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21.24: Deconstructing the Seven Point Plot Structure · Writing Excuses

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  [SPEAKER_01]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Season 21, episode 24.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is Writing Excuses.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you construct the seven point plot structure?
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mary Rabinett.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Dillon.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Dan.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Aaron.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm Howard.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: And we have been talking this season about different forms of plot structure, I asked Dan if he would come in and talk to us about the seven point plot structure, which is one of my favorite plot structures, but I have to go back and look at my notes every single time that I used it and Dan is the person who introduced me to it.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I damed to come back.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I'm very excited to be here, glad to be recording with you again.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: So 7.plastructure, that's my name for it.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if it has an official name.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is essentially a TV writing formula for writing TV episodes, which I found through a Star Trek RPG and turned into
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: Class, which turned into a YouTube channel and arguably more people know me for that than from my actual books.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: But it is a system that I still use as a very quick
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: overview of it because we're going to spend the rest of the episode I assume taking it apart.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is seven points.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: It starts with a hook and then which is basically introducing the characters, plot point one which is more or less the call to action.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: Then there is pinch one which is adding pressure to the characters forcing them to act.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: the midpoint, which is where things change from reaction to action, then there is pinch two, which is another put pressure on the characters, plot point two, which is like
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: I've figured out how to win, and then the resolution in which they win.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I've got a whole YouTube series, you can look up.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is so old that it's back in the day when YouTube videos were limited to 10 minutes.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so it's actually broken into five pieces.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a obnoxious intro and outro music.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: It was just filmed live at a con.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: But.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: It gives a very good overview of what the system is and how it works.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you're not familiar with seven point, go watch those videos and then come back and listen to the rest of this episode.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the things that I, I love about it is that when I use it, it helps me spot opportunities.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to dig into kind of the why it works aspect.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in a lot of things, we see some form of of hook.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have been attempting to relabel this for myself because I, I'm always like,
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So hook, I find that a lot of people think that a hook has to be really flashy, and for me, I've been relabeling it in my own head as the reason to care, that sometimes people are like, well, we're going to establish the characters in their starting state, and so either you wind up with something that's in media res and you don't have any idea what's going on because they focus on the hook part of this.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or you find something that is actually pretty boring because nothing like it's just the character waking up and going about their day.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when you're thinking about hook, what are you thinking about when you're shaping that?
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think of hook as a mirror to resolution, starting state, and it is an ending state.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: So really what you're doing with the hook is you are setting up a character arc.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Where is this character going to start?
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because that lets me know where the character is gonna go.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I actually usually think of the resolution first.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: I build the story backwards when I use this.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: Where do I want my character to end?
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: What's the opposite state of that?
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I want Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star and become a hero.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: What's the opposite state?
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, he is not a hero.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: He does not have a lot of agency of his own.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're going to set him on a farm in the middle of the desert where he has to do chores all the time.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: But he is dreaming of something else.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that dream...
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  [SPEAKER_05]: is the key part, because like you said, if it just started with, here's a kid on a desert planet, that would be boring.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's worth pointing out.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's not how the movie starts.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: The movie starts by showing you, here's the big villain that we need to defeat.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: And so,
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  [SPEAKER_05]: Then you get to the the kid and like the first thing we see of him, you know, he buys the droids or whatever, but then we see him staring off into space and he's looking at the two sun setting.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: He wants to do something more.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it is that desire that is really his starting state.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: Not so much living on a farm, not so much doing chores, but dreaming of something.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: bigger and that's the hook that pulls you in is is this kid going to be able to fulfill his dream?
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really like the term hook because I feel like the beginning of whatever it is that I'm making needs to have hooked people.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: They need
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  [SPEAKER_03]: a hook has a couple of components.
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  [SPEAKER_03]: One of the components is the spiky bit.
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  [SPEAKER_03]: The start of the stroller is that spiky bit.
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  [SPEAKER_03]: It's got your attention.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is telling you a thing, and you can't not pay attention to that crawl.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then learning about Luke and seeing this contrast between Star Destroyer and Farm Boy, that's the barb on the hook for me that says, oh, there's a conflict here and I need to see how it turns out.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I can't get this hook out of me.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have to finish this movie for this book or whatever.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think it'll hook having two stages, right?
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: The first is like the first, yeah, the initial sort of like hit.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then when you're fishing, you need to set the hook, right?
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's a truck that like gets the hook in a position that it's going to be long lasting, right?
