In this instructional video, Monica Leonelle guides writers through outlining the first half of Act 2 (the 25‑50% segment) of a novel using the Ultimate Novel Plotter. She explains that middle beats are looser than the tightly‑structured setup and resolution, which can lead to a "muddled middle" if not handled carefully. The core beats she outlines are: (1) the post‑decision regroup period where the protagonist, still passive, gains temporary safety and assesses the new situation; (2) confronting and breaking false beliefs derived from the character’s fatal flaw; (3) training and preparation scenes that equip the protagonist for upcoming challenges; (4) the antagonistic‑force sighting around the 37.5% midpoint, which raises stakes and reminds readers of the villain; (5) the aftermath of that encounter, where challenges intensify and the hero may suffer setbacks; (6) the reversal beat, where both internal (belief) and external (plot) arcs converge, pulling the rug out before the final battle. She illustrates each beat with examples from The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and romance scenarios, noting how genre changes the specifics (e.g., romance uses forced proximity scenes instead of combat training). Monica also references a set of ten 25‑50% scene worksheets that writers can use to map these beats. The video ends with a call to comment with questions and to sign up for the broader writing challenge.
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Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com. Today is day 27 of the challenge. We are doing outlining for the 25 to 50% section of your novel. We're on day 27 and we are outlining the first section of Act 2, so the 25 to 50% section of your novel. We are continuing to use the Ultimate Novel plotter, and this is for the response section, or you call it the wanderer energy as well. Uh, all right, so we have a couple more beats, and the beats for these two middle sections— so the response, the attack— these beats are a little bit looser than the beats are for the setup and the resolution. And so the, you know, the, the beginning and ending of book, those beats are pretty tight actually, and it really helps to follow just traditional story structure in terms of those beats. But for the middle sections, there's a little bit more leeway to make the book, you know, to make the beats your own. This is both a good thing and a bad thing because people kind of go off the rails in this section. That's why they, you know, that you, you hear about, like, the murky middle or the muddled middle of a book. And so this is a— this is an area that you can really lose your reader. But we'll talk about what the, um, the general beats are. So, uh, the first big one is— so the character makes a decision at the end of the setup, and now there is going to be like a regroup period. So a lot of— sometimes people skip this and they go right into some more action, but this, this is basically, uh, this regroup period is kind of like a quieter pacing where the character can really start to get their bearings on this new situation and they can think through like how are they actually going to approach things. So for Katniss Everdeen, there's this long like train trip to the Capitol, and this gives her a chance to regroup before she has to really go out and do anything else. And she also gets to like see Peeta, and they have an interaction, and she gets to meet her mentor Haymitch, and they have interactions. And it's just this period of— it's not really a period of calm, but it is a period of temporary safety. So So she has this temporary safety as she's traveling, and so she's able to not like think about her life being in danger right away. She's able to kind of get— come to grips with the situation. So that— the reason that this beat is so important, and it can be, you know, it can be several chapters or a couple scenes. The reason it's so important though is because you are basically giving— well, you're giving the reader a breather, but you're also giving the character some room to develop, basically some room to meet people, meet other enemies. Usually there's like some sort of physical transition, so both Harry Potter and The Hunger Games has a train ride that covers this And it's, it's just a time to give, give the character a chance to figure out what they're going to do. Also give the reader a chance to figure out what they're going to do. So, so now the next part is what happens to the character first on their new journey? What's their first move? Who is really in control of all of this? And the answer to that last part of the question is never the protagonist. Like, if the protagonist is in control at this point, then you have a problem in your story because the character and the protagonist should be in a Wanderer energy. So they should not be in control in any way. They should be on the defensive, basically. So, you know, when they shift to the attack, that, that's when they go on the offensive and they start to develop their own plans and kind of go off script. But for now, they're just letting life happen to them. They're very passive in this section. So this is, you know, this is why we had that list of false beliefs that stem from the fatal flaw, so that you could really know what comes next. Because for a lot of people, it's like, I don't know, I don't know what the character is supposed to do next. And so the thing that you can do, and this false beliefs list is actually almost like a blanket, or, um, yeah, like a, like a security blanket for you because you can always go to that false beliefs list and say like, well, how can I help the character break through this false belief? And then that can start a scene for you. All right, so, um, this, this section can go on for a little bit. Um, basically you're going to be roping them into situations that help them break through false beliefs. So, and that could be a lot of different things. And then also during this time, you're supposed to be preparing your character for whatever they're going to encounter in the second half of the book. So whatever training they need, skills they need, and you can see this really easily. This is why The Hunger Games is kind of a go-to on this. You can see this very easily in that series, because she literally is going through this training portion where she actually goes every day, she goes in, she has— she does skills every day, she talks about strategy, she has to perform for the game makers, she has to do these interviews publicly. And so there's a lot of There's just a lot of stuff there that is training her for what she's going to encounter in the games. And this is essentially what you want to do for your character. Now, if you, if you have a romance, for example, this is— it's not going to look the same. They're not going to go to school. What they would be doing instead is like, what are all the reasons that they cannot be together, those two characters? And you would create a— you create settings where they're forced to be together, like hang out together, and they are able to break through some of those beliefs. So a lot of this happens through conversation, um, and you just need to give them lots of, um— so like in a romance, you'd be giving them lots of different like date-y type settings or different situations where they are kind of forced together, forced to either interact with each other, talk to each other, even forced to touch each other, like, you know, like, oh, he has to hold her hand, or they have