Filling in the Sticky Notes: Act II, Part 3: The Midpoint

Previous posts in this series:

Act I 
Act II part 1 
Act II part 2 


ACT II, PART 3: THE MIDPOINT


Act II is long, and the Midpoint is a kind of climactic point right in the middle of it. Usually, stakes are raised in re: the overall goal.

In Stone Mattress, I think it could be the line " It was Bob who’d turned her into—why not say the word?—a murderer." We've been with Verna, as worse and worse memories about Bob surface-- as she processes the information because he has returned to her life. Up until this point in the story, although she admits to herself she has eased the way to death for a few husbands, she hasn't used that word in reference to herself. Once all the awful memories have surfaced and been given to the reader, we go from knowing that Verna wants to turn the tables on Bob somehow, to learning, at the same time as she herself has the realization, that she wants to kill him. This is a definite raising of the stakes.

In "The Birds" this might come on page 9 where we learn the birds have been acting strangely all over the country. Basically, the tension in this story escalates so continuously that I'm not sure there's one clear Midpoint raising-the-stakes moment. Even once the birds' strange behavior is acknowledged as a national problem, many people aren't taking it seriously. And yet this is the point when people stop trying to claim that it's simply the weather, or Nat's imagination: this is when even the news announcers admit that there is a real, widespread issue and nobody--from regular folks in their homes like Nat, to the military and the government-- knows the cause or the solution.

In The Wizard of Oz, this could be when Dorothy finally reaches her original goal-- the Wizard-- but it turns out he won't help her unless she accomplishes something else: getting the Witch's broom. She's gone through a lot to get to the Wizard but the stakes are raised here because she'll have to go into really hostile territory to get hold of the broom.

Let's look for a moment at how this escalation in stakes relates to your character's Want from early in the story.

In Stone Mattress, Verna enters the story with this Want: to be surrounded by enough padding that no one can ever hurt her. However, that protection is breached when she runs into Bob and the original hurt returns. Her new Want, then, becomes to get the better of Bob in some way. The Midpoint is when that way turns out to be murder. It's still basically the same Want from the beginning of the story: to triumph over that event that changed her life at 14.

In The Birds, we learn in the second paragraph that Nat has "a wartime disability" and we learn that he likes solitary, predictable part-time work on the farm. From this I get the feeling that Nat's Want is to have a steady, quiet life after the chaos of his wartime experiences. As in Stone Mattress, Act II is about how his quiet life is threatened. He continues to want basically the same thing-- safety and security-- but that gets harder and harder as the threats from outside increase. From the moment the birds attack his kids, protecting his family is his one big Want, and that doesn't really change throughout the story.

In The Wizard of Oz, interestingly, Act I is about Dorothy wanting to get away from Kansas, into some better, more colorful place, but as soon as she's there, all she wants is to go home. That's a big change, but after that, her Want stays the same through the end of the story. In one way, you could say her longing throughout is for "home," for the place where things are right, are the way they should be. The process she goes through in the story is figuring out what that really means to her. She actually realizes that the farm with Aunt Em-- who is worried about her and loves her-- is where she wants to be, before she gets to Oz, as soon as she sees Em in the crystal ball during the tornado's approach.



TO DO: 


Think about what your character's Want is early in the story. Is it the same now, as you get to the middle of Act II? Is it at least related?

What might the Act II Midpoint be in your story? Jot it down on a sticky note and put it at the bottom of the first Act II column, or the top of the second column.