hello and welcome to our weekly writing q a this week's question is from prathap Chinese which I'm probably butchering and I'm sorry um and he asks what is the difference between the first plot point and the first pinch point is it possible to write a first plot point and first pinch Point only in a single beat this is a good question I think that there's a fair amount of confusion about what the pinch points are um so just really quickly the way I teach structure it revolves around the timing of eight specific sections of the
story that are divided by turning points or beats and within the first half of the story we have the inciting event which is halfway through the First Act the first plot point which is 25 of the way into the story and is like the swivel between the First Act and the second act and then a quarter of the way into the second act so about 37 Mark you have the first of two pinch points this the second one is in the second half and so right away you can see that the short answer to this
question is no that they are not the same and they cannot be the same beat because one of the primary things of importance to understand about them is that they are um is the timing right and so one the first plot Point takes place at the 25 Mark and the first plot Point takes place around the 37 Mark so that timing is really important because by dividing the story up into equal parts and creating these important turning points what you're really doing is controlling the story's pacing and if any one of those sections is too
short or too long and they don't have to be precise the percentiles are General guidelines but you do want it to be relatively close simply because you want each section of the story to have enough space to do what it needs to do to recover from the previous turning point and to build into the subsequent one so the timing is important if you were to say combine you know um you know structural considerations of what those beats actually do aside if you were to combine these two turning points into one then either you're have a
really really long section before you even get to the first plot point the first turning point I mean you're leading up to somewhere in the range of the 37 Mark which is a long time for readers to wait particularly that early in the story or you have a really long section after the Turning Point leading up to the midpoint at the 50 Mark in which you know if there's no turning point then technically nothing's happening nothing's changing the plot and that can be very problematic for pacing and the other consideration is what do these turning
points actually do within the story now they share the commonality that they're basic they are turning points that's the the most important thing for both of them in that they introduce new information characters take irrevocable action in some way so that something changes within the story there are consequences new decisions have to be made and there's forward progression within the plot right um but they do the first plot point in the first pinch Point like all of the structural turning points do have their own specific flavor and you could say responsibilities within the story so
the first plot Point all of the plot points there's three major plot points the first plot point at the 25 Mark which divides the first and second acts the midpoint or second plot point which is a halfway through the entire story at the 50 Mark and the third plot point which divides the second act and the third act at the 75 Mark those are the big moments in your story if you had three big moments those are them and so you do not want to shortchange those and what they're doing you know is indicating these
these doors of no return between the acts so they the first plot Point specifically is is this threshold of no return in which the character leaves the normal world of the First Act and fully engages with the conflict by entering the Adventure World of the second act whether the setting actually changes or not it can be totally symbolic but it is very important because it's an irrevocable moment in the story where the character you know enters fully enters the plot and the conflict and can't go back whereas the first pinch point is not necessarily that
irrevocable it is um primarily an emphasis of the antagonistic force and what is at stake for the characters leading up to in this instance the midpoint um and the major turning point that's going to happen there so it's it's it can be a huge moment but it's generally smaller with an emphasis more on reaction rather than maybe more of the action that you'd see in the major plot points so short answer is they're very different the timing is important because they're either 12 of you know there's 12 percent of the story in between them and
that can be a very big chunk depending on how long your story is and it's important to you know fully flesh that out so I hope that's helpful there's so much more on my site about this I talk about structure all the time you can find some of my um most popular and important structural posts in the left sidebar I'm not sure where that shows up on mobile devices I think there's a drop down menu but there's a section on structuring your story with all kinds of articles about this so if you're confused or you
want more definition around plot points and pinch points you can definitely find that on my site I also talk about this some in my books structuring your novel and I have a free ebook called five secrets of story structure which actually goes into quite a bit of depth about the pinch points so I hope that was helpful and if you enjoyed the video or any of my content I would totally appreciate it if you'd consider just taking a quick second to interact with it in some way to let YouTube know that you liked it either
by liking it or leaving a comment or something like that all right thank you and if you have a question for next week be sure to leave it in the comments below
