Here’s the perfect way to summarize the mid-point of any story. “Shit just got real”. And really, I could just stop the episode there because if you break down the meaning of “shit just got real” and apply it to the moment in your story where it does, officially, get real for the main character, then you’ve found your mid-point and you’re doing fine. If there isn’t a moment where the quote unquote “real” doesn’t occur. You’re missing your midpoint.
Sequence six is, in my opinion, the most important sequence of your script – especially in your early drafts because you can set a little destination for your main character by writing the mid-point complication before you write sequences 4 and 5 – just so you know where the main character will end up halfway through the story.
But nonetheless, here’s a straight forward breakdown of the mid-point. I always reference it specifically as, “the mid-point complication”. Emphasis on “complication”. If you just call the sequence your “midpoint”, then you’re really just defining the “when” instead of the “when and what”…and the “what” is always more important than the “when”. So here ya go…the basic breakdown of sequence six.
It’s the consummation, or twist. It’s where the “dynamic acceleration” occurs. Yes, you heard me right. Not the “dynamic manipulation” that I’ve referenced in previous episodes, but the dynamic acceleration. And I’m assuming you’re smart enough to figure out what that means, but still…I’ll explain anyway. It’s the moment where the dynamic character affects your main character so much, that your main character’s misbehavior or in other words, emotional problem, is so threatened that he will either go hide away in a hole in the ground, or change so drastically that he’ll seem like a new man. There is very little in-between there.