This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers

Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode,

The Two Halfs of the Inciding Event.

Stories are made of scenes.

By one of their simplest definitions, scenes are transitions.

They signify a change of some sort, an arc. They start in one place, whether a

physical place or an abstract place, and they end in another. This is how we

determine whether something happens in a scene and

whether it moves the plot. Therefore, by definition, we can see how scenes may be

viewed as essentially a whole of two halves.

This is nowhere more important or true than of the major structural moments.

The major turning points of the plot are the scenes that must dynamically change the conditions of the

story and the characters in it.

If these structural scenes fail to change or move the plot,

then the entire story's structure weakens and eventually crumbles.

Today I want to start a short unofficial series that examines the two halves

implicit in all of the major structural beats,

the insiding event, the first plot. in all of the majoral structural beats,

the insiding event, the first plot point,

the midpoint or second plot point,

the third plot point, and the climactic moment.

...