[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we're going to talk about one of our favorite plotting tools, which is we call them Pivot Point plans. So before we dive in, if you haven't yet listened to episode seven, which is called WTF, as agency, we'd highly recommend that you go and listen to that one first, because in that one, we break down the difference between story goals and scene goals and different types of story goals. And it's just a really good foundational episode for what we're about to launch into, which is one of the coolest tools ever.
[00:52] Rachel: Yes. So listen to that one, learn from it, and then come back to this so that we can build on that discussion about goals into now discussions about plans.
[01:03] Emily: Plans.
[01:04] Rachel: What's a plan?
[01:06] Emily: What is a plan? It's what it sounds like. It's a plan of action. And I think it can be really helpful to think in terms of plans when you're plotting your novel, because a goal is not a plan. Like, having a goal to achieve something is important. Your characters always need to have goals, but they also need to have a plan of action for how they're going to achieve those goals, because everybody might have a slightly different plan of action for how they're going to get something. And that says a lot about the character and how they think they're going to get what they want and all the things. And so a plan is really just your character wants something and they have steps they're going to take to go get it.
[01:48] Rachel: Yeah. So I love breaking this down with an analogy that can be pretty easily compared to, like, a modern American workplace where you have think of it like project management. You have an objective. You have a goal, like increase sales by 25%, whatever. Like at work, you're given this major, major task, and you can't just tackle it right away. Like, you have to break it down into smaller, more manageable, bite sized pieces. And they're like milestones along the process to reach your big objective. Plans are that you have this great big goal. Your character has this story goal, but they can't just immediately do that thing. They've got to take baby steps to get there. So they need to form plans which will help drive. What are they going to do? How are they going to start tackling this major story goal?
[02:44] Emily: Yeah. And it's really helpful in breaking your story down into digestible actionable pieces for you. Because a story, like writing a story, is a massive thing. And so if you can break your story into different plans that your character has for how they're going to achieve their goals, then you can break your book into sections that you work on at a time, and then you can break that plan into the stepping stones of the scenes. And we talked about this a little bit on episode seven, but you can break it down that way. So essentially, plans are the step between your story goals and your scene goals. And we'll talk more about that in a minute. But before we do that, can you talk to us about what a Pivot point plan is?
[03:30] Rachel: Yes. Okay, so we have plans. We know what that is. It's your character's bite sized opportunity to start tackling their big goal. We are going to talk about Pivot point plans because they tie directly to character arc and it's a very pointed and intentional way of forming these plans. So your story has different or let's talk about story in general. So as a character sets out on a journey to accomplish a goal in a positive arc, they're going to experience some sort of change along that path. As we are looking at character change, and as we're looking at their external pursuit to reach a goal, they have moments of changing gears, changing directions. We call those Pivot moments. So they're Pivot points where your character is forced to change their approach to achieving their goals and at the same time, it reveals something about their character. So when your character will hit like a major failure or a plot milestone, they'll need to shift tactics. They'll need to change their plans. And that's their Pivot point, where they shift, they pivot. And then therefore, their plan to achieve that goals, their plan to achieve their major goal changes a little bit. So there are multiple points at which this happens throughout the story. You have it at the beginning of Act Two, where they make their first plan to go on the journey of this goal. It usually will then happen around the midpoint where they've had some milestone or some failure that's now forcing them to shift gears, change tactics, so they form like a new plan. And this is in the character arc side of things. This is where they kind of like double down in their flaws. Then they go through the remainder of act two with that same flawed plan. At the end of act two, they hit their rock bottom moment where they have their major reckoning, their come to Jesus moment. They know, they realize that they have been the problem the whole time and they need to change in the face of that. So they go through their change. Then once they've changed, they have another Pivot. They need to shift gears again because now they've learned their lesson. So at the beginning of Act Three, they put in another change of plans. This one is usually in the right direction. They're on the right path now. And then in the middle of act three, it's called the High Tower Surprise in Save the Cat. But there's usually like a climax twist. And there's another plot thing that forces them to change gears, like, one last time. And since they've now learned their lesson and a positive arc, they form the right plan once again and they're able to accomplish their goals. So these moments, we call them pivot points because they're shifting in a major way. They're kind of like changing what they're planning to do. And it relates to the way that they either double down in their flaws or they eventually change and then prove that change along their character arc. Yeah.
[06:44] Emily: So the plans are like a way to externalize the internal journey that your character is going on because essentially.
[06:52] Rachel: They.
[06:52] Emily: Start the story with a flawed belief, which we call the internal obstacle. And we have an episode on that, right?
[06:58] Rachel: Yes. Flawed people in episode three. Flawed people are more interesting.
