StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 25: It’s time to write! Let’s explore our big, emotional midpoint scene.

Writing a novel is probably one of the biggest creative projects anyone can undertake, so keeping inspired throughout the entire process is really important (and really difficult).

One of the issues some writers have with outlining is that they just want to start writing, but the risk of starting the draft before you’re ready is that you get stuck somewhere along the way. Getting stuck can derail the entire book, so it’s important to find a middle ground to make it all the way through.

This is where writing the big, emotional scene (your midpoint), is an amazing part of the StoryCraft process. It allows you to dive into the writing experience and have fun without risking the entire trajectory, and it also provides a ton of inspiration and clarity about what else still needs to be figured out.

To get started, think about your midpoint and the big emotional moment that needs to happen here. Don’t worry about setting anything up or paying anything off, just tap into the core emotions. Figure out where the scene needs to start and end, and then write with abandon.

Allow yourself to explore the world and the characters, as well as all the pivotal emotions that have been simmering up until this point. Tap into what you love about writing.

Afterward, you’ll probably find you’re inspired to fill in the blanks up until this moment. What do you need to set up to get here? Are there new threads you hadn’t thought about before? Revelations about the voice?

Next week, we’re going to start our official, chapter-by-chapter outline, and then we’ll be off to the races! For now, let yourself steep in those creative juices, because we’re in the home stretch and soon we’ll be drafting.

This is just one of the exercises from the StoryCraft Workbook, which has over 100 pages of amazing exercises designed to build the best version of your novel. 

Happy Writing,

Jess and Theo