What's up my friend? Abbie here and welcome back to WritersLife Wednesdays where we come together to help you make your story matter and make your author dreams come true. Today, we're talking about writing pinch points into your story and what a pinch point even is. I'll give you a hint, it's a little bit of suspense that goes a long way. If you've been on this channel for a while watching my videos, you know what's up and you know why we are talking about pinch points today. But if you're new around here, we've been breaking down in detail the three-act story structure, like every single story beat of the three act story structure. If you missed the other videos covering act one, you can check out all of those. They are linked below for your viewing convenience, the hook, the inciting incident, a cool inciting incident case study, and the first plot point. You want to make sure you watch all of those and get all of those story beats nailed so that you can really have an amazing first act of your story. Today, we're digging into the last story beat of the first act. Okay? There's still two more acts to go. But before we dive into the midsection of your book, we want to pull the reader in even more with a little hint of the trouble still to come. Let's talk about the first pinch point and explore the brain science of suspense. Why does your story matter? Good question. What if I told you that there's a science behind every great story? I don't just teach you how to write. I teach you how to change the world with your story and make your author dreams come true. Before I begin, I have to mention that there are commonly two pinch points in the three-act story structure. One appears at the very end of act one and the other one is at the very end of act two. Some people might say that the first pinch point actually appears at the beginning of act two. But what's the difference? I like to think of it as sort of the book end of act one because it just seems more ominous that way and also more symmetrical. In my three-act story structure template, you'll see that the first pinch point shows up at the end of act one. Speaking of that template, which is linked in the description box below, by the way, make sure you grab your copy, let's start off by reading the description of the first pinch point. First pinch point, opposition or antagonistic force looms in the distance. You can have a pinch point even if you don't have a villain character in your story. It doesn't have to be a villain. It doesn't even have to be a person. It just has to be something that is ultimately going to come back to haunt the protagonist later. It can even be the protagonist's misbelief. Prompt, ask yourself, what is the opposition or antagonistic force my protagonist is going to have to face head on later? How can I show the reader that it's already looming in the distance? Foreshadowing, suspense, impending doom, whatever you want to call it, the first pinch point is our first taste of that as we head into the second act of your story. But wait, Abbie, if I show the reader how the antagonist is looming in the distance already, it won't be a surprise plot twist. No, it won't be a surprise. It'll be something so much better, suspense. Don't worry. Your story is still going to have the element of surprise and that's going to show up in your plot twist, so we're going to talk about that very soon. But for now, let's talk about suspense, adding suspense a little bit of it early on in your first pinch point. Now, it is generally known that there are three kinds of suspense, one, vicarious suspense where the audiences in on it, but the character has no idea, two, shared suspense where the audience and the character are both in on it, and three, direct suspense where the audience is worried about something on their own and not worried for the character. Since number three is more suited to films and video games where you can unexpectedly scare the audience with a sudden jump scene or something, let's just battle it out between vicarious suspense and shared suspense. Both of these forms of suspense are great gut gripping choices and I totally recommend using both. In fact, a great way to use both is to use vicarious suspense for this first pinch point and then shared suspense for the second pinch point. But most of the time I only use vicarious suspense. Why? Well, not only is it my favorite, but studies in film psychology have proven that vicarious suspense in film elicits the strongest emotional reaction from viewers. The reason is simple, people like to feel smart. Readers like to feel smart. We like to feel like we know things that the characters don't know. We get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing what a character doesn't know. Moderate satisfaction out of knowing something with the character and actual dissatisfaction when the character knows something we don't know or proves to be smarter than us. No, I don't have actual science to back this up, surprisingly. It's more of just a social observation. Just remember for a minute the last time you played any kind of trivia game with a group of friends. You know that one person who seems to get like all the answers right? By the end of the game, they're like grinning and so happy because they feel like they're the smartest one. They got all the answers right and you kind of want to just ring their neck. Same thing goes for characters in the story. When you know things that the character doesn't know, you're like the person winning at trivia. You know all the answers and you feel smarter than everybody. Dopamine is firing in your brain and you were happy. But when the character knows something that you don't know or knows a lot of things that you don't know, they are now the person winning at trivia and they just end up annoying you with their omniscience. That's why I love vicarious suspense. If by this point I still haven't convinced you to use vicarious suspense in your story, let's hear it from the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. "There's a distinct difference between suspense and surprise, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, boom, there's an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene of no special consequence. Now, let's take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they had seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware of the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen, "You shouldn't be talking in such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it's about to explode." In the first case, we have given the public 15 seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second, we have provided them with 15 minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed, except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is in and of itself, the highlight of the story." I read that quote on my last Patreon podcast because a writer asked me if it's okay to have two protagonists, one who knows pretty much everything that's going on and one who's totally in the dark, and I was like, yes, absolutely because