[07:03] Emily: Yeah. So go check that out if you don't know what an internal obstacle is. But essentially, it's just a flawed belief that they have at the beginning of the story that you, as the author, want them to unlearn. You want them to address throughout the story. And so the plans are how you externalize that belief because they want something. They want that story goal, their external and internal story goals, and they have a flawed belief about how they're going to go get it. And that belief is driving the formation of their plans. So after the big catalyst happens in Act One and they have to decide what they're going to do about the story's plot problem, they come up with a flawed plan that sets them off into Act Two. And then that plan, like Rachel said, fails at the midpoint. And it fails because it's flawed.
[07:49] Rachel: It's not the right thing.
[07:50] Emily: Yeah. You're giving it intentional consequences. So this is where when we talk about snowballing consequences, this is what we're talking about. They made a choice at the beginning of Act Two to go down a path that was influenced by their flawed belief instead of by something more healed and more appropriate. And so because they didn't do that thing, there are consequences that spiral towards the midpoint. And when they fail at the midpoint, they have a chance to change. But like you said, they dig their heels in and they don't. And so they come up with a different plan. Like, they have to change tactics. And that's the plan that leads them through the second half of Act Two. But that plan is also flawed. And then, so it's not until they've had like, two plans that are really bad that they finally are like, oh, maybe it's me that's the problem.
[08:41] Rachel: Right?
[08:42] Emily: Exactly. Just the external plot issues. And so then they change and come up with healthy plans. And again, that's how you externalize that they've changed, is that that new plan in Act Three, both plans and Act Three are led by your story point belief, the healed belief, the thing that they've learned in the story. And so because they learned it. They have a different approach to achieving their goals, and then they succeed and you prove that they've changed. But yeah, it's a great way to externalize it because I often get that question of like, okay, I know I want them to change, but how do I show it? This is how you show it.
[09:23] Rachel: This is how you show it. Yeah. And I want to clarify. When we say flawed plans or bad plans, they seem good to the character. So let me just tell you that the character thinks these are good plans because they're driven by their internal obstacle flaws. They're still driven by that flawed belief. But as the author and as the reader, we know this probably isn't going to work out. There's going to have consequences. But therein lies like, the beauty of change is that we don't change because we're told to change. We change because of the consequences pile up until we can't move on without changing. Or we know, like, if we didn't change, we would experience something even more dire. So that's why these plans need to generally not work out. Like, they're flawed. They don't work out. They create consequences that pile up because that's how you force your character to change. It's not like you give them these flawed plans and then everything goes really great and they're like, on the right path and they're figuring things out, and then all of a sudden they change. They need to not work out. They need to have that's not to say that they constantly fail. Like, you have ups and downs. There are ups and downs in a story where things seem to work out and then, oh, wait, just kidding, that didn't work out. But make these plans fail. Make them create consequences that continue to pile up. And that is the crux of the end of Act Two, where they have their all is lost, their rock bottom moment. And then see the light. Like, oh, yeah, I have been going about this the whole wrong way.
[10:56] Emily: Yeah.
[10:58] Rachel: So we talked about in episode seven about WCF's agency story goals and scene goals. Yes. Where do Pivot plans fit? In the middle. Right in the middle of this.
[11:13] Emily: They're right in the middle.
[11:14] Rachel: Yeah.
[11:14] Emily: So essentially, if you think of, like I think the business analogy is so good because you have your overall project, right, your overall thing that you're trying to achieve, you have to break it into phases, essentially, right? First you have to do this plan, and then you're going to do this part of it. And within each of those phases of your project implementation, you're going to have objectives like those smaller goals of the things that you have to do first. And so you can use your Pivot point plans to determine what your character's scene goals need to be. And so this is what makes planning, plotting Act Two so much easier, is because if you know what your character's plan is from the beginning of Act Two to the midpoint, then you can make sure that every scene and that half of the huge act two is related to that plan. So oftentimes when I'm working with clients and they're struggling with their scene goals, I'm like, okay, well, what's their plan? Zoom out, remember? What is their plan right now for how they're going to achieve their goals and what is the next step towards achieving that plan? Because that's your scene goal. That's always your scene goal. And like you said, they might think they're succeeding, and then you're going to hit them with a major failure at the midpoint. But whatever's going on, whether they think they're failing, succeeding, struggling, or, like, celebrating, it's always the next step towards that Pivot Point plan because that's what they think they need to do right now to get their story goals. And so it's just a way to filter down and figure out exactly what you need to happen in a scene.
