Midpoint. Valid? Interesting?

[Mintclub]

Personally I like to break my scripts into 4 parts. Each act escalating, raising the stakes and challenging the protagonist's journey.

The execs I just worked with referred to the beat/ mid point in the script as a 'trailer moment' - which I found useful. It's the protagonist's point of no return...

[tucsonray]

When I tried my hand writing music in Nashville they had a really good approach that I've embraced; namely, if you're going to break the rules (and we had MANY rules regarding song structure) you need to know them first.

I'm fine with breaking from the scructural 'rules' (any and all of them), but if done recklessly and/or unconsciously it seems to show and the script somehow tends to be less convincing.

So for my two cents - know the rules, and when you want to break them understand why you're doing so and why it's making your story better. The result should be fine.

[ChadStrohl]

Originally Posted by Mintclub

The execs I just worked with referred to the beat/ mid point in the script as a 'trailer moment'

I like that

[The Road Warrior]

Originally Posted by ChadStrohl

If you have a 90 page screenplay, the midpoint is page 45. If it's 120 pages the midpoint is page 60, etc, etc.

I'm a believer that if you keep throwing reversals or raising stakes to the end, you create a compelling story.

Since we're talking Star Wars we have...

1) Leia sends of the droids and gets caught. Not exactly what she had in mind.

2) Droids get caught by the jawas. Not exactly what they had in mind.

3) Luke and Uncle Owen buy the droids to help on the farm. Artoo runs away. Not exactly what the Skywalkers had in mind.

4) Luke goes off after Artoo. Gets attacked by Sandpeople. Not exactly what he had in mind.

And on and on and on with the pattern of "Not exactly what they had in mind" even up to the point when Luke turns off that computer and blows up the Death Star with the force.

I'm not saying there aren't such things as midpoints or act breaks or whammies every ten pages or "dark nights of the soul" or any number of other benchmarks, but I do think fixating on the whens and whys are less important than how the story progresses organically.

I prefer to look at it as the whole "Send your characters up a tree (act 1), throw rocks at them (act 2), and see how they get down (act 3)." Then when I'm done with that, I'll fine tune it toward the benchmarks (if possible) and see what developes.

I think if you keep doing "Not exactly what they had in mind" and keep raising the stakes with each one, you're probably writing a pretty decent story regardless of what the guidebooks say. I could be wrong, though.

--I think so too Chad because audiences are forever catching up with 'the story', so once the audience figures out what kind of film they are in and where it's going they begin to get bored.

Or even, begin to second guess, write in the events themselves, so you write to trip the bleeders up. And sometimes it's showing the unexpected, as in Star Wars, where we don't know their universe inside out, so we're led into a fascinating unknown.

But in the crime genre, methinks: we already know all about secret files, femme fatales, crooked cops, or what-have- yous as we've seen over x 1000 versions before now, so if we have the following facts -- say a dead partner, out of two P Dicks who partner-up out of DICKS FOR HIRE DETECTIVE AGENCY, and it's all about stolen files --ostensibly -- to keep some politicians sex life secret, we're familiar with how this goes.

Or are we-

--because we learn that's all just a front for a dodgy cover up black operation that's really smuggling blueprints of steath bomber technology out of the country. And blah blah.

The story then gets changed "radically", and the stakes rise, it goes from the domestic and sordid, run of the milll plot, to the crazy-insane out of depth Dick, who doesn't know what's coming next plot.

It's gone from B-movie noir to international thriller in a few seconds.

Whether any of this has to comply with some arbitrary "midpoint" may be more to do with a natural pattern that happens time and again, rather than any 'it must happen at the midpoint' doctrine.

What I may be trying to suggest is that genre, story-type and many other factors determine when things happen, and if the genre is tired, these get moved around, we could range beyond the midpoint to throw things much further on, or come right back and kick it off in minutes of the opening pages and it becomes relentless until the end.

We've all seen this delay/prolong approach imho, consciously or otherwise.

-- just my lil greasy dollar bill's worth.

