Someone once said that building a story is basically like chasing your main character up a tree, throwing rocks at them, then chasing them down again.

What they mean is that the beginning part (other than getting to know the character) is where you first give them their big problem to solve.

Mulan’s dad being forced to go to war.

Our main character dropping the money down the sewer.

Rudy Miller going to camp.

Whatever it is, giving them a problem to deal with is the ‘chasing them up a tree’ part. It’s a good comparison because we know they can’t spend the rest of their lives in a tree.

At some point, they have to figure out how to get down.

But that doesn’t mean you have to make it easy.

The middle part of the story is where you give them a bunch of little problems that help them gain the experience to, eventually, solve the big problem and get out of the darn tree.

Those little problems are where you can have some real fun with the character because you can put them in all sorts of crazy situations.

Think of all those middle chapters where Anne Shirley was dealing with just about everything you can think of.

The author is, in a sense, throwing rocks at their character. That is, they are giving the character problems to deal with. And through those problems and conflicts, whether they are winning or losing, that is where their growth is happening.

Because nobody just grows up in one, sudden leap. It takes time and it takes many experiences.

If in chapter 3, Anne Shirley was all of a sudden mature enough to take over the family farm and look after Marilla, nobody would believe it. It’s just too fast.

So, the middle part of the book is where lots of stuff gets thrown at your character, and they start to grow and figure out their world.

Because if the problem you gave them at the beginning of the book is big and difficult enough, then the person they are at the beginning of the book isn’t ready to solve it. They just don’t know how, yet.

So we need that growth, through their problems and experiences, to get them to a place where they know enough to solve the big problem.

To get them to a place where they now know how to climb out of the tree.

At the beginning of Star Wars, Luke is not mature enough to take on Darth Vader or the Empire. There’s just no way. He’s a huffy, selfish teenager. Sure, he wants adventure. But he’s nowhere near ready for the responsibility.

He’s gotta go through a lot in order to grow up enough to take on that battle.

Same with Harry Potter. Harry meets Voldemort at the end of the first book, but he’s still gotta go through books 2-6 to learn what he needs to, in order to be ready for the final fight in book 7.

He was up in the tree for 5 bloody books!

(That’s only partially true. Each book, individually, had the same structure with a beginning, middle, and end. He comes out of a tree at the end of each book. The real genius of it all is that all 7 books, taken together as one giant story, have that same structure. Book 1 has a beginning, middle, and end, but it is also just the beginning of the larger story. It’s a very cool setup.)

So. Once you know who your character is in the beginning, you can spend all sorts of time in the middle throwing rocks at them.

Now, there is more to say about how to do that (because this is often the place in story-building where writers get bogged down), but that’s for next time.

Happy writing, young writer.