[12:54] Rachel: Yeah. I really like how we describe Pivot Point plans as the bridge between story goals and scene goals. And when I first learned this, that was really eye opening for me because I generally had a sense of what my story goals were. And I knew that every scene needed a scene goal. But then you think of like, okay, I have 50 scenes that I need to fill to get them to this story goal. How do I do that? It just feels so overwhelming to think of, for me, at least those two pieces individually, because you have all of these scene goals that somehow need to link together to create, okay, they did it. They succeeded in the story goal. But then once you insert that bridge, once you insert, like, Pivot Point plans, it's so much more manageable to break it into. Okay, I know for Act Two to the midpoint, they're focusing on this one plan, and I know it's not going to work out. They're going to need to shift plans into the plan between Act Two or the midpoint to act three. So that helped me think of it, helped me connect them in a way that felt like a lot less overwhelming because I was already given that direction, what my characters are going to be doing. And I could basically fill in the blanks from there rather than having to fill in like 50 or 60 blanks and hope that it reached the endpoint that I was hoping for. Yeah, never happened.
[14:22] Emily: It can also provide variety. Like, a lot of times when I start teaching clients about scene structure and scene goals and scene choices, I'll get the question, well, won't this get repetitive?
[14:34] Rachel: Yeah.
[14:34] Emily: If in every scene they're going after the same thing, in every scene, they're making the same flawed decisions, like, won't the reader get bored? And this is the answer to that. No, they're not going to get bored because you can give them drastically different plans of action. We have an example in which it's not a drastic change, but there are stories in which your character at the midpoint fails so badly that they make like a 180 turn to something else. That's flawed, but it changes up, right? It changes everything up because they're going to be failing in new ways now, and they're going to have different goals for there because it's not like they're following one plan for the whole story. They're following one goal, but not necessarily one plan. You want them to change tactics so that, okay, now we're on this different path. We've got these different things we need to do that we didn't expect at the beginning of the story. That mixes it up in a good way.
[15:28] Rachel: I think it does. And also I think when you insert pivot point plans at the same time that it gives you variety, I think it also really gives you focus because you know you're not going to go off on this random tangent. I used to do that all the time, so that's very characteristic of me and my brain and perhaps is a panther thing. Some panthers are really easy to stay on track, but it's also really tough if you are kind of just uncovering as you go or having fun exploring different opportunities as you go. If you at least know like pivot plans and at what point your characters are going to shift their focus, you still know that they have a focus. And that helps a lot to keep you on track and give you a direction for how you're going to write forward.
[16:20] Emily: Yeah, I love that. I love how this tool can be used in lots of different ways. I'm a plotter, and so I love knowing where I'm heading with my plans. And I'll oftentimes when I've got my plans planned out, and then I will figure out exactly what I want to happen in each of the arcs. And I'm not necessarily down to the specific scene, though sometimes down to the specific scene as to what are the steps for each plan and where am I headed and how can I weave the consequences in as a plotter? It's a really good tool for me, but I know you use it in a slightly different way.
[17:00] Rachel: Yeah. So when I'm loosely planning my story we talked about this on the podcast before, and so I'm just trying to find the right words of what I want to say remains in panther territory. I think there's a huge value to understanding where your story is headed, but I also really want to preserve my creative freedom and the opportunity for my brain to come up with ideas as I'm writing. So what I love about this tool is that it allows me to know where my story is headed without going so nitty gritty down into what happens in each individual scene that I feel like my creativity kind of draining away. So what I do with this tool is I get to know my characters really well. I know what my goals are as best as I can, and then I just write out, like, okay, I have two main characters, and they have different Pivot Point plans, and they kind of overlap, but that's how they conflict with each other, is that they're trying to do different things. But anyway, I plan out. Okay, here is my Act Two a plan. Here's what's going to happen at the midpoint, and here's their Act Two B plan, and here's their Act Three plan. And just having, like, a one word sentence written out for those plans allows me to give structure to Act Two without it feeling suffocating. So if you're a panther and you've ever felt like, I have no idea what to do with Act Two, I feel completely overwhelmed. Like, how am I ever going to fill all this space? Start with just, like, a one word sentence of what are they trying to aim for and how does that change once they fail? And use that as your guideposts as you're drafting. If you know your plans, you can drive your Act Two and still allow yourself to explore all the fun ideas that end up coming up. Then I'll add an asterisk that I did this, and then I got to the end of Act Two and I realized that my plans were a little bit off. My plans were not hitting the emotional impact that I needed them to in my characters. But after a week, it was very clear to me that that was the problem. And we've talked about that on the podcast too, where I went back and I redid those plans, and now I feel, like a lot stronger in them. So that's something that's very normal if you're drafting and then all of a sudden you're like, I don't think these plans are right. You can go back and redo them and still give yourself a path forward for revisions without feeling like you have to analyze every single scene and go back and I don't know. It helped me a lot to see my new direction in my revisions without feeling like everything was wrong and bad.
