Feeling stuck in the mushy middle of your novel?
You might be missing the midpoint—a dramatic, game-changing moment that throws a knife in the dinner table and propels your story toward the climax.
Let’s talk midpoints.
A thread 🧵🪓
#writingcommunity
You might be missing the midpoint—a dramatic, game-changing moment that throws a knife in the dinner table and propels your story toward the climax.
Let’s talk midpoints.
A thread 🧵🪓
#writingcommunity
Comments
A midpoint isn’t just a scene at the halfway point of a novel.
It’s a turning point—a major shift in stakes, power, or perspective.
Think:
🔹 A betrayal
🔹 A bold act
🔹 A devastating truth
🔹 An epiphany
Something that hurts—and changes everything.
A killer midpoint hits on two levels:
🔸 External: Things get worse. A new obstacle. A shift in power.
🔸 Internal: A mirror moment. The protagonist realizes what it’s really going to cost to reach their goal.
The stakes are higher than ever.
Some famous midpoints:
📚 The Hunger Games – Katniss blows up the Careers' food.
📚 The Hobbit – Bilbo wins the ring and steps into his power.
📚 1984 – Winston trusts O’Brien (oops).
📚 Game of Thrones – Eddard Stark is arrested.
All high-stakes. All irreversible.
Chuck Wendig calls the midpoint “a knife in the dinner table.”
We love that. It’s jarring. Unignorable.
It’s also a catapult—the thing that hurls your characters into the second half of the story with urgency and purpose.
⚠️ Common mistake: panicking in the middle and adding new business.
Resist.
Your midpoint should emerge from what’s already in motion. Not a random event. Not an anecdotal detour.
Look back. The seeds of your midpoint are likely already there.
🔑 Causality is everything.
Every beat in your novel should be caused by what came before.
If you can remove a scene without breaking the story? It’s not pulling its weight.
A good midpoint deepens existing threads—it doesn’t start new ones.