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 halves of the midpoint. The midpoint is unique among the major structural turning points. Not only is it made up of its own two

individual halves, working together to create a scene arc, but the midpoint also marks the dividing line between the two halves of the entire story arc.

As we explored last year in our series on Kiastic structure, which is about how the structural beats in the two halves of the story mirror one another, for example the link between the inciting event and the climactic moment.

But the midpoint is also unique in that it stands alone at the top of the circle in kastic structure

with no partner or mirroring beat.

Rather, the midpoint notably offers what James Scott Bell

so brilliantly calls the mirror moment.

This is a moment within the story, usually inherent within the thematically all-important moment of truth,

in which the characters are given the opportunity to see truths about themselves as if in a mirror.

What the midpoint, or as it's sometimes

called the second plot point, does have in common

with all the other major structural beats is that it too is comprised of two halves.

This is of course because the midpoint is a scene or sequence of scenes in its own right

offering a complete scene structure and emotional arc. In the previous two episodes we

started talking about how each of the major structural turning points is made up of two intrinsic parts, which together serve to reverse the value of the scene by moving the character through some

progression of goal to disaster. In all the beats, both halves are important for properly turning the plot.

The beats we are exploring in this series are the inciting event, the first plot point,

the midpoint or second plot point, which is what we're talking about today, and the third

plot point and climactic moment.

So what is the midpoint? As the centerpiece of the entire story,

the midpoint in many ways encapsulates

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