[19:47] Emily: Yeah, I'm actually doing that right now. And the Pivot plans are proving to be a massive revision tool for me. So I just took a manuscript off the shelf that's been gathering dust for two years. I literally have not looked at it in two years. And I know that I want to make big changes to the themes of the story and the story, like the story point, which can feel so daunting and overwhelming when you realize you want to change your story point. But what I'm doing is I haven't even read it. I haven't read the manuscript so long, though it is very long. But the reason that I haven't is because I know what I want to do with the foundation of the story now. And so I've actually looked back at my notes on my old Pivot plans, and that's where I'm starting. It's like, okay, this is how I want this character's new arc to be tweaked. And so I'm finding that their plans are mostly the same, but I can tweak the nuance of why they're doing it and really get into that. And so that's helping me because once I can take that from that top level and start looking at the scenes, I'll have a rubric by which I can revise the scenes because I think if I just dove into the manuscript and tried to, I would just get stuff off. So that's where I'm starting is with the Pivot plans, and I've used that a lot with my clients. When we're doing revisions, as we start with the Pivot plans to really figure out what foundationally has changed, if anything, and then we do the trickle down effect to the scene level.
[21:20] Rachel: Yeah, I think it's like if you pair up your goals and your Pivot Point plans and you know that I'm adding a thing here, that, you know, they're tied to your character's internal obstacle, et cetera, you have a very good idea, like a very good skeleton of what is happening in your story. And for me, that is plenty to give me structure while also giving me creative freedom to write and have fun with it. And it has helped a lot to where I don't just create a story where all these random things happen and then I have to make sense of it after the fact. I love that this is just as skeleton as you want it, and you could go, like super hard, as hard, and as plotting heavy as you want it. And so if you're listening to this, figure out how to incorporate it into your process and see what works for you and how much you might need to think about with your plans. Start really high level or go really nitty gritty. Either way, it's going to serve you in the structure of your story, in the structure of your character arcs, and help you for sure in revisions.
[22:31] Emily: Yeah. Love it. Okay, so I want to break down the lia example, but now I'm thinking this is a tricky thing to talk about on a podcast because we don't have the visual. Can we link our Pivot Point graph visual in the notes of the podcast? We could put links in there so we can link an image.
[23:00] Rachel: Yeah, if we upload it as, like, an image.
[23:03] Emily: Yeah, we will figure it out. We're going to put the image in there for you guys so that you can visually see it. But in the meantime, I'm going to walk you through lia of Sarah's Pivot Point plans in the first book of the Ember in the Ashes series. Okay, we ready?
[23:28] Rachel: Yes.
[23:28] Emily: Jump in. Okay, so when we open an Ember in the Ashes, lia, she lives in an oppressed family within this world, the secondary world, where they are oppressed by these people called the Marshals. And she's always seen herself as the weak one in the family. Her parents died trying to rebel against the Marshals, and her grandparents are really strong figures, and her brother is a really strong figure. But Lia feels like she's weak, and her internal obstacle belief, is that some people are inherently strong and others are inherently weak, and she considers herself weak. And so at the beginning of the book, lia's home is raided in the middle of the night, and the Marshals kill her grandparents and arrest her brother. And her brother tells her to run, and so she does. And so that's the catalyst of the story, is that her brother has been arrested and she runs away. And so because Lia thinks she's weak, her first pivot plan when she breaks into Act Two is to seek rebel strangers help, and she agrees to spy for them in exchange for their help in rescuing her brother. So because Lia doesn't believe she's strong enough to rescue her brother, she agrees to spy for these rebels, who she sees as stronger than her, and they're complete strangers to her. And so that's her first plan, is she's going to spy for the rebels and put herself in as little danger as she can. So she's basically snuck into the Marshall headquarters and she poses as a spy in the commandant, like, the leader's household.
[25:11] Rachel: Yeah, she's a slave. She poses as a slave, and she is a spy. Yeah.
[25:17] Emily: So plan number One that takes her from the Act Two break to the midpoint is I'm going to passively spy and gather information for the rebels while putting myself in as little danger as possible. That doesn't work.
[25:33] Rachel: Yeah.
