Story structure: seven pointsPlan it from the end.

Where it comes from

Dan Wells is the author of I Am Not a Serial Killer and one of the hosts of the writing podcast Writing Excuses. He presented the seven points in an hour-long talk on story structure at Life, the Universe, and Everything, a writing conference in Utah, on 13 February 2010. It was filmed in five parts and is still on YouTube, and he went through it again on Writing Excuses (episode 7.41, 2012). He has said he learned the system from a role-playing game book.

The seven points, in order

Wells gives the order and what each point does, but no pages or percentages, so there are none here. Some guides online put the Midpoint at 50% and the others around it: that’s theirs, not his.

The points come in pairs round the Midpoint: the two plot turns, the two pinches, and the Hook and Resolution as opposites.

Planning with it: backwards

Wells starts at the end. Decide the Resolution first: where your character ends up. Then the Hook is the opposite of that, as far from it as you can make it: a coward who ends brave starts as a coward. Then the Midpoint, where the character turns from being pushed around to pushing back. Then the plot turns, which carry the story from the Hook to the Midpoint and from the Midpoint to the Resolution, and the pinches, which put on the pressure.

Using it on a book written without a plan

The backwards order suits a finished draft: you know the ending now. Write down your Resolution and your Hook, and ask whether they’re opposites. If your character ends where they started, the change the book is about may not be on the page yet. Then look for the Midpoint: is there a moment when your character stops reacting and starts acting? A draft that drifts in the middle often lacks one.

Common misreadings

• The order you plan in is the order you write in. The plan goes backwards; the book still runs from Hook to Resolution.
• A pinch is any setback. It’s pressure that forces the characters to act.
• The points come with percentages. Not from Wells.

In Falcontext

Falcontext 6.0 (in the browser extension, the desktop app and Falcontext Perch) measures your book against three acts, Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey and the Story Circle: you mark the scene that is each beat, and it says how far that is from where the structure puts it. Seven-point story structure is explained here but not measured, because its source gives an order and no places: there’s nothing honest to measure against.

What you can use today: Bird’s Eye shows where each chapter and scene starts and how long it is, so you can see where your turns fall yourself. Your writing is never sent anywhere, and no AI is used on your writing in any way.

Other story structures

In Falcontext