Where do I turn?
The trinity of nuances inherent in the obligatory Turning Point of every scene.
Spoiler Alert
I'm going to deviate from Story Grid dogma today. Just a teensy bit. Or a fuck-ton. Your perspective may differ. Your mileage may vary. You have been warned.
This is my own view of one of the Five Commandments of Storytelling that I have found to be useful in my own writing and with my private editing clients in working to refine the obligatory Turning Point.
Note: We do not teach the Turning Point this way in the Scene Writing Workshop nor in the Writer Mentorship. If you're looking for the Official Dogma™ you'll find it at storygrid.com and in the Story Grid classes.
public void functionName(){
// This is my code!
}Remember Sam
In case you missed it, here’s who I’m talking about when I use the universal term Sam in this post. Everything we do in storytelling is in service of Sam.
Every Commandment Is a Beat
They are Commandments because Thou shalt have them or else thine scene doth not worketh. The count of thine Commandments shall be Five. And the…
[I made him stop with the Monty Python bit. You’re welcome. —ed.]
The reason there are Five Commandments (5Cs hereafter) is intentional. The number emerged from psychological theory. It’s called Miller’s Law. I first learned it in software, where it’s ironically attributed to a different guy also named Miller.
Shawn Coyne said to me (just a couple weeks ago in a video call with a dozen of my favorite story nerds) that he constrained the 5Cs from among the myriad different nuances and necessities of story to just five, because that’s the low end of the number of things a human can keep in working memory at any given time (seven plus or minus two). I have found this to be accurate in many walks of life. But I digress…
In my view, every one of the 5Cs is a Progressive Complication (PC hereafter). Each PC is a beat in the scene. The Inciting Incident is a beat. The Turning Point is a beat. If the Crisis appears literally on the page, it's a beat. (Try not to do this with your Crisis because it usually winds up being too on-the-nose.) The Climax is a beat. [Technically, the Climax is the back half of the Turning Point beat. He’ll explain this in a minute. —ed.] And, of course, the Resolution is a beat.
Why am I beating this drum? 🥁
A beat is input and output. Input from a force of antagonism and output from the protagonist. Punch and counterpunch. Every time. The punch tells Sam what's at stake: either A or B or both. The counterpunch tells Sam how to feel about it and what the protagonist values: either A or B or both.
This means that all 5Cs are actually two parts each: punch and counterpunch.
It’s my considered opinion that any line in your scene that's neither punch nor counterpunch is wasted. If it’s neither, the words don't dramatize the stakes. It's pointless exposition. Make it mean something in the scene, in the immediate conflict between the antagonist and the protagonist or cut that shit.
I have observed that it is a common amateur writer mistake to feel compelled include “the lore” or a “global story element” or some other darling that tickles their fantasy but does not serve the immediate plot and probably bores Sam. Yeah, sometimes you’ll find it in masterworks, too, but the masterworks succeed in spite of the waste, not because of it.
We’ll come back to this punch-counterpunch duality soon.
What is actually turning?
Every PC is a turn in value, an escalation of the Crisis stakes toward the inevitable Turning Point and an increase in net irreversibility of the situation for the protagonist. Robert McKee describes this as The Gap in his cosmology. The unbridgeable space between what the protagonist tries and what was needful to overcome the force of antagonism in that beat. The Gap must get larger with every beat. Your stakes and your PCs must escalate or Sam will become subconsciously confused about where the story is going.
Sam knows that the Turning Point is coming because every PC gets bigger, more powerful, more emotional, and more irreversible than the one prior. If it's not that way in your scene, you got them in the wrong order. Fix the broken PCs or cut them.
Note: The hormone that delivers this narrative drive is primarily cortisol. It’s your job to ramp Sam’s cortisol UP in every beat. That’s how you make the subconscious promise of dopamine delivery at the Climax which Sam came to your story for. If you’re curious about the neurology of storytelling, Lisa Cron is the mistress of all that.
If you do this right, it brings us up to the Turning Point. Which is a PC, of course, and a beat. The antagonist does the biggest something of all in the scene and the protagonist reacts or responds with the biggest something they’ve got because the protagonist sees the binary Crisis clearly for the first time. And it’s not enough…which means the protagonist must make a choice next or lose it all. In the clearest examples, the Turning Point is the antagonist’s biggest punch. Win or lose, the Climax is the protagonist’s biggest counterpunch.
The Climax often, but not always, follows immediately after the Turning Point. This post is about some of the reasons WHY sometimes the Climax does not immediately follow the apparent Turning Point. I have a supplemental theory related to Crisis stakes that works hand in glove with this one—and you’ll have to wait for that one in the future. (Dun, dun, dun!)
But wait, there’s more!
The Turning Point itself is a complex, progressive concept. I see at least three different components inside the concept of the Turning Point, so I'm going to break them out and discuss them individually. That's the punchline of today's pontification: the Turning Point has three parts. At least three parts. I reserve the right to find more parts later. 😅
Spoiler Alert: If you can arrange your PCs so that the Turning Point nails all three concepts AT THE SAME TIME, it will be the strongest promise of the most cathartic Climax for Sam. That’s the brass ring and that’s the assumption underlying the Turning Point in Story Grid (in my unauthorized opinion).
