What Is a Midpoint?

You have read all about the importance of writing amazing openings in your screenplays to hook and engage the script reader — and eventual audience — as quickly as possible. You have also learned how vital it is to conjure shocking or impactful endings to your stories to create cathartic conclusions for them. But there’s something just as significant as those two screenplay elements that your scripts need — a midpoint. 

Okay, What’s a Midpoint?

A story’s midpoint is a moment when characters face higher stakes, significant changes, greater challenges, or story-altering revelations that propel the story into a new direction. 

• You’ve introduced your characters by showcasing their ordinary world. 
• You’ve (hopefully) created an engaging opening that introduces the core concept and conflict. 
• You’ve thrown your characters into the conflict at hand, launching them into the concept and conflict of the story, and beginning the story and character arcs of your script.   

The Importance of a Good Midpoint

Beginnings and endings are often seen as the enjoyable aspects of crafting a screenplay, while the middle section is commonly regarded as the part that screenwriters find most challenging and daunting.

Why? Because while the goals of beginnings and endings are relatively straightforward — grabbing the audience’s attention and providing cathartic or thrilling conclusions — the goal of a midpoint is somewhat nebulous — to keep your audience engaged.

The midpoint must sustain the audience’s investment in the protagonist’s journey through conflict, tension, and character development while preventing the story from becoming stagnant or predictable.

How do you do that?

What Are the Story Ingredients for a Compelling Midpoint?

Midpoints come in different narrative shapes and sizes — but all exist to accomplish a combination of similar objectives. 

• Create a Turning Point in the Script: A turning point in the script allows you to be able to create a before-and-after effect within the screenplay to keep things new and engaging from the first half to the second half.
• Change Character Goals: By Midpoint, character goals and directions change because of new information, new emotional responses to the initial conflicts, etc. 
• Push the Character’s Arc Further: Characters confront their fears and flaws and begin to change, develop, and evolve as a result.
• Push the Story Arc Further: As the character arcs shift, so does the arc of the story as the characters face new challenges and conflicts that drive the plot and story forward.
• Raise the Stakes: The Midpoint helps to raise the stakes by increasing the tension of the story and enhancing the conflicts the characters face. With more at stake, the script readers and audience become more invested in the narrative. 

Midpoints exist to accomplish these things within the screenplay. And you can utilize a few different types of Midpoints to do so. 

Types of Midpoints

• Reversal Midpoint: Characters’ fortunes take a sudden and unexpected turn for the worse, complicating their journey.
• Revelation Midpoint: Characters discover a significant piece of information that changes their understanding of the story or their objective.
• Decision Midpoint: Characters make a crucial decision that impacts the direction of the story.
• Conflict Midpoint: Characters face a major conflict or obstacle that forces them to confront their limitations.

Where Do Midpoints Go in the Story?

The obvious answer is, well, in the middle of your story. There’s no particular page requirement for a Midpoint. However, for it to serve its purpose, it does need to trend somewhere within the middle of your story. But, let’s go over a few examples from popular story structure paradigms:

Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet

In Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet, the Midpoint comes roughly at Page 55 (give or take a few pages) in the average screenplay, which should be anywhere from 110 to 120 pages. But you shouldn’t limit yourself to a particular page. Formulas like beat sheets offer great options, but there’s no end-all-be-all be-all page number where Midpoints should be. 

Syd Field’s Midpoint

Syd Field spoke about the Midpoint in his earlier screenwriting book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, explaining the Midpoint as, “An important scene in the middle of the script, often a reversal of fortune or revelation that changes the direction of the story.”

Chris Vogler’s “The Ordeal”

In Chris Vogler’s approach to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, the Midpoint is presented as The Ordeal where the situation for the protagonist worsens and they face even tougher challenges, which can sometimes lead to a crisis in their life. The Ordeal is listed as number eight out of twelve stages. No specific page count is mentioned as Vogler states that not all of the twelve stages need to be present in a story — with The Ordeal being the likely exception because every story should have some type of Midpoint.

Three-Act Structure

Think of the three-act structure, which is the most widely used basic story structure in screenplays and movies. 

1. Act One (Beginning)
2. Act Two (Middle)
3. Act Three (End)

We’ve already covered the importance of a strong beginning and an impactful ending. The Midpoint is placed in the middle of those screenplay elements to create a consistently engaging story. 

Read More: How to Use 3-Act Structure to Better Write Your Screenplay

Beats That Lead up to the Midpoint

So, with that said, we know that the Midpoint should lie somewhere within the second act of your script. Here’s a general story beat example laying out a potential structural lead-up to the Midpoint. 

• Introduce your characters. 
• Introduce the core concept and conflict they will be facing. 
• Throw them into that conflict. 
• Have them deal with the conflict amidst their limited knowledge and experience.
• Let them learn something from their failures and struggles. 
• And then, just when they think they’ve figured things out, create a Midpoint that rocks their world and has them facing evolved conflicts with higher stakes. 

That’s where your midpoint belongs.

Examples of Movie Midpoints

Star Wars: A New Hope

Some mistake the Midpoint as the moment in the story when Luke Skywalker decides to join Obi-Wan Kenobi on his adventure. This is more of a Call to Adventure moment, which is also accompanied by the Meeting the Mentor,  Refusal of the Call, and Crossing the Threshold moment, all of which generally take place in the first act. Instead, the true Midpoint is best interpreted as the moment that Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, and Chewbacca (and droids) are pulled into the Death Star. 

• The stakes are raised tenfold.
• They find Princess Leia. 
• They are tasked with escaping with the battle plans.
• Darth Vader senses Obi-Wan’s presence.

Titanic

The love story of Jack meeting Rose encompasses the first act of the story, leading us into the second where tension arises as Cal and others aboard the ship stand in between their love affair. The Midpoint occurs when the ship hits the iceberg. From that moment forth, the forbidden love story evolves into a higher-stakes survival story.

Barbie

Barbie meets her mentor (Weird Barbie) and then crosses the threshold from Barbieland into the real world, with Ken in tow. The two of them go through the culture shock of seeing how the real world really is and how different it is from what they know.

The true Midpoint occurs when Mattell discovers that they’ve crossed the threshold and must capture them before any harm is done. The culmination of the Midpoint is when Ken discovers patriarchy and brings that back to Barbieland. This creates higher stakes for Barbie, her friends, and Barbieland itself as she struggles to right Ken’s wrongs and educate the rest of Barbieland on all that she has learned. All of that happens after the Midpoint. 

Have Fun with Your Midpoint

Midpoints offer you the chance to shake things up in your scripts. Script readers are used to boring second acts because a majority of the scripts they read don’t have strong Midpoints. Instead, the scripts they read from novice screenwriters usually have first acts that go on for too long, followed by rushes into third acts and climaxes where nothing is set up in an interesting way. 

Don’t fall into that all-too-familiar trap. Instead, have fun with finding entertaining and impactful Midpoints that continue to capture the interest of script readers and audiences all the way through to your exciting and enthralling conclusions. If you give them that engrossing experience from beginning to end — and everything in between — you’ll be doing your job as a cinematic storyteller. 

Read More: Understanding the Midpoint Mirror

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Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries Blackout, starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner, the feature thriller Hunter’s Creed, and many Lifetime thrillers. Follow Ken on Twitter @KenMovies and Instagram @KenMovies76