[25:34] Emily: She constantly fails to get information. She is constantly put in danger even though she's trying not to put herself in danger. And then at the midpoint, the rebels threaten to withdraw their support because she hasn't found anything for them. And the slave master, that who runs her household, tortures her for basically no reason. And so basically, Lia's first plan of I'm going to spy and keep myself out of danger is proven impossible. She's always going to be in danger, and she's got nothing left to lose. So Lia changes tactics for the second half of Act Two. She actively puts herself in danger to gather information for the rebels so that they will save her brother.
[26:17] Rachel: Right.
[26:17] Emily: Her story goal is to save her brother, and because she thinks she's not capable of it, she wants these rebels to do it. So then that plan fails at her all his last moment when she realizes that the rebels have been lying to her. And so she realizes that she was wrong to place her faith in strangers who didn't earn it. And so basically, she has this massive suspicion that the rebels have some other motive that may or may not include her brother. So Lia changes. She learns the story point in that moment that her power lies in her hands and her hands only. And she comes up with a third plan. And so this plan launches her into act three, which is she's going to find the rebels and demand answers as to whether or not they're going to find her brother or help her brother. And then regardless of what they say, she's going to save her brother no matter what. And of course, she learns that they did in fact betray her. They never intended to save her brother and they actually tried to kill her. And one of her rebel friends saved her life. And he offers to save her brother for her. But because Lia has changed, at this point she says, yeah, no, I'm going to trust myself, not other people. And so she declines his offer and she sets out to save her friends and her brother by herself. And so that's her last plan. I'm headed out. I'm not leaning on others anymore. I'm going to trust myself. So you can kind of see she's pivoting tactics all throughout the book. And the pivots in those tactics are showing us what she believes and how she's changing.
[28:09] Rachel: I love Lia and that's like such a good summary of the story at the same time. So when we were saying earlier this is a really good skeleton, like if you need a plot summary, this is a good place to start, figure out what is happening. So if you're thinking yourself, how do I do this? How do I start creating plans? What do I do to create this? The first thing that you need to do is really know your story's goals. So go back to episode seven, listen to our podcast about or the episode about goals. Think about your character story goals, then break that down. How are they going to try at first to achieve that goal? What are they going to do? What do they think is in their head, the right thing or the easiest thing or the best place to start? And then think about all the ways that that's not going to work out and it's going to force them to change their mind and do something different. That's their next pivot point plan. That's the one that comes at the midpoint. So what do they do at that point? That one's also not going to work out. So then they need to learn the lesson. They need to learn your story points. You need to be hurting them basically in that direction. Once they get to everything fails, learn their lesson. What is the right thing that they should have been doing the whole time to get what they. Want? What is the correct healed plan that they're going to go into in act Three? Start thinking about that. Ask yourself if this character had known the story point lesson at the very beginning, what would they have done or what would that have looked like or what is the right way to go about achieving this story goal? Then you can think about like, okay, is there a twist in act three? What is the high tower surprise? What's the climax that's going to test this character one last time and then what is the final? Okay, they've got it down. They've proved they've changed. Now is the time to succeed and to give them what they want. And that is their last pivot point plan. So if you have been counting along that's four, two of them, yes, check out the graph helpful visual. They have two that are very flawed and they have two that are in the right direction and those last two happen in Act Three. So you're having basically two different they could be slightly different, but they are a distinct change in the way they're going to tackle their plans in Act Three. Use those plans to drive or give your story like focus, drive the action, keep you on track and know, okay, you're moving in this direction. You're trying to give them what they want, but they can't get it until they change. Start there.
[31:03] Emily: Yeah, start there. And if you want more guidance, we have an entire course that leads you from story point all the way through to scene summaries that really breaks down how to set up these plans and sets you up for outlining success. And that's called From Idea to Outline and it is exclusive to our Tenacious writing members. And so if you want to check out our Tenacious Writing Lifetime access program, you absolutely should because it has that course as well as like a billion other things in it that will just make your writing life so much better. So if you want a little more guidance, that is the place to look.
[31:42] Rachel: Yes, tenaciouswriting.com, check it out. We want you in the program. You're going to love it. And there's so much content in that course. It is a full blown course that's included in this program and there are other Ala Carte Master classes that dive really deep into these ideas and get you on the right track. Okay, so we've mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast. We are planning to do periodically listener question episodes. So if you have a question or a current writing concern that you want to send our way, we would love for you to do that. You can email us your questions at [email protected] and put in the subject line podcast Question. We are collecting these. We've already had a couple send in, so if you've been one of those, we've seen it, we're so excited to cover it. And then in an episode. In the future, we're going to go over these questions, give out some love, some coaching, some advice, and some next steps for you to help get you on the right track. So send us your questions and we'll do that in the future. All right. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[33:05] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you will have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[33:14] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there.
[33:17] Emily: Bye bye. You our.
