hi I'm cam Wyland and welcome to this week's writing q a video this week's question is from DDT games who asks can another character who isn't the main antagonist serve for the pinch point of a character's Arc so of course um a pinch point is a structural Turning Point within the story structure pinch there's two pinch points they take place on either side of the midpoint both within the second act one leads up to the pinch point and the other leads up to the third plot point which Begins the third act and generally speaking pinch
points are there to emphasize the antagonistic Force they're there to show what's at stake for the characters what they stand to lose and also to kind of give sometimes not always it depends on the story but give a hint of what the antagonist is up to and how they might be flexing their power within the story so the the main thing to understand in answer to this question is that the point of structure is to create a cohesive whole for the story so when you're examining each of the structural beats in your story one of
the main things that you need to be looking at is do they all line up do they all seem like they are unified and that they're all a piece of the same hole um and so generally you know first and foremost you're going to want to make sure that your protagonist shows up at every beat it isn't as important that your antagonist does particularly um in person since in a lot of stories um the antagonist may not show up in a lot of the scenes may never um show up until the climax um or it
may be instead of a person it may be an antagonistic Force which is um more represented by just things that happen that threaten whatever is the character's status quo or what they're working toward for example in a relationship story it could be something that's you know threatening to keep the characters apart it's not necessarily a person it's just circumstances um but whatever it is you do want still even if the antagonist is not showing up at every beat or in the pinch points you want to feel like everything is creating this unified whole that it's
showing what the protagonist what the protagonist's goal is and what is consistently creating the obstacles to that goal and therefore the main plot conflict so the first step is simply identifying in your story what is creating that plot conflict what is creating that string of obstacles um between the character um and their plot goal so once you've identified that then go and you can go and look at your pinch points and examine what's the best way to bring that in and emphasize that there and again one of the primary roles of the pinch point is
to emphasize what is at stake for the character so sometimes that's more important than actually bringing the antagonistic force on stage and showing what they're up to but in looking at you know how your antagonistic force shows up and how your conflict shows up you can then examine what's the best way to bring them in at the pinch points generally speaking the answer to this question is no you do not want a character who is not the main antagonistic force to be presenting whatever's happening in your pinch point because that's a clear um you know
straying off the beaten path of this otherwise linear structure that you're trying to create for your story however it's totally possible and I'm going to write a post about this pretty soon I think on my website um helping writers become authors.com that you can have antagonistic proxies so for example you've got a big bad who doesn't show up throughout the story but that character is going to have proxies who work in his stead you know for example he's got henchmen that would be the the simplest lowest common denominator way to go about that so it's
it's totally possible that you're that your big bad isn't showing up at the pinch point but that some henchman is showing up on their behalf again it can be you know depending on your story and how the antagonistic forces represented in general it may not be a person one of my favorite examples of pinch points in a relationship story is the movie the lake house with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock which has really lovely pinch points that don't feature an antagonist they're just about the ways where the characters keep kind of missing each other in
the relationship like one of them is when Keanu is trying to go after Sandra Bullock and a train station and he misses the train so it's just it's just this really subtle moment that doesn't have anything to do with a person but which is you know creating a roadblock within the overall plot which in this story is for them to be together so it really you really have to look at like how the conflict is presenting in your story and um what you're going to do about it otherwise you want it to be pretty much
that like I say that linear through line where it's the protagonist versus the antagonist whatever that is in your story there can be exceptions and um I have seen it done although I can't think of an example off top of my head in which the pinch points are feature almost subplots um but they're still unified there's still a pair so whatever is happening in the first pinch point is also reflected in the second I would recommend caution with that it's something you can play around with but you do need to really understand the effect that
that's having on your overall structure and have a very clear understanding of how the antagonistic force is functioning within your story so shorthand answer is no you don't want a minor or sub character taking the role of your main antagonist at a major plot plane which is what the pitch points are but there is there's always room for experimentation a lot of it depends on the context of your own personal story and how the stakes and the conflict and the antagonist are represented in your story so I hope that's helpful for more information on pinch
points I've included some links in the description down below and I hope you will stop by next week if you have a question please leave that in the comments and I will see you later