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't fish.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Don't yell me if I throw it.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But you are establishing a writing sound true.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have to confess here.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I probably, I can't believe we are this deep into writing excuses before I confess that for years, I thought a hook was referring to a shepherd's crook.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's also you need to get the shepherds' cooking position, then you need to yank them off stage.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Specifically, it's specifically about steering the sheep to where you want it to be.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've always thought about a fishing hook.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is, like, as a metaphor, these, these cause you to do different things.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, so anyway, I'm just like, huh, all of these things about the barbe.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, like, I
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think when we talk about the hook there are the two parts right there there's the initial initial sort of sharp bit and then the setting of the hook and I think the difference between what Dan or how we're talking about what Dan you're talking about are the two stages that the first age is the mirror the resolution of the like Death Star plans attack on the tentative four and all that and then when it's set is the character like the thing that you're saying about what do we care about?
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we care about Luke's journey, we care about how Luke sees himself and the journey he's going to go on to become this epic hero right and so those two stages there.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think are really important, but also
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, very much so and Howard hit it on the head when he's talked about conflict because I think that to me that is the most important element of fiction is conflict and that's what I believe gets people hooked into a story is not so much here is a
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: kid in a desert, but here is a kid in a desert who doesn't want to be in a desert.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: Suddenly you have a conflict, suddenly you have something.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: And what you're talking about, I think of as the difference between a plot conflict and a character conflict.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: which is not necessarily a part of seven point structure, but you can kind of see it.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think of the hook as this is where we begin our character, our character conflict.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Luke is one thing and he wants to be a different thing, will he succeed in that journey.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then the next step, plot point one, that's where we start our plot conflict.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's where, you know, he finds the message from Leia, and he talks to Ben Kenobi, and he's like, there's this big adventure out there that is waiting.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a princess that needs to be saved.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a giant evil fortress gun that we need to blow up.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's what starts him on his plotted venture.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: But we only really care about the plotted venture
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that we see when we're talking in fiction is the issue of when these things happen with movies with TV a lot of times these are rigidly described as the number of pages.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: into a plot into a screenplay.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: The number of minutes.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're looking at the call to action into the, when you're looking at the call to action, is it, is there a specific distance that it has to happen from the hook?
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you decide when you make that transition?
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it depends very much on the genre that you're writing in.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: If you are writing a thriller, it needs to be past very quickly.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: You need to get the thrill out soon.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: If you are writing horror, you can wait a long time.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: because part of what makes horror work is we get to see this person and live in their life for maybe several chapters and we have to really love them before we start doing genuinely horrible things to them.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: If you're writing epic fantasy just the pacing in general is much more stately and we don't have to rush through things.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so if you were writing a Hollywood script,
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: there's incredibly specific rules down to what page the call to action needs to be on.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: But for books, I think it's a lot more fluid.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think one thing that I find frustrating in modern media is actually how much the ability to be different depending on the genre has changed.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I'm looking right now, you're wearing a jaws TV shirt.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: The time to shark in jaws is so long.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Compared to time to monster and a contemporary movie, right?
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Predator, we're like halfway through the movie
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: horror stuff starts happening in a lot of ways, right?
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so I think the ability to have that slow burn pacing, now those have to be paced more like thrillers and action movies, where stuff is popping off very faster, which has this consequence of flattening the landscape, right?
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: So being able to have that flexibility of wind that plot point one and when that pinch one comes in, I think is really important for telling for effective storytelling.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the way I have been reframing it in my head from call to action is that here's the question that this is the point where we introduce the first kind of story question because I tend to frame things using the mice quotient it's like what is what is the kind of problem that we're going to have to solve.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So with Star Wars, there's a disruption, and then there's also, you know, both the, you know, the big disruption of hello, here's our, here's our capturing of Princess Leia and all of that, but also the Luke also starts with a disruption in his world.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: that these disruptions are small, they aren't yet the big thing, and, you know, like, that for me is one of the things with the call to action is, it's the first thing that says you character, you're the one who's going to participate in this.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: That there's often a place where the character could have noped out.
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  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, um, how does that sit with your understanding of, um, we are going to take a break.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is our cliffhanger.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're going to let you all hang on that question and we'll answer when we come back.
