In this instructional video Monica Leonelle guides writers through Day 14 of a novel‑writing challenge, focusing on the "Response" – the middle portion of a story that corresponds to Act 2 (or Part 2) and ends at the midpoint, which she calls the "reversal." She explains that the reversal is a pivotal, often unexpected moment that flips the narrative, and she distinguishes two primary flavors: an emotional reversal (a sudden, belief‑shattering revelation) and a physical reversal (a near‑death or high‑stakes confrontation). Monica illustrates both flavors with best‑selling examples such as The Hunger Games, Twilight, and The Da Vinci Code, showing how they can be layered together. She then offers a concrete plotting framework for the Response, breaking it into four categories that the protagonist must acquire: assets, people, skills, and knowledge. Each category is explained with genre‑specific examples (e.g., magical objects for urban fantasy, mentors for romance, survival training for thrillers). Monica stresses that these elements should be introduced organically and aligned with the character’s false beliefs. She also introduces a symbolic layer—the Wanderer‑to‑Warrior shift—using Katniss’s bow as a visual cue, and she uses a video‑game analogy (levels 2‑5 of a 10‑level game) to help writers visualize progression. The video concludes with a reminder to move on to Day 15 (Wanderer energy) and a call for comments and sign‑ups.
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Hey there, Igniter!
Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com here. Today is day 14 of the challenge, and we are talking about the response, which is the middle section of your novel.
We are on day 14, the response, and so this is going to be the beginning of Act 2, sometimes called Part 2 if you're doing the 4-part story structure. Act 2, if you are doing a 3-act story structure, uh, it's basically the same thing. So, you know, this is either the 11 to 50% of your story, or, you know, the 25, 26 to 50% of your story. This section also ends on what's called the midpoint. I call it the reversal. And then basically it's that 50% mark. So, you know, you may have even heard of, um, story structure called, uh, or like plotting your book from the middle. And what that means is really to start with this reversal, um, which is really critical to the success of your book. And so this reversal moment It, it basically is this really unexpected moment that kind of flips the entire book and the entire story on its head. So flavor one is that it's something totally unexpected. It changes everything that the character knew and believed. It's typically a critical piece of information that the protagonist has not had until now, and this is you know, this is ideal for like romances or for, you know, women's fiction, um, cozy mysteries probably. Uh, it's, it's ideal for, um, it's ideal for stories where there's not a lot of action or danger. Um, whereas for like, you know, like a thriller, for example, that might have a more physical midpoint. This is kind of the emotional midpoint. The second type of midpoint or reversal that you can have is, is a more action-based one. So the character is, you know, physically looking death in the eye, or the character is physically battling somebody. The character truly thinks there's no way out. So this is ideal for, again, mystery, thriller, typically in a fantasy or a sci-fi, especially if it's like a big galactic battle or, you know, like a big epic adventure, then— and, and there's like lives at stake— then typically you will have more of like this, um, this kind of like fight or death scene. So like the character, the protagonist has to look death in the eye. So most books that are super successful, so like The Hunger Games, Twilight, yeah, I'm trying to think of, oh, I think The Da Vinci Code has this. They basically nail this moment in the story and they actually combine both flavors. So, um, and it's, it's basically like they actually, they, they kind of, and they actually like layer it in many different ways. So I've talked about this in, I think, day 11. I gave the example of, um, Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games. So definitely check out that day if you haven't already. Um, so that's a great example of how that midpoint or reversal actually meets both, both of the criteria, and it does it in many different ways. Twilight is another great example of this. In Twilight, you know, the, the 50% midpoint, if you've read that first book, is where Edward, who is the vampire, is going on a date with Bella, who is the human, and he basically thinks he's gonna kill her. And he, he doesn't want to kill her because he's also in love with her. But, you know, it's a— it's this very, like, dangerous situation, and both characters are really looking death in the eye. So, um, Bella is looking death in the eye because she's, like, literally potentially gonna die. Edward is looking death in the eye because if he kills her, he would never be able to recover from that. He— or he doesn't believe he would, um, be able to recover emotionally or physically or really mentally, like any, any way. Like it would, it would be his own death basically. So, um, yeah, so that's, that's another great