Where the Turning Point Goes (And How to Know If Yours Is in the Right Place)

If you’re second-guessing your pacing, give your turning point this two-part check.

Where the heck is the turning point?

If you’ve ever tried to spot the turning point in a story you love, you’ve probably asked some version of this question.

I always feel like I’m playing that old children’s video game: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

(In my imagination, the turning point is captured in shadowy profile, wearing a red hat with a wide brim.) (this is also called, tell me you’re a 90s baby without telling me you’re a 90s baby.)

Anyway. When you’re analyzing someone else’s story, it feels like a hunt for something you just can’t spot.

When you’re analyzing your own story, it feels like second-guessing your pacing.

Did you put the turning point in the right spot? Is it happening too early? Too late? Will the reader get bored waiting for it to happen? Or have you rushed something critical?

If any of those questions sound familiar, you won’t want to miss this episode.

It’s all about where in the story the turning point is located—and yes, this question is complicated enough to require an entire episode to unpack.

You’ll hear:

• 2 guiding principles I use for the location of every turning point
• Where the turning point is located in a novel, novella, and scene—and why those can be different places
• What happens when you move the turning point earlier or later
• Whether the turning point and the midpoint are ever the same point
• And more!

You know what the turning point is—the moment that makes it clear the protagonist cannot achieve their goal in the way they wanted to.

You know what it does—it forces the protagonist into a crisis choice.

And now, you’ll know where to look for it—and where to put it in your own stories.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Ep. 94: Turning Point: How to Find and Write the Moment That Changes Everything