• 13:23
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• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: One of, and this is such a bizarre title to bring into this particular discussion, but one of the movies that I often think about when I'm noodling around with 7.0 plot structure is horrible bosses.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: That is a weird poll.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: It follows the structure very, very well, but it does it in some interesting ways and kind of the main through line of it.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: If you're not familiar with horrible bosses, it's three friends who all have horrible bosses who decide they're going to.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think murder Jason Bateman's boss or something like that.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Who's played by Kevin Spacey, so he probably deserves it.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the hook is, we all have horrible lives.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the call to action is when Jason Bateman's boss refuses to give him time off to go to his grandmother's funeral.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that is right in the beginning.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is part of the hook.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is right up front as an illustration of how terrible my life is.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, but it gives us the call to action in the beginning because suddenly there's a conflict he has to do something about and then, you know, his decision is, well, let me get my friends together, we'll kill my boss, uh, which is terrible way to solve that problem.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, some movies have those really close to each other, uh, you know, like in, in this case, they're right on top of each other in a more Hollywood formula way you would call that the big decision moment.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: which usually comes much later, but that's a movie that kind of breaks the formula by moving it up really soon.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if that's a good answer to your question, but it's what was going through my mind while you were talking.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is, because it's an illustration of, this is a one thing that is wrong, but then we move on to the next phase where we put the real pressure on the characters and we force them into action,
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: But quite much, pinch one one.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I can never remember these.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the way that I differentiate plot points and pinches is that a plot point is something that helps them on their journey toward the resolution, something that is going to get them closer to their endpoint whereas a pitch is something that gets in the way.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that can be an odd way to think about it because obviously their character depends very heavily on those pinches, but it is something that is impeding them that they have to overcome.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So just to break it down, it would go back to our solar example.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Plot.1 is on Peru and Uncle Owen dying because that gets him out of Tatooine.
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  [SPEAKER_04]: Pinch.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Point one is we need to find a pilot who will actually take us somewhere.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Maybe I think that there's a couple of examples.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Usually what I do when I'm teaching this is I use the tie fighter fight in the Millennium Falcon.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because it's right at the beginning, it's really kind of a dumb scene because it doesn't
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, some tie fighters show up, they blow them up the end.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't kind of lead anywhere, but what it's not or pinch, that's a pinch.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: The reason that it's there and the reason that it is kind of a load-bearing moment in story is because it is forcing him to action.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: We need to eventually believe that Luke Skywalker is this incredible fighter pilot who can blow up the Death Star.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so we start off
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know, we need something to get us from farm boy to fighter pilot and that little scene where he gets in the thing and he blows up some tie fighters shows us that he has at least some of the skills and it forces him to act.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: It forces him to step out of his role as farm boy and become something else.
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a question for you that it's not any of this.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So apologies for taking you off track, but when you taught this, the first time I heard you teach this, there was something you said about the lie the character believes about the world that has always stuck with me.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm curious where that, if you really said that, or I hallucinated it number one, and number two, where that falls in there, the idea of the character believing a lie about the world.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so the live character believes comes from a book about character arcs by Cam Wailant.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's brilliant book and really great.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think what you are remembering is one of the writing excuses cruises I taught like five different story structure methods over five days and then at the end we synthesize them all.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so it's a different system.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: Uh, but it does apply to this one.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if they map one to one on to each other, though.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that helps me with the seven point structure, I've loved three act structure for a long time.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I overlay my diagrams of these, pinch point one and pinch point two, for me often represent the beginning and the end of the tri-fale cycle.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: with the midpoint in the middle.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I just think about it in those terms.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: If I'm at a pinch point and they are trying something and it's wildly successful, I may be constructing the plot wrong.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I may have the tension wrong, because I want to be in tri-fail land where we fail more.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And at the end of pinch point, too.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I want things to be bad.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: but we need to have tried the last thing that isn't going to work or maybe the first thing that really does work.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so for me framing the pinches in terms of tri-fail,
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: helps me structure things.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you said that because that combines with something that Dan just said which is the difference between the plot points which are helping the character move or moving the character towards their goal versus the pinch which are things getting in their way.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: is that I've recently realized that people are not understanding when they think about tri-fale cycles.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think about them as there's a barrier and you've to do a number of tri-fale cycles to get through the barrier and once you're through the barrier then there's another barrier and you have to do a bunch of tri-fale cycles and what I will see people do is set up too many barriers because they want to
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas using star wars as an example, the getting off of the the ship when they go into rescue layer, there's there's really only two barriers three.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have to get past the storm tripers.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have to get out of the garbage shoot and then they have to get back onto the ship.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like those are really the only three barriers, but within each of those, there's a bunch of
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there are consequences as they go.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But thinking about that, I'm like, oh, okay, so the pinch point is, like those are often barriers.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like what you were talking about with the tie fighters, this is preventing the characters from moving towards the goal, whereas the death of Luke's aunt and uncle, that is moving them towards the goal.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a success for the character, but it's a push.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so then moving on from there, then we've got our midpoint, midpoint, pinchpoint, plotpoint 2 and resolution.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you go through all of those and all of those as quickly as possible?
