I think the event that is currently my midpoint was going to happen later in the story as I had it loosely arranged in my head. With that said, I think I made the right decision - it had to happen when it did, but as of right now, I feel like I'm paying hard for it. It's like I wrote myself into a corner and now all these plot points that I thought were planned out neatly in my head have revealed themselves to be jumbled bits of vague ideas that may or may not even fit at this point. Allow me to be a bit more specific so I'm not talking in vague references:
The first half of the story was mostly spent with Nate, the unappreciated Internal Affairs investigator, trying to expose the physically superior, beloved, but corrupt cop, Wrigley. So they were sort of going at it without anyone else really knowing. My plan was to have roughly from the midpoint to halfway through the rest of Act 2 spent with the cops finally suspecting Wrigley before he blows his cover and a warrant is put out for his arrest. So what's the problem? Well my midpoint is more... extreme than I imagined. There's really no way that Wrigley would be able to go any length of time without being exposed at this point (Nate set it up so that Wrigley almost kills him in front of a ton of witnesses, plus the criminals with whom he was aligned have just been busted, and Nate's even got a recording of him saying too much). There's really no way to move the story forward other than having Wrigley realize he's exposed and take off to become a full-fledged fugitive/criminal, fighting the cops and going after everyone who tarnished his good name.
That raises a few problems. For one thing, it gives me the age old "crap, I'm running out of story near the end of the Second Act" dilemma. Two, it kind of skews the idea of the good guy fighting the uphill battle. That's not to say that Nate has it easy, but right now, he has to be a bloody mess on his way to the hospital, and then he'll help with the investigation. But after that, then what? Obviously he'll be roped into a big final confrontation with Wrigley, but there aren't going to be a whole lot of opportunities for one Internal Affairs investigator to go after this guy if the whole police force wants him (and now the criminals are pissed at him, too). The story can't just become about Wrigley killing people while Nate goes around talking to Jess (the love interest) and other cops and whoever else. I've gotta connect the characters - the setup is there, but it's mostly only there for a final confrontation with maybe one failed attempt. Jess has to be threatened, for example.
And there's also an issue of how much time can/should pass. Logically, there would be a passage of time - a couple weeks to a month, where Wrigley has fully disappeared, maybe even becoming the FBI's problem, Nate has healed up a bit and has had time to hang out with Jess and all that stuff before Wrigley comes back and the shit hits the fan for the final few sequences (how Act 3 is going to be long enough is another issue for me. I thought I had it worked out, but I'm not sure anymore.). But from a writing standpoint, I know that it's better to avoid any major transitions in time.
Whatever. I'll figure it out, but it gets a little tougher with each section. Writing in this blog helps me see through some of the clutter and figure out what I need to do, in the same way that talking it out helps even if no one's really listening.
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