and nuanced that I
think I'll still be learning howit works when I studied it for
decades, certainly that was thecase for Sean.
(24:28):
He'd been studying and using andteaching the structure for 30
years before he articulated Xwithout y.
So if you still struggle to spotthe turning point in your story,
don't feel bad.
If you analyze a story one wayon Monday and you come back on
Tuesday and analyze it again andsee something different, don't
feel bad.
That is the nature of this work.
That is the nature of story.
(24:50):
I encourage you to practice byplaying around with every
measurement I've laid out here.
Pick up a story you love andchallenge yourself.
Can you spot the goal?
What is X without y?
what makes it clear that Xwithout Y is impossible?
Is that event disruptive?
Does it cause the core value ofthe story to shift?
(25:13):
Does it force the protagonistinto the core choice of the
story, both X and Y, or neitherX nor y?
If all of those things are true,then congratulations.
You found the turning point.
I have often found that Igravitate towards a goal of
being an expert without making amistake.
(25:34):
So all of those times when Itried to use my original
measurements of turning pointsand found them still missing
some layer of position werereally frustrating to me.
But being an expert withoutmaking a mistake is an illusion
if there ever was one.
And so we can all take a tipfrom Lizzie Bennett and
recognize the truth we weremissing and grow and change.
(25:55):
Realizing that X without Y isnot possible was a turning point
in my own understanding ofturning points.
Perhaps it will be for you aswell.
I have much more to say aboutturning points, where they
appear in the story, what I lookfor when I'm editing them, and
where writers fall into commontraps.
All of that will be coming infuture episodes.
(26:17):
For now, be on the lookout foreverywhere.
Protagonist must face the truththat X without Y simply is not
possible.
it's as uncomfortable as all getout to be forced to realize.
But it gives us the gift ofseeing reality clearly.
Until next time.
Happy editing.
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