[socalwriter1]

Road Warrior, just using your example, this almost seems like two different stories ... before and after the midpoint. Did you mean it to be this drastic, going in such a new direction? Any movies come to mind that used this huge change of direction after the midpoint? (And would love to know what that midpoint was that caused or stimulated such a drastic change of direction.)

Interesting post none-the-less.

[The Road Warrior]

Originally Posted by socalwriter1

Road Warrior, just using your example, this almost seems like two different stories ... before and after the midpoint. Did you mean it to be this drastic, going in such a new direction? Any movies come to mind that used this huge change of direction after the midpoint? (And would love to know what that midpoint was that caused or stimulated such a drastic change of direction.)

Interesting post none-the-less.

I probably was exaggerating to try and illustrate a point, but it seems to me to be not unlike some versions of the political thriller plot, as you get deeper, the story is redefined. Or the way a Chandler novel works, as Marlowe gets deeper in, we/he figures out the story has nothing much to do with how it all began.

But often when watching films now, because we're so used to seeing certain story types roll out, it seems like the pressure to keep the audience on their toes is more difficult than ever. I've seen how people dose off in the cinema and talk about what's coming next, or shrug at some plot point or big reveal, so much seems like cliche. So that to actually beat cliche, it feels like something drastic is often required.

I don't know, it's stuff I've tried out in my own musings on structure, leading the audience into a series of changes where they think they more or less know what's coming, but instead use that false lead against them. I guess marketing might become a big issue here, you could say that if the story follows an evolution from a small town crime film into something much larger with international dimensions how do you sell it on the box without giving it away? Which genre are we in?

[Biohazard]

Originally Posted by tucsonray

...know the rules, and when you want to break them understand why you're doing so and why it's making your story better.

Yes.

So many people assume that 'breaking the rules' means doing whatever you want just because you can. If you try to explain it to them, they say "rules are meant to be broken", blah blah blah, and a bunch of self-gratifying nonsense.

No. Rules are meant to help you understand how each part of a story functions. When you understand that, you can do other things and learn new ways of approaching that function - but in every case, every decision should be made to help the story work to its maximum efficiency.

[muser777]

Originally Posted by tucsonray

...if you're going to break the rules... you need to know them first. .

I couldn't agree more if we were talking about the inciting incident, outward goals, raising stakes, dramatic suspense, denouement... - but in five pages of discussion I only remember one film mentioned where everyone agreed on where the midpoint even was (Jurassic Park, which, if you think about it, would be hard to write without that midpoint - it was begging to have wonder flipped into danger at some point). On top of that, we've got handfuls of varying explanations as to the function of a midpoint.

Maybe if we could agree on a single dramatic function for this beat, I'd be more on board seeing it as a story-writing 'rule'. As it is, I am still not convinced the midpoint is anything more than a centrally-placed peak of 'action' in the second act that serves one/several of any number of dramatic functions (eg raised stakes, growing and complicating obstacles, a twist, revelation, shift in character's development or a newly ignited hunger for his goal... ).

Perhaps the midpoint is not so much a rule for writing stories, but more a tool for describing them?

[socalwriter1]

Muser, re: "eg raised stakes, growing and complicating obstacles, a twist, revelation, shift in character's development or a newly ignited hunger for his goal... "

Yes, this was my PART of my perception of the what the midpoint should be at the beginning of this thread.

BUT Road Warrior actually better reflected my feelings for a DESIRABLE (my opinion) midpoint when he said "...it seems like the pressure to keep the audience on their toes is more difficult than ever." That's what I meant I said about waking up the audience. So we need something to do that.

And it seems like a "twist" (Muser) or a drastic change in the story at midpoint (Road Warrior) is the way to accomplish this.

That's why I was hoping Road Warrior had an example of a movie in mind when he wrote that.

[ChadStrohl]

What is the midpoint in True Lies? In fact... what is anything in True Lies?

That movie seems to break every rule in existence, yet (IMO) is one of the most fun movies to watch ever. It's constantly shifting gears. Is it action? Is it comedy? Is it farce? Is it thriller? But I love it.