Story Time! Beginning, Middle, and End
A mouse wants cheese. The cheese is on a high shelf. The mouse builds a tower of blocks to reach it! That is a whole story in three tiny parts. Every cartoon you have ever watched — even a 5-minute one — is built the exact same way: something happens, then a problem shows up, then it gets solved (or it doesn't, and that's funny too!).
What You'll Learn
- The three parts every story needs: beginning, middle, and end - How animators draw a 'storyboard' before making any moving pictures - How to invent a character who wants something - How to draw your own 3-picture story
Every Story Needs Someone Who Wants Something
In the beginning of a story, we meet a character and learn what they want. In the movie 'Finding Nemo,' the beginning shows us Nemo wants to explore the ocean, even though his dad Marlin is scared for him. A story does not start with 'once upon a time' — it starts the moment we know what the character wants.
The Middle Is Where the Trouble Happens
The middle of a story is where the character's want runs into a problem. Nemo gets captured by a diver! Now Marlin has to swim across the whole ocean to find him. The middle is usually the longest part because the character tries things, fails, and tries again. Animators call this 'rising action' because the trouble keeps getting bigger before it gets fixed.
The End Shows Us What Changed
The end of a story solves the problem — but a good ending also shows the character learned or changed something. Marlin finds Nemo, but he also learns to let Nemo be a little braver and more independent. That's why the ending feels satisfying: it is not just 'problem solved,' it is 'character grew.'
Real animation studios draw a 'storyboard' — a comic strip of simple sketches — for the whole story before drawing a single final frame. It's like a map so nobody gets lost while making the cartoon.
The first Pixar short film with a full beginning-middle-end story was 'Tin Toy' in 1988. It was about a wind-up toy hiding from a loud baby — and it won an Academy Award!
What usually happens in the MIDDLE of a story?
Why do animators draw a storyboard before making the final cartoon?
Draw Your 3-Picture Story
Fold a piece of paper into 3 boxes. In box 1, draw a character and something they want (a dog who wants a bone, a kid who wants to fly a kite). In box 2, draw the problem (the bone is stuck under a fence, the wind stops). In box 3, draw how it gets solved. Show your 3 pictures to a family member and tell the story out loud without looking at the paper.
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