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Transcript

1:29

Where the heck is the turning point? You know what the turning point is? It's the moment. It makes it clear the protagonist cannot achieve their goal in the way that they wanted to. And you know what it does? It forces the protagonist into a crisis choice. But where is it? Where is it? In the books that you're reading, the movies you're watching, are you spotting it correctly or are you confusing it with other major disruptive events? And where is it in your story? Have you put it in the right place? Or is the balance off? Is it happening too early or too late? If you've ever wondered whether you're getting the pacing of your story right? This is an important question to answer, and the answer is, well, it's less straightforward than you'd think. So let's unpack it. We'll look at all the places the turning point can be. We'll explore how shifting the location of the turning point in any segment of the story impacts the emphasis of that segment. And I'll give you two guiding principles to help you make sure that your turning point is happening in the exact right spot. Welcome to your next draft. Where in the story does the turning point appear? This feels like it should be a simple question, but every time I tried to write out a simple answer, I found so many exceptions that it felt like the simple answer was immediately invalidated, so I decided to make a whole episode out of it. Where does the turning point appear? Let's find out. I've got two principles for you. The first principle to know is that the six elements of story always appear in order. Inciting incident, progressive complications, turning point, crisis, climax resolution. this means that the turning point always appears at the end of the progressive complications and before the crisis and climax. Woo. That's an easy measurement. One down. now for the second one. The next principle is the longer the story is, the more fixed the location of the turning point is. As the story or the segment of story gets shorter, the location of the turning points I have found gets more flexible. So in a novel or a feature length film, the turning point is usually going to be around the 70 to 75% mark. That's fairly consistent. You might find it a little bit earlier than that or a little later than that, but it's probably going to be pretty close to 75%. If you pause the movie at the 75% mark or flip the book open about three quarters of the way through, you're probably somewhere in the ballpark of the turning point. Take Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which is roughly 120,000 words. If you listen to the last episode of your next draft, which is all about what the turning point is, then you know Elizabeth Bennett's goal. She wants X to marry for love without y admitting she is wrong. And the turning point of pride and prejudice is when Lydia runs off with Wickham. That is when it becomes inescapably clear that Elizabeth cannot X without Y. There is no marrying for love without admitting she was wrong. That happens at the 70% mark, right in our 70 to 75% range. Okay? Now what if we shrink it down from a full length novel to a novella? A full length novel is typically around 80,000 words. Could be shorter, could be a lot longer, but a novella is no longer than 50,000 words. Stephen King's novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is roughly 40,000 words, so about a third of the length of pride and prejudice. I won't tell you the full story of Shaw and Redemption here, but the basics go like so. Andy Dre's wife and her lover are shot and killed in the inciting incident of the story, Andy is convicted of the double murder and sentenced to life in Shawshank Prison. his goal is that he wants X, his freedom without y defying the system. Which would put him on the wrong side of the law and prevent him from returning to his normal life. Prison life is hard, but after a few years he figures out how to make it work well enough. But on page 55, the narrator read tells us this. Maybe you'll understand why the man spent about 10 months in oblique depressed days. See, I don't think he knew the truth until 19 63, 15 years after he came into this sweet little hellhole, until he met Tommy Williams. I don't think he knew how bad it could get. Red is bracing us for the turning point. The event that makes it clear to Andy that X without why is not possible because Tommy Williams is a new inmate who's transferred to Shawshank, and he also happens to know who actually killed Andy's wife, A man incarcerated in another prison on different charges. Andy believes that this is his ticket out. If he can find the other man, contact his own lawyer and build a new trial. With Tommy's testimony, he could clear his name so he brings all of this to the prison Warden and Warden Norton Has Tommy transferred to another prison and denies Andy the chance to pursue a new trial. Andy is not getting out of Shawshank by any legal means. His ex without Y is a non-starter kaput. It's very likely that it was never a real possibility in the first place. All of this happens between pages 53 and 69 of the book, which is 111 pages long. That means that it's a span from about 47% to 62%. And that makes it a little bit earlier than our typical 70 to 75% mark, but we're going to need the next 42 pages for the crisis climax and resolution. We have a lot of story left and not much space left in this novella. Only about 15,000 words to cover it all. you'll notice too that the 47% to 62% span covers something else. The mid points. In a full length novel, the turning points and the midpoint are not the same thing. There's the midpoint at the 50% mark, and then there's the turning point around the 70 to 75% mark, and they serve two different distinct roles in the story, though I'll save those differences for another episode In Shawshank Redemption, the midpoint and the turning points are the same sequence. I am not an expert in novellas. Most stories that I work with are full length novels, but my hypothesis is that as you contract the word count, the turning point and the midpoint can squish together into one moment. So in a novella where the word count is under 50,000 words, The midpoint and the turning points might be the same moment, even though they won't be in a full length novel. Now, what about when we go even smaller than the novella? What about when we go down to the scene level? Now we're talking about a segment of story that's typically somewhere between 1000 and 3000 words. Remember, the six elements of story are fractal, so there's a turning point here too. Where does the turning point fall in a scene? Well here the space is even shorter and the location of the turning point gets even more variable. It can honestly range really widely. It can fall at that 75% mark. Again, It could fall at the 50% mark. I don't measure a midpoint of scenes, but the turning point could happen