example. And in that example, you know, people kind of knock Twilight, but, um, actually I really encourage you to read it even if you are not a teenage girl because it, it really hits all these points pretty much flawlessly, and that, that is why it was a massive bestseller in the last decade. So yeah, so it also— so it does hit the physical death piece, and then it also hits the, a lot of the emotional death piece, and it also has that kind of unexpected flip of, of like the internal arc as well. And you know, the, the critical pieces of information— so Bella like fully learns what a vampire is and what it means for their relationship during this date, and Edward fully understands his desire to kill Bella basically and gets to a point where he knows he's not going to kill her. And so that, that midpoint is really— it really hits flavor 1 and flavor 2 really, really well. So good books hit at least one of these, uh, great books hit both of them typically. And, and typically there are several layers because you can hit these in many different ways. All right, so for this, you're going to build this part of your book. It's called the response. You can check out some other story craft books if you'd like to learn more about this. The way I think about it, and the way to just make this very simple, is your book is a video game. It has 10 levels total. This would be levels 2 through 5. So if you played any video game, I think, you know, I think that this is really helpful in understanding like, well, how, you know, how bad are the bosses at the end of each level? How difficult are the skills that you need to complete each level? So this should be, you know, 2 to 5 on the range of your book if your book is a total of 1 to 10 or 0 to 10. So in this section, I encourage you to think of what the character needs to acquire in terms of 4 categories. So the first is assets. So this, you know, if this were an urban fantasy, then it's going to be like a magical object or a weapon. If this is a sci-fi, it's like a special piece of technology. It can also, you know, it could also be like a pet or an animal, just depending, you know, this is kind of a good— we think of animals as assets. Books, so like information. So in Twilight, for example, Bella, she acquires a book in many ways, or she tries to acquire a book to understand vampires because she has this hunch that he's a vampire. Meetings or dates for a romance. So if you are writing a romance a meeting between the two characters, that can be considered an asset, or a date between the two characters. Like, let's say one character asks the other out on a date. I also— I've read a number of romance books where it's, you know, kind of like the fake marriage. So an asset might be like an engagement ring. It could also be like an interview or like going public. So the next category is people. So this can be all the people that we've looked at under character relationships. So that— I can't remember what day that was, um, maybe day 6, I think, somewhere around there we talked about character relationships for the protagonist. So that could be like a mentor, a friend, a lover, a sidekick, um, it could be like a double agent, all sorts of things. So this is the section where you're going to introduce a lot of those people. And of course, you're not going to— you're not going to introduce them all at once. You're going to kind of have a scene for each one of them. The third category is skills. So in something like The Hunger Games, where it's very linear, you know, Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist, literally goes to a school where she can learn survival skills and fight fighting skills for, uh, for The Hunger Games. So that's, you know, that's kind of an example. You see in academy books or like books about school, basically, this would be like the different classes that the character is taking. Uh, skills, you know, this— so like, I think if you're writing a fantasy, uh, it's pretty obvious what that is. If you're writing, you know, if you're writing a romance, for example, what would the skill be? I mean, it would really be like, you know, learning how to converse better with somebody or learning how to, you know, learning what makes that person tick, like learning how to love that person, learning how to cook for that person, learning how to make that person happy. So that could be considered a skill. So I had like magic skills, driving skills. The reason I put the driving skills there, I really meant like transportation skills. So like let's say they need to, like, and I'm thinking a lot of like Star Wars. So like they need to like fly a, you know, fly a ship somewhere. That's typically, you know, something that needs to happen. This could be, you know, that, that could be an example. Also like Mad Max, they, you know, they, they have like driving skills. So this is important for like a thriller. And then the fourth category, which I think very easily applies to all genres, is knowledge. So this is like clues. So if you have a mystery, you're gonna need clues, important information that the character doesn't have. So this is I think this is obvious how this would apply to basically every genre. Secrets. So if you're writing a romance, you're probably going to