Middle

The beginning of the story usually sets up some kind of contrast or conflict that develops into escalating confrontations through the middle of the story.

For example, in The Old, Dead Nuisance, Paul—who does not believe in ghosts—has some mystifying and terrifying encounters with not one but several ghosts:

He sat on the bed. The sleet still struck the window.

A face was looking at him. It hung in the air. It glared.

Paul yelped. The eyes were huge. The mouth was down-turned. It hung there like a mask.

He looked wildly around—hoping that he’d see something that might be reflecting.

There were other faces. They also hung in the air. Brothers. They hated him.

Paul thought he should run to the door. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t move his legs or arms. Too terrified.

The Old, Dead Nuisance(2011)

The snippet opens with the normal situation for this particular scene.

In this case, that's Paul sitting on the bed in one room of the 'haunted' house.

Then a cause-effect chain begins. Note that there are no connectors, but we can still follow the links:

A face appears.
So Paul yelps.
He notices grims details in the face.
So he looks wildly around for an explanation.
He sees even more floating faces.
He thinks he should run to the door but can't.

Notice how in this particular passage, the main character is responding to steady pressure from other characters.

While the highlighting might look back and forth, the pressure is all in one direction. This is important because that continual pressure is what creates the change in Paul.

The snippet we're seeing here is just one moment in a series of events in Paul's story.

The middle of a story is usually comprised of a whole series of these experiences and encounters, which cumulatively create a change in the character or their circumstances.

Elena was lying on the sofa watching TV on her phone. A text popped up from Nidhi: a link to a course description with 'you'd love this'.

Elena rolled her eyes. She was tired of people sending her suggestions. She swiped her thumb to delete the link but somehow launched it instead.

Before she could tap back, a banner image caught her eye. At first, she thought it was a painting of blue and gold. But on closer inspection she saw it was an underwater photo of plastic garbage suspended in the ocean. But it was so beautiful, it looked like a piece of modern art.

Elena, entranced, scrolled down to find out more.

That afternoon they had training.

The new kid, Filsan, blitzed the cone drills—even coach's feared cyclone drill. Sometimes his feet moved so fast, it was like he was one of those YouTube chefs chopping an onion. Other times he glided across the field like a swan coming to land in a lake.

Tom felt something he wasn't used to feeling: jealousy.

When they played a game, Filsan scored three goals and stole the ball from Tom every time he tried.

Tom glared.

At the end of training, everyone wanted to talk to Filsan, except Tom, who wondered bitterly about the odds of Filsan having a bone-breaking accident in the next few weeks.

On the previous page, you wrote a beginning.

Think about the situation you described and your character's attitude towards it.
What kind of experience would radically change your character's attitude?
You can go back and check what you wrote if you need to.

Start to describe the experience:

Put your character in a baseline situation.
Introduce some kind of trigger or cause to destabilise them.
Describe the immediate effect of the character.
Keep up the pressure from the cause.
Develop the character's reaction.

Go back and forth as long as you like.

You don't have to conclude the scene, just get it to the point where it's clear the character is in a different position to where they were in the beginning of your story.

Describe an event in the middle of your character's story, where something pushes them out of their normal state.

You can see where this is going.

Let's jump to the ending.

Change, cause & effect