to kiss, like if it's like a fake romance scenario, or like a marriage of convenience or whatever, they have to kiss for the cameras, you know. So you're going to be putting them in those situations. Um, this— so this section can kind of go on for a while. And this, the whole response section, it's actually, it's kind of, it's 5 big beats, but it's kind of mirrored by this midpoint, which is called, I mean, it's called a lot of different things. It's called an inflection point in some books. I just call it an antagonistic force sighting. So that's this third beat here. What is the antagonistic force sighting? And what it is is basically like, like if you're writing a thriller, this is, you know, a villain comes after the characters. Like not, not the main villain, but like one of the villain's henchmen comes after the characters, um, and, and that's— they, and they, they have to defeat them somehow. For, you know, for romance, it would be like the characters might have a fight. Like, that would be an antagonistic foreshadowing. For, you know, for— yeah, yeah, I think that— I think that's good. But basically, it's just, you know, we talked about this, I think, in one of the early days, you know, day maybe day, uh, 6, but the section was called Character Relationships. And this is essentially what it is. It's basically, um, it's like cronies or henchmen or right-hand men, but some— someone in your antagonist's group, some one of their people, is going to interact with the protagonist here. And so the goal here is to remind the reader what is at stake and what, you know, who the villain is, who the hero is, what the danger is. Next, so this is kind of the halfway point. So if you were doing it by percentages, you have 25 to 50%. The halfway point is about 37.5%. So this is 37.5% of the way through your novel that this antagonistic force sighting would happen. All right, so, um, so you can kind of, you can almost write the section from this antagonistic force sighting. So you know what that is. You need to do some false beliefs before that. Um, you need to do some false beliefs after that. So this fourth beat is what happens to the protagonist after the antagonistic force shows up. And so typically the antagonistic force is going to up the ante a bit. It's— they're going to introduce more challenges. So a great example would be it's a thriller, there's a car chase or something, and then they kind of have this break, they're regrouping, and then, you know, these cronies come after them and they are able to they're able to fight the cronies and they win, but one of the characters ends up with like a broken leg. So that, that's typically the sort of thing that happens during this first antagonistic force setting. It's like the— they're gonna have to give up something in order to move past this antagonistic force, and that thing is going to introduce more problems. So So now they're on the run, but one of the characters is injured as well. That's the type of thing that you would expect here. So in this second portion, the antagonistic forces introduce more challenges, and then the, you know, you're breaking through anything that you need to break through in order to face the reversal. So that's another part. Part of that. Um, whatever they need to do in the reversal, you have to use these other two sections. So this, you know, this section before the antagonistic force setting, the section after the antagonistic force setting, you have to use those two sections to prepare your, your protagonist for that reversal. So then the reversal comes, and this is, um You know, this is basically— we, I mean, we did a lot on this already. So it's, um, there's an internal arc to the reversal, there's an external arc to the reversal. So typically, you know, if it's typically the character is looking death in the eye if, if it's a physical danger type of plot, or if it's like a romance, they're looking death of the, um, death of their safety, essentially their safety from that relationship, because it— because the two characters are not in the relationship for a reason. And so they're looking at the death of those reasons. Um, and then the internal character arc is, um, you know, it's typically just symbolic of the external. And we've talked about that with, um, you know, with The Hunger Games, Katniss's internal arc. But basically it's breaking through Like if you had to summarize what the internal arc is, it's basically breaking through a major false belief. So, you know, come up, look at your list of false beliefs, decide one of the major ones, one of the top 3, one of the top 5, however many you have, but definitely in the top half of difficulty and breakthrough or, or break through most of that here. So another way you can think of that internal arc is that the character learns something that completely changes their perspective on life, on love, on whatever the theme of the story is. So, yeah. So, okay, so what happens right before this reversal the characters should be feeling like they're getting a grip on the situation. They should be feeling like they kind of have things figured out, they're kind of getting the hang of things, and the reversal should pull the rug out from under them once again. It's also like a dress rehearsal for the final battle. So, uh, and, and this is going to really challenge the character, um, kind of the— it's going to challenge the character almost the most before the final battle happens. All right, so, um, what else can we say about this? Uh, yeah, like I said, um, you know, these— so there are 3 things that are kind of known in this section and then 2 sections that are very loose. All right, so the 3 things that are known, um, that, that you can like figure out very easily: the reversal is number 1, The antagonistic force sighting is another, and then what happens after the decision is made is the third. So that one was here. What happens after the decision? So what's that regroup process, and what do they need to do to regroup? So those are kind of the three— you can call them like miniature temple moments within this section. And then you have to fill in the gaps of the rest, and the the, the roadmap to doing that is going to be the false beliefs list. And you can, you know, and there, you know, there's a lot of other stuff like you want to have a lot of the meetings with mentors, sidekicks, whoever. Um, all of that stuff takes place here too, and a lot of those scenes are going to have to pull double or triple duty doing some of that stuff. But definitely use the false beliefs as the underpinning skeleton of those sections, and then you will not have that muddled middle that, you know, that really takes people away from the story. So with this, you know, you should be familiar with this set of worksheets, scene notes for 25 to 50%. There are 10 of these, and you can use these to really start to map out this entire 25 to 50% of your novel. Thank you so much for watching and listening, and if you have any questions, make sure you leave a comment in the comment section. I'm happy to answer any of your questions, so definitely feel free to leave a question. I'd love to share some of my resources with you. Additionally, if you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, there are links in the description that will give you all of the information. It's not too late, and there's lots of great materials on the other side of that sign-up, so please sign up if you are interested. Hope that this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day.