right around the middle. It could even come before the 50% mark. Take the opening scene of Seafire by Natalie C. Parker. Seafire is like a pirate dystopia in the opening scene. Caledonia and her family and friends are sailing on a ship in waters controlled by a tyrant. They're planning to sneak through the tyrant's barrier tonight and enter open waters and freedom. But in order to do that, they need a lot of food because they don't know what they'll find on the other side. So they anchor near an island And in the inciting incidents of this scene, Caledonia's mother tells her, you and your brother prep for the short run caledonia's goal is established. She wants X to execute this most important shore run of all shore, runs the best that she can without why disobeying her mother. If we take it one level deeper than that, if we read between the lines to see what's underneath the surface level want Caledonia's goal becomes, she wants X to follow her own intuition about what will make this the best short run without y disobeying her mother. And there's an immediate conflict between Caledonia's intuition and her mother's order. Caledonia knows that her brother will be terrified all night if he comes on the shore run. So she negotiates with her mother to go with her friend Pisces instead, and her mother agrees. So Caledonia and Pisces sail for the island. They arrive safely and for a while they gather food without incident. And then Caledonia alone on one end of the island without Pisces. Here's footsteps. They're not alone. There's a bullet that is an enemy. Child soldier here with them. Caledonia knows the order that her mother would give. Shoot first, but Caledonia has never killed anyone before, and the bullet is a drugged child and she wants to save him, not kill him. Her intuition is telling her not to shoot that the best possible short run is one where she saves a child soldier, not one where she kills for the first time her mother is telling her to shoot. That bullets are beyond saving and the danger is too great to risk trying, and the best possible short run is the one where she guarantees a safe return to the ship. That approach of the bullet is our turning point. X without Y is not possible. Caledonia cannot execute what she believes is the best possible short run without breaking her mother's rules. It's either disobey her mother or compromise her own values. So where is all this located? That turning point happens roughly 31% into the scene. The scene is 16 pages long and the bullet walks into the scene at the bottom of page five. The next 44% of the scene is the crisis. Caledonia spends seven pages weighing, shoot or don't shoot, obey her mother, or follow her instinct, protect her community, or save a drugged child. It is a really enormous internal debate that sets up the moral crisis Caledonia will wrestle with for the entire rest of the trilogy. and the final 25% of the scene. The last four pages are the climax and resolution. Note that in this scene, the crisis is really, really long. Not every crisis of every scene will be this long. They shouldn't all be this long, or your readers will start to think that your protagonist's main problem is their absolute inability to make any decision ever. But in this case, in this specific scene, this internal debate sets the stage for the entire rest of the story. It merits the page space. And it also pushes the turning point earlier in the scene in order to create space for that level of debate. Notice what happens when the turning point comes early. This segment of story shifts its emphasis from progressive complications to the crisis. Caledonia spends most of the scene wrestling with her choice, not dealing with escalating obstacles in the first part of the scene. Another impact that this could have, could still be a pretty short crisis, but it could be a really long climax. basically you're shifting the amount of page space that you're giving to each of the six elements. you're shifting it away from the progressive complications and towards any of the elements that come later in the scene. In contrast, when the turning point comes at 70%, like in pride and prejudice, most of the story emphasizes the progressive complications. All those obstacles and challenges that make the stakes of Elizabeth's crisis choice clear before the turning point hits, and she has to face that choice head on on the other end of the spectrum, if we go back to the scene level, the turning point can happen even later than 75% of the way through the scene. They can happen really close to the end for a quick crisis climax resolution. That would put a heavy emphasis on the inciting incident and the progressive complications and the crisis climax and resolution would make for a quick wrap up before we bump into the next scene. I'd say that this is a less common pacing, but it is possible. I've also speculated that ending a chapter right after the turning points of a scene could be one method for creating a cliffhanger, But I haven't studied cliffhangers extensively, so right now that's just speculation. A little half-baked idea with a Doy middle for you. the most common location for the turning point, though is definitely around the 70 to 75% mark. This is the case for both scenes and entire novels. In novels. It hovers near the end of the third quadrant, the third act of four act structure. It's right there on the line that's pushing us into Act four. It feels kind of funny. I will say that I've spent so much more time unpacking the flexibility of the turning point than I have on emphasizing what's most common. But I want to leave this as your landing place for this question. The most common location for the turning point is around 70 to 75% through the story, and it always comes at the end of the progressive complications and before the crisis. So that is the long, long answer to the short question. Where in the story does the turning point appear? It also opens up another excellent question. one that I've heard from listeners and debated among story grid editors. Is there a difference between the midpoint and the turning point? And if so, what is the difference? But that's a topic for a different episode. If you spent this episode thinking, wait, what actually is a turning point? Well, you are in luck. I answer that question in the previous episode. So just scroll one episode down in your feed and you'll find that. And if you've listened to that episode already, then you're now armed with the knowledge both of what the turning point is and where in the story it falls. And so I challenge you to go spot some turning points in stories you love. You've seen the turning point in Pride and Prejudice, Shawshank Redemption, and the opening scene of Seafire. What other turning points can you find? And in future episodes we'll dig into what makes great Turning Points work and where turning points go wrong. Much more to come. Until next time, happy editing.