The novel's title is a reference to the flow of arguments in a debate, and a series of these exchanges tell the story. Instead of a single central plot, there are a number of interlinked story lines and recurring themes (as in musical "counterpoint").As a roman à clef, many of the characters are based on real people, most of whom Huxley knew personally, such as D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, and Huxley is depicted as the novel's novelist, Philip Quarles. Huxley described the structure of Point Counter Point within the novel itself, in a stream of consciousness musing of Quarles:
