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That time I found out I'd been outlining my stories wrong for 4 years

I sat down last week to finally organize my novel idea and realized I'd been using the wrong structure the whole time... I kept trying to fit everything into a 3 act format, but my plot kept dragging around page 60. My beta reader finally asked me why I had 15 chapters of setup and no payoff. She showed me her own outline template with a pinch point and a midpoint twist I never knew about. I felt so dumb, I even printed out the wrong guide from a blog back in 2018 and never questioned it. Has anyone else stuck with a bad method for years just because it was the first one they found?
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finleyfox
finleyfox15d agoTop Commenter
Lived with the "save the cat" beat sheet taped to my wall for two years before I realized I was following a cat food commercial structure lmao.
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christopher_hunt
Honestly never saw it that way but you're totally right, that changes everything.
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