Something underdiscussed in fiction—if it's discussed at all—is the idea of a midpoint. Midpoints are a big part of screenwriting craft, but hardly every considered in fiction, which is one reason why many novels sag into unreadability around pgs 100-200

Inasmuch as fiction writers bother with plot, we generally think of it as a series of amorphous complications leading to a climax of some kind. Things just naturally get boggy in the midst of this, and midpoints can help both conceptually and in practice

In screenwriting, midpoints tend to be a smaller and false version of the ending—if the hero wins in the end, they think they have won at the midpoint, only to find they haven't and that they need to marshal all their energy for the final push

Conversely, if the hero fails in the end, the midpoint is usually a false failure from which they ineffectually rally, seeming to have overcome their main obstacle only to be defeated by the real obstacle in minute 120

Less programmatically, in fiction, midpoints can be thought of as simply a kind of reversal or otherwise fundamental alteration of the narrative's terms—a midpoint rearranges the main character's sense of their world, and by extension, the reader's, as well

I just finished The Custom of the Country, so it's on my mind, but Wharton does this with the suicide of Ralph Marvell. To this (approximate) midpoint, it seems the novel is mostly about Undine Spragg's marriage to Ralph. Not so—it is really about Undine's remorseless advancement

To clarify, since I'm getting some hostile RTs (lol twitter), yes, I am talking specifically about writers of literary fiction quote unquote, yes I'm aware that writers of other forms and genres (including the aforementioned screenwriting) are more aware of this

Btw, it's been comical having this RTed by a bunch of people saying it was helpful, while simultaneously having a bunch of other people tell me how no one could possibly find it helpful. In conclusion, Twitter is a land of contrasts