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: midpoint like the midpoint of Star Wars is what you just talked about.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: They arrive at the death star.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: They are no longer running away from bad guys.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: They are enacting a plan, right?
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: They have been, you know, the tractor being pulled them in, but now they're
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: They're doing their own thing trying to rescue the princess.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: One of my favorite midpoints, and I use movies for most of these examples, because then I know most of my audience is familiar with them.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: One of my favorite examples of a midpoint is actually Toy Story, because it is a Tri-Fail cycle.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: But it, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's failure is different.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: So the midpoint of Toy Story is, what he finally gets rid of us.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: But instead of knocking him down behind the dresser, he has knocked him out of the window into a car and now the car is driving away.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, on one hand, he succeeded.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: He did what he wanted to do, but his goal is to eventually become,
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: His goal is to maintain his role as the beloved favorite toy, and part of that is, I can't be the kind of person who kicks another toy out of the window and gets them lost.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so in order to maintain his role, he realizes that his success just turned into a failure.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: at the same time.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so then the second half of the movie is very active instead of reactive.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's not reacting to this dumb new toy that he hates.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: He is actively trying to get that toy back into the house in order to be the good guy that he believes himself to be.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so it's still part of a tri-fale cycle, but it is a success that looks like a failure.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: which I love.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that movement of reaction to action is really important.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: We are two.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think this is something we see with a lot of superhero fiction, which has taken over so much of media is heroes are almost always just reacting to the villain, which ultimately is very weak.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: We could do several episodes of me complaining about what superhero fiction has done to media.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: but that's one of the things.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: You have to have that moment where they start enacting their own plan instead of just constantly reacting to the bad guys.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Early days of writing excuses, I just started calling that pro tagging.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's when your pro tagging us starts being protected.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pro tag.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then what have we got next?
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Pinch 2.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Pinch 2 is
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the easy pinch two is, you lose your mentor.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: Pinch two is, Obi-Wan Kenobi getting killed by Darth Vader, spoiler warning.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Pinch two is Gandalf fighting the bellrog and falling and disappearing.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: And once again, the purpose of the pinch is to force the characters to act for themselves.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: They cannot rely on the person who's been guiding them this whole time.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: strike out on their own.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: What the pitches have done both times is get in their way, take in a way some kind of advantage that they have.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: All in ultimately in the service of turning them into the kind of person who can achieve the resolution.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I find that one of the things that does, because we see that kind of moment in a bunch of the different plot structures, and I think that one of the things it does is it also serves as a point of contrast, so that, you know, we'll see it in the, you know, the cave, the darkest before the dawn kind of situations.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: that it serves as a contrast so that when we get to our victory state, that there is a bigger movement from that moment to that contrast makes the cathartic release bigger.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's one of the things that it does.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I sometimes think of it as, you know, there's the
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It can be a bunch of different things.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It can be the removal of the mentor, which is removing a crutch, which allows the character to become more fully actualized.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think there's a bunch of different reasons that that particular piece is there.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: It also feels important that it comes after the turn back.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: You switch from reaction to action and then something goes deeply wrong and you have that, oh no, what have we done?
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: But then that crazy opportunity for the doubling down, for the push, for the eventual catharsis.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: helpful ways that for me that the terminology works, I think of the pinch, not as, you know, being smooshed or actually pinched, but a narrowing of my options.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have taken away from me some of the paths.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: You took away my mentor.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can no longer have a path that is Obi-Wan does all the work.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it just, you restricted my options and, you know, pinpoint one and then we have the midpoint, which was everything.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: You said, and then my options got narrower again, leading me into plot turn to where depending on the type of story we're telling, I've figured it out.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm out of my tri-fale cycle and we are now, you know, I have powered up all of the things that I know how to do and we see if it works in our resolution.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the pitch point two of Toy Story is the moment where Buzz realizes he's a toy and suddenly doesn't care about anything anymore.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's like, if I'm not this great hero, I thought I was, then I may as well just stay here in the creepy kids house with all the monster toys and nothing matters.