this is suspense. Surprise doesn't last long, but suspense can make your story unputdownable. Knowing what's going to happen or at least what might happen is far more emotionally engaging than being clueless alongside the character. It doesn't make your story predictable. Think of every movie you've ever seen about some major historical event like Titanic or Pearl Harbor. Chances are you knew before watching these films what they would be about. You knew what the outcome of the plot would be. It's no surprise to you when the Titanic sinks or when Pearl Harbor is bombed, which just goes to prove that what makes a story interesting is not so much what happens, but how what happens affects and transforms the characters. That in a nutshell is what I mean when I always say that you should make your story matter to your characters. If historical movies never showed you how what happens affects the characters, you might as well just watch a documentary about that particular event in history. But I'm getting off topic. Back to pinch points. There is no one size fits all way to write a pinch point, especially the first pinch point, but some of your options include full vicarious, where the readers see something the protagonist can't see, antagonists plots behind closed doors, or subtle clues, where you go super mild on the suspense and just leave clues to the future conflict hidden in plain sight, the protagonist can see the clues, but has no idea what they mean, or shared suspense, where the protagonist learns about the conflict they're going to have to face head on later and already feels intimidated. This is not an exhaustive list. There are way more styles of pinch points out there, but these are the three most common styles and the first two are my personal favorites. Let's look at some story examples that feature these styles of pinch points. First, full vicarious where we see something the protagonist can't see. There are tons of great examples of this kind of pinch point in stories, but one that immediately comes to mind for me is the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. We don't just follow the Pevensie's as they navigate Narnia and try to figure out what happened in the past 1,000 years, and we don't just follow Caspian as he runs from his evil uncle who wants him dead. We also follow said evil uncle King Miraz, because what's happening with the Telmarines is just as important as what's happening with the Pevensie's and Caspian, because it's going to come back to haunt them later. It essentially is the climax when the Telmarines go to war against the Narnians. You've seen this a million times. It's your classic, meanwhile, on the dark side, you've seen in Stars Wars, you've seen Disney movies, horror movies, everything, vicarious suspense is popular for a reason. Pinch point type two, subtle clues. Great example, Jane Eyre. Spoiler alert, the big disaster plot point of the climax is when Jane is just about to marry the love of her life, Mr. Rochester, then she discovers that he actually already has a wife, a lunatic who has been living in the house she's been working at all this time. The interesting thing about Jane Eyre is it has pinch points all over the place. There is, of course, the major ones like Mr. Rochester's room being lit on fire and his brother-in-law nearly getting murdered in the mysterious North tower, but some of the more subtle clues are just as eerie as the suspenseful moments, like the red scarf Jane sees in the tower window or the times she wakes up in the middle of the night to someone rattling her door knob. Although like Jane, we aren't sure what the hell is going on, it pulls us in because we know that these clues point to something and we want to find out what. Finally, type three, shared suspense, where the protagonist learns about the conflict they're going to have to face head on later and already feels intimidated. For example, pretty much every war movie you've ever seen, right? Your main characters are headed into battle and they likely know what they're taking on, but they're reminded of the danger and the conflict of the situation by some flex of the antagonists, like in the film Dunkirk. The whole movie is highly suspenseful and doesn't exactly follow the three-act story structure, but from the first dive bomber attack on the beach, we understand what the characters are up against, and so do they. There are several moments of the antagonistic force flexing its power in the first act of this film, all of which deliver shared suspense as the characters are fully aware of the imminent danger of the situation and so is the viewer. There are so many examples of great pinch points that I could just go on and on and on about, but I'll stop there and ask you, what is your favorite example of a gripping pinch point? Comment below and tell me. Now, let's recap everything that we learned about pinch points today. All a pinch point must do is hint at the future conflict that the protagonist is going to have to face head on. This hinting can take place in the form of vicarious suspense, shared suspense, or subtle clues. You get to decide how much or how little you want to reveal right now. Remember, suspense beats surprise. There's a time and place for surprise, like in your plot twist, but now is the time to give your reader a taste of the conflict and the danger still to come. Even if you give away what's going to happen or might happen, your story does not become predictable. If that were the case, there would be no stories based on historical events. What makes the story interesting is not so much what happens, but how what happens affects the characters. Ask yourself, what is the opposition or antagonistic force that my protagonist is going to have to face head on later? How can I show the reader that it's already looming in the distance? Okay, boom, that's it for this story beat. Next time we return to the story beat breakdown, we're going to be diving into act two of your story, ooh, the dreaded middle act. But don't worry, it's nothing to dread. It's going to be great. It's going to be so freaking riveting not only to read, but also to write. Smash that like button if you liked this video and be sure to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already because I post writing videos and publishing videos every single Wednesday, and I would love to have you here in the community. Also, be sure to check out my Patreon because that's where we go beyond videos and take storytelling to the next level. The Patreon community is not only the best way to support what I'm doing here on YouTube, but it's also the only way to connect one-on-one with me and get better guidance on your story. So go to Patreon.com/AbbieEmmons and check out all the awesome extra exclusive content that I have over there for you. Until next week, my friend, rock on. Which just goes... Oh my God. How about you just stop freaking out? Because it's going to be like an emoji graph. Yeah, just like put emojis on the screen for like... You know what I mean. I may not be able to talk sometimes, but I can make a good chai latte.