fall more into like the people and knowledge categories. If you're writing, you know, something that's like a fantasy or sci-fi, so like The Hunger Games, you're going to fall more into like the skills and assets. Categories. If you're writing a thriller, let's say, you might fall into more of like the skills and knowledge categories. So it's gonna— you're gonna have a variety of, of percentages. So, so like these, the percentages of what you're gonna do across these 4 categories is gonna change based on the genre that you're writing and based on the type of story that you're writing. But this should get you started thinking about what this character needs to go into the reversal and also eventually the final battle. So the other thing about this is that you want them to acquire these assets, people, skills, and knowledge in a way that is not super obvious to the reader. So you really want to match this up. Like, so this is kind of still behind the scenes stuff. You want to create scenes that allow this character to get these things organically, and you are also going to want to match this up with like the false beliefs that you've already mapped out. So, um, you're gonna have to get really creative in combining this stuff for your characters and for these scenes. So then the last section of this is the reversal. And with the reversal, we've really talked about this a lot as, as it's a tentpole moment. So it's basically, what is the reversal? Uh, what is a physical near-death or danger? So it doesn't have to be, you know, even in a romance you can have a near-death. You can also just have a danger, and it would be like danger to the relationship um, so, and, and typically, typically in a romance, it's that, uh, so like the Wanderer phase or the Response phase, which is kind of like, which is the one that we're talking about, that is typically like all the false beliefs about why they can't be in a relationship. And then that Warrior phase, which we're going to get to next, also called the Attack phase, is, um, it's really that they've, you know, they have that moment, um, in the middle at the 50% mark. The reversal is where they, you know, kiss or, um, or like talk about their feelings for each other. Um, it's where they, you know, depending on the heat level, they, you know, there could be like something, you know, something more physical there. Um, and that's where they essentially admit their feelings to each other, is usually what it is. And then, uh, the aftermath of that— so the aftermath of that reversal point is like them figuring out how could they really make their relationship work. And there's a lot of obstacles there too. So if you're writing a romance, you can kind of divide it up that way. So the danger would really be around What is the— like, what is the— what are the things that are holding them apart? And they end up, like, kissing, or they end up talking about their feelings. So it's like the danger is around their falling into this relationship even though they meant to stay apart. They meant not to. Emotional death or releasing false beliefs. This is more of the internal arc, of course. And then I like to keep this because I think this is really valuable and it's something that is used in all the bestsellers and it's not really used— it's not used in every book though, I guess is the thing. But like, if you look at bestsellers, they always have this in there. So that fourth thing is the symbolic representation. Representation of the character moving from Wanderer to Warrior. And I think this, this one is just so important. So I talked about this in Day 11 again, the example with Katniss Everdeen and her finally receiving her bow and arrow. So she's moving from kind of like the Wanderer just trying to survive in the Games to the Warrior. She has her weapon of choice and she is able to kill basically at this point. She doesn't want to kill, but she's like able to actually attack rather than to just defend. And that, that was really, uh, you know, I think it, I think it's very subtle in the book and in the movie, but it's actually, um, really, I guess, subconsciously useful. So I like to think of like what could be the symbolic representation of my characters moving from that wanderer to warrior stance, I guess, or energy. And so we, you know, we'll talk more about that in the coming days. So that's how you can plot this out. You can do this for 5 different characters.
Thank you so much for watching and listening to day 14 of the challenge. The response, make sure you check out day 15 of the challenge, which is the Wanderer energy.
So these two days go together, and it really helps if you do one and then the other close by so that you just remember what you did in each day.
If you have any questions about the content, make sure you leave a comment below. I will be happy to get back to you and support you however I can. Additionally, if you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, there are links in the description, and it's it's really not too late. We're not even halfway through the challenge, so there's plenty of time to catch up.
I hope you'll sign up.
Uh, link's in the description if you are interested in that. I hope this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day.