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that makes Woody's job harder because
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: now the person he's trying to save doesn't want to be saved anymore.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: He can't just drag him back up the side of the house and through the window.
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, but you know, it's a good example of that, you know, I have lost more of my options.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: And now the single only option left to Woody is that he has to genuinely become friends with this person in order to save him.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: the one thing he hasn't wanted to do at all, which goes back if we had time and we're already over time, goes back to what you were talking about Aaron with the lie the character believes and you know that hinges on the thing the character wants versus the thing the character needs, what what he actually needs is to become a good person rather than just be a respected person and so
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the purpose of pinch two is to take away all those other avenues.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then we get to plot point two.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: We've been talking so much about tri-fail cycles.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: Plot point two is really the tri-try moment.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: The tri-succeed moment, where you finally get it together.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know what you have to do in order to win.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: you are able to, you know, Luke turns off his targeting computer and he uses the force.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's what is going to help him succeed.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Woody decides, you know what?
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're just going to break the rules and we're going to talk to this kid and freak him out and that's how we're going to succeed.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: So where's the line between plot two and resolution, right?
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: If plot two is the character resolving the want in the conflict into one thing, right?
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then how does resolution come into play?
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think of resolution as a state rather than an action or decision.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so plot turn two is this is where I would call denumon in a different.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Plottern 2 is some kind of fuzzy combination of, I know how to win and I actually carry it out and I win.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then resolution is, here's who I have become now that I'm at the end of this story.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in mystery, what we see, I think with this is, we understand who the villain is.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the clue that gives us, in plot point two, we get the final piece of the puzzle.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the thing that gives us the clue, but then the resolution is, you still have to apprehend and take them to justice.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the horror movie, this is the final little driving away into the sunrise, pretty finely from what ever happened.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: So if we were to break this out into Hollywood formula, for example, there would be a much bigger difference, like you say, Mary Rominet, between, I know how to do this versus I'm actually going to do this.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: You have to carry it out and make it happen.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: And different stories will have those moments very close to each other,
• 31:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Again, it depends on the pacing that you're going for and the effect you're trying to create.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I honestly believe that if you can write a story that follows this seven point structure and then you look at it and you realize, oh, but the minutes are wrong for it to be a screenplay.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I need for it to be a screenplay.
• 31:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: You've already done the hard part.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: shaving things to move these points around is going to be easy.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's one of the reasons why I feel like the seven point structure is so useful because it can get you from word zero to draft complete quickly and sensibly in a way that lets you easily edit for whatever effect you really want.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things, you know, what we'll say this and then we'll start, we'll move over to homework, but one of the things that I hope that you are hearing as you're listening to us is that this is a plot structure that like the other plot structures we're discussing which you can apply to a lot of different stories, but it also like a recipe, still makes a specific kind of thing.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is going to be really, really good for character stories, for action-driven things, for places where you want someone to succeed.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you are doing something that is more experimental or literary, this particular recipe may not be the recipe that you work with, so having said all of that, what homework would you like to give people for playing with seven point plot structure?
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: The main way that I use this plot structure today in my writing is to figure out subplots.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I know what my big overall plot is going to be, but I need to figure out how these two characters are gonna fall in love or something like that.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I need to figure out how this betrayal of a side character is going to work.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: And seven point is a good way to flesh that out
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: And without just saying, well, there's going to be three tries and two fails, and then they'll succeed at the end.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: It gives you a nice up and down with the plot points versus the pinch points, and it helps me assemble side plots really well.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: So what I want you to do is take a book that you're working on or a story that you're working on.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: that has a side thing.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: Don't worry about turning your entire novel into this.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Just take that side plot, that subplot, and sketch it out in seven point.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's say you want two characters to all love.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's your resolution.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: What's the opposite state of that?
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: How are you going to express that as a conflict we want to see resolved?
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: What is the midpoint where they move from hating each other to loving each other?
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: set up the pinches and the plot points to give texture to that relationship, and that will give you a really good sense of how this works.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll have a link in our show notes to the seven points that go in the seven point plot structure.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, this has been writing excuses.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're out of excuses, now go right.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong-Wan Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells and Howard Taylor.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.