But could you kind of break it down as a structural beat?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, right.

Something really important happens in the middle of every archetypal story, which has taken screenwriters and screenwriting gurus quite a long time to make sense of.

So if you read Sid Field, you won't get any real sense of it.

If you read Robert McKee, there's almost nothing there.

But around the time of Save the Cat, onwards, there's a real growing sense that the middle is quite important there.

It's a

So I guess my question for you is, if the midpoint is the embodiment, um, of the lesson, what is the end of act two?

Okay.

All right.

That's a brilliant question.

Uh, so tha- thank you very much.

So just again, stepping back for a second, you know, I, I, you know, when I started doing this, obviously there were a lot of established screenwriting books around and, you know, some of them were very good.

Um, but I, you know, every time I read, you know, definitions of midpoint, I mean, there isn't one in Robert McKee, which is a bit of a flaw I think, you know.

Is there a place we should go to look for the question? Is there any tools you can give us? How do we, how do we bring our own question into consciousness?

Does that change the nature of how the story should be told?

I think the underlying structures tend to be very similar, but of- obviously what has changed massively is, is the rise of, uh, social media and the empowerment of individuals to get their stories out without the need of publishers or broadcasters.

And so, you know, the biggest change in my world, in our world I'm sure, is, is, is, you know, is YouTube and its equivalents.

Um, and the rise of, um, you know, short form storytelling, you know.

And I think ...

Yeah, I mean, the example I, I, I always talk about is, you know, your phone is a dopamine factory.

Um, and ...

Going back to the, one of the original questions I asked, John, about, you know, a company starting off wondering what to do, what to te- what sort of story to tell, and what s- Would you recommend the use of market research to give you clues as to what people are thinking about your particular company? Would that, would that, would, would market research help initiate stories?