However, sometimes a Turning Point doesn’t quite land with maximum punch and still works, in my opinion. Here are the three parts that I see which are why the Turning Point can seem “soft” in many stories, even in masterworks:
The Tipping Point where Sam feels the value at stake in the scene shift.
The Crisis Point where Sam registers both binary Crisis options.
The Breaking Point where Sam registers the biggest or most powerful PC.
In case you care, I came to this epiphany when dissecting the scene from Ready Player One in which Parzival meets Art3mis for the first time. It’s a long but very cohesive and dialog heavy chapter. And all three of these elements are distinct in that masterwork scene. I’ll parse all that out in a future post about Crisis stakes.
In some scenes, I see these as separable moments, distinct PCs. And they usually come in this order, but sometimes they don’t. Thinking about the relationship of these parts can help you figure out why a scene might feel “off.” Let’s dissect them individually.
Tipping Point
In every working scene in every genre, something is at stake. If nothing is at stake, Sam won’t care. The something at stake is the literary signifier for the human value that you’re exploring your story. It could be Life-and-Death. It could be Love-and-Hate. It could be Good-versus-Evil. Perhaps between Safe-and-Threatened. Maybe even a more important human value like Hungry-versus-Satiated! [The author needs a sammich. —ed.] These value spectrums are binary and, in general, we all know which end is positive and which end is negative.
Because each human value is a spectrum, you signal to Sam that something meaningful has happened by shifting that value in your scene. The value starts closer to one end or the other at the beginning of the scene and moves significantly in the other direction by the end of the scene. It could start at the negative end and move to the positive end. Or it could start at the negative end and shift toward the positive. If that doesn’t happen, your scene doesn’t work.
Every PC will nudge the value along this spectrum in your scene. Yes, it can move back and forth, positively and negatively, with each PC. However, if it doesn’t move one way or the other, it’s not a working PC and you need to fix it or cut it.
The Tipping Point occurs in a PC when Sam feels like the value at stake for the protagonist has moved irrevocably toward the opposite end of where it started. It doesn’t matter whether a character is moving from safe to in danger in a Thriller fight scene or from bored to curious in a Maturation plot exploration scene. The value must shift.
Think of the Tipping Point as the “Oh, no!” point in your scene because that is how Sam should feel.
If any of your PCs after the Tipping Point move back in the other direction, Sam will become immediately confused. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
If you only have one PC and it’s your Tipping Point, Sam will feel like the shift in value is unearned. And it’s very likely that you have not established enough of the stakes for your binary Crisis options if the Tipping Point is your only PC.
If you think your Tipping Point comes after your Crisis Point, you may have a problem because Sam will be confused about the stakes of your binary Crisis and may not understand them if the value shifts too soon.
When you do not have a Tipping Point, Sam will unconsciously know that “nothing is happening” in these words, start to feel bored, and begin to skim or close the book.
Never. Bore. Sam.
Crisis Point
The Crisis Point is the PC when Sam realizes that the protagonist must choose between the two binary Crisis options. This realization is usually based on an implied Crisis Question that smells like one of these general structures:
Will the protagonist choose really good thing A or really good thing B? (Irreconcilable Goods Choice)
Will the protagonist choose really bad thing X or really bad thing Y? (Best Bad Choice)
Will the protagonist suffer consequence B in order to get the thing A that they really want? (One form of “A without having to B”)
Will the protagonist do the unpleasant thing B in order to get the thing A that they really want? (Another form of “A without having to B”)
Will the protagonist sacrifice the thing A that they really want in order to avoid doing the thing B that they loathe? (A third form of “A without having to B”)
Will the protagonist sacrifice the thing A that they really want in order to avoid suffering the consequence B that they deeply fear? (Yet another form of “A without having to B”)
I just realized that I haven’t published my Crisis Question post yet. Doh. [Remind me to remind him to come back and put a link to it here when that happens someday. —ed.]
The most salient bit of the Crisis Point aspect of the Turning Point is that it’s forced by the antagonist. This is the PC where the protagonist and by extension Sam are forced to acknowledge that there is a binary Crisis Question to answer and it is not optional. The antagonist will not be denied. The protagonist much choose…or else.
Please, for the love of Sam, do not write your Crisis Question on the page. Do not have the antagonist speak the Crisis Question aloud. Do not have your protagonist think it. Just don’t. That’s lazy. That’s bad. It’s really hard to get right, even when you think you’re being ironic or campy or whatever, Sam will probably just cringe at the on the nose dialog or internal monologue. The reason it doesn’t work is that Sam won’t get any dopamine out figuring out the implied Crisis if you do it.
Trust that Sam is smart enough to read between your lines. That’s literally what Sam came to your novel to do:
Sam did not come to read your lines but read between your lines.
