Sunday Night Studio

The most difficult part of telling a story comes right at the midpoint. If you have a decent beginning—where the premise gets set up—you can have a decent chance of getting to a satisfying end…but only if you don’t mess it up halfway through!

Let’s take a look at the plot of The Sound of Music to appreciate how a song sung to one audience in the middle had different connotations when it was sung to a different audience near the end.

Taking the exploration of motivations at the midpoint a step further, let’s look at what happens when the truth of a character’s very values are challenged. This is basically the premise of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof (1971)—the story of a a poor Jewish milkman, Tevye, raising his daughters in the social upheaval of the final years of Tsarist Russia.

In the middle—where stories twist and turn (or at least are supposed to twist and turn)—that’s when character motivations really do the work they are meant to do. They explore the themes and arguments of the story’s thematic premise.

The key to not boring the audience is to keep the beats of a story moving up and down in opposition to each other, in a way that engages their attention and then maintains it long enough to reward them with a fulfilling pay-off.