In a guest post on Writers Helping Writers, September Fawkes examines plot structure as a series of turning points. “One of the quickest ways to gauge if a turning point has happened, is to ask if the character’s current goal or plan has shifted in some way,” Fawkes writes. “If the answer is yes, you likely hit a turning point.”
The climax is the most obvious turning point, because that is the point at which your hero succeeds or fails in achieving his goal. However, this isn’t the only turning point. Within each act of your novel, you are likely to have a similar rising action and climax, even though your hero has not reached their ultimate goal. The peak of the act – which occurs right before the falling action – is not as big a point as the climax, but is still a turning point.
Further, within each act, you will have multiple scenes, each with their own rising action, climax, turning point, and falling action. “The difference is that these things will be even smaller and less pronounced–because they fit inside acts,” Fawkes says. “This basic shape can go even smaller, fitting within passages of scenes, or it can be expanded into something bigger, creating a nice structure for a book series.”