When you do not have a Crisis Point in your scene, your scene will not work. Full stop. This is the most common reason that a scene doesn’t work.
Thou shalt have a Crisis Question in thine scene.
If you don’t have one, Sam will be bored because Sam will have no curiosity about what fundamental human struggle the protagonist is having. The only other way to drag Sam through the scene is a Dramatic Question—which is another post for another day. Today, we’re talking about the Crisis Point part of the Turning Point. Stop distracting me! [He’s not diagnosed with ADD, but it’s kinda obvious. —ed.]
If your Crisis Point comes before your Tipping Point, Sam will not understand the Crisis Question because you have not yet articulated the binary stakes on the table for the protagonist to choose between. If your critique group, beta reader, or editor circles a beat or a highlights some text with the comment “WTF?” then it’s possible you dropped your Crisis Point too early.
The same “WTF?” will happen if you try to put your Crisis Point after the Breaking Point (coming up next!) because the biggest forcing function, the most powerful PC in the scene won’t make sense if we don’t know what’s at stake, i.e. what the Crisis Question is.
Never. Confuse. Sam.
Breaking Point
We’ve reached the mother of all Progressive Complications: the Breaking Point. This is the dramatization of the force of antagonism at its most naked, most blatant, and most powerful. The Breaking Point is the point of no return for the protagonist when the antagonist has left them no other option than to choose.
In Life-or-Death terms, the protagonist or someone they care about will DIE if they don’t make a choice at the Climax.
To be honest, Sam will be “happy” either way at the Climax: to die or not to die isn’t the question. It’s the uncertainty that Sam is here to vicariously enjoy. The anticipation of the cathartic Climax is the most enjoyable part of the story for Sam. “Will she or won’t she?” “Will he or won’t he?” “Will they or won’t they?” [I made him stop. You’re welcome. —ed.] But I shall digress just a little further with one of my favorite bad movie quotes.
“The fear of death is worse than death itself.” —John Hatcher (Stephen Seagal), Marked for Death
If you’ve done your job with every PC, then the binary stakes of the Crisis Question are so equally balanced that Sam can’t decide for themself. The best Crisis Questions smell like damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t (either in a good way or a bad way). [Yes, he’s aware that some people don’t believe there’s such a unicorn as an Irreconcilable Goods Choice. He’s also aware that some people are stupid and don’t believe in unicorns. —ed.]
When the antagonist slams the protagonist into the Breaking Point, there are no other options left except the choice that the protagonist has been fighting not to make. The antagonist must take every other option off the table in PCs before this point.
If you try to put your Breaking Point too early, the rest of the PCs will fall flat and bore Sam because they will be lower energy and smaller than the Breaking Point. That means your scene doesn’t work.
Putting the Breaking Point before the Crisis Point is like telling the punchline before the joke. It just doesn’t work. If we don’t know what the Crisis Question is and what the stakes are, then even the biggest punch from the antagonist won’t make sense.
Putting the Breaking Point before the Tipping Point can’t really happen, because you just flipped the table. The Breaking Point, if it’s a working PC, shifts the value by definition. As noted above, if your biggest value shift—your biggest PC—comes first, Sam will start to get bored with all the smaller PCs after it. Sam will start to skim and possibly close the book because your PCs are not correctly ordered in ascending order of impact.
If you try to put your Breaking Point before the Tipping Point or the Crisis Point, Sam will feel like a deer staring at the headlights wondering why they’re reading this book or if the author even knows how to tell a story. Putting the Breaking Point before the Tipping Point or the Crisis Point is like trying to have sex with no foreplay. Fun for the author, maybe, but that “Gotcha!” feeling isn’t fun for Sam. When Sam isn’t having fun, Sam stops reading.
Never. Forget. Sam.
What’s next?
In summary, you must have all three of these moments among your PCs in every working scene:
1. Oh, no! (Tipping Point)
2. Oh, shit! (Crisis Point)
3. Oh, fuck! (Breaking Point)
In your next scene, look at where these three concepts land in your PCs. It’s OK if you can’t get them all at once, but… See if you can rearrange or refine your PCs to stack up the perfect alignment of “Oh, no! Oh, shit! Oh, fuck!” all at the same time.
Sam will thank you.
Want help with your story?
If the Nine Circles of Revision Hell seem daunting to you, you’re not alone. They can be a slog, even when you’ve done them many times. For a lot of writers, the editing process is the most painful part of publishing. I’m weird. I enjoy it! But I’m aware that not everyone does. If you don’t get off on revisions or if you don’t even know where to start, let me help you.
I’m a Story Grid Certified Editor and founding member of the Story Grid Guild. I’ve been helping my clients with developmental editing of their novels and screenplays as well as chapter-by-chapter scene coaching for their works-in-progress since 2020. I joined the staff of the Story Grid Scene Writing Workshop as a coach in June 2024 and the Story Grid Writer Mentorship cadre as a mentor in January 2025.
I’m available for hire. Book a campfire chat and let’s see if we might be compatible story adventuring companions.