Is Your Middle Weighing You Down? Pump It UP

I find beginnings and endings fun to write. Usually, I know how I want to begin and how I’d like my manuscript to end. Middles however can be bothersome. A real pain. And I don’t think I’m alone with that problem.

Most of the time, slow middles are easy to spot-at least in the work of others. Have you ever read the flap copy of a library book, scanned the first chapter, and knew you had a winner in your hands? You rushed home planning to read it stretch out on the sofa with a glass of iced tea. This book was so hot, you would spend the night on the sofa until you read the last page.

Then, somewhere in the middle, the momentum slowed. The tension stretched into limp elastic. If it wasn’t for your caffeinated tea, you would go to bed. What happened? Are there times when your writing suffers from this dilemma? How do you know?

Author Barbara Lowell turns to her critique group for answers. “You have
completed your first draft and done some revision. But you hear from your critique partners or beta readers that the middle of your manuscript is sagging. You know that you need to keep your story moving forward. And now it’s stuck in the middle. What can you do?

Try cutting.  Cut anything that stops your story – unnecessary details, description, backstory, narrative, internal dialogue that will make the reader want to skip ahead. Every word in your manuscript needs to serve the story. It’s difficult to cut what you love, but if it has to be done to make your story work, then do it. To test this, put brackets around words, sentences, paragraphs, sections you think need cutting, and reread the manuscript out loud without them. A tighter story often solves the problem of a sagging middle.”

If not, what can you do to fix it? I’m a firm believer in the power of mentor texts. I love picture book biographies and I admire those who write them. As I read, I try to identify their “keep them reading” technique. Sometimes, it’s a question the author asks throughout the book. Keep reading to learn the answer.

Chris Barton uses this technique in WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A VOICE LIKE THAT? THE STORY OF EXTRADORINARY CONGRESSWOMAN BARBARA JORDAN. His middle never sagged.

Another book that used a similar technique is

SOMEDAY IS NOW – CLARA LUPER AND THE 1958 OKLAHOMA CITY SIT-INS
by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. She uses the refrain, Someday Is Now when Clara Luper’s
group of students start to plan sit-ins. The author switches to Someday Was Now
when they actually sit-in. What happened during  the sit-ins? Where the students hurt?
Readers will want to know the answers.

I asked author, Kim Ventrella how she handles middles in her novels.

“Oh the horror of the saggy middle. It’s almost as bad as the dreaded ’soggy bottom’ in British baking. So how do you avoid it? Of course, every story is different, but in general, it's around this time in the story when your character moves from simply reacting to external events to driving the action. If you get to the middle and your character is still being ping-ponged around by external forces, see how you can change that. Challenge your main character to make her own plans and take control of the action.”

Alice Faye Duncan uses another technique to keep readers engaged. “Before I begin a writing project, I often identify some symbol as my reoccurring motif. When the middle slumps, I brood over the many facets of my symbol and in due season, I find overlooked elements to support the middle. While writing A SONG FOR GWENDOLYN BROOKS, my reoccurring image was a flower. As the middle slogged along, it came to me that a bloom is a bud before maturation. This metaphor was just what I needed to precisely express the poet's development between childhood and her Pulitzer Prize writing career.”

As I read Alice’s comments, I immediately connected with them. I had a symbol at the beginning of a story, then I let it disappear and I was stuck. Now, I can see a way to pump up my middle. I challenge you to think about the above ideas. Try them with your writing projects.


Posted by Gwendolyn Hooks

Connecting Lily Pads: The Messy Middle

To follow three outstanding posts by April, Bobbie, and Carmela on "messy middles"is a major challenge.  They've already covered so much but we all have our ways of slogging through those messy middles.

I am a meandering writer. First chapters are easy. You're setting the story up, introducing characters and conflict. Chapter two you do more of the same. In fact, you're cruising along until you hit that bog/swamp/deep dark forest (choose a metaphor) aka: the messy middle. You know the "heart of the story" (see April's post) but do you know the end of your story?

I don't mean you have the last chapter, dialog and all in your head (although you might...I write last chapters first...but that's a post for another time.) More importantly, do you know how your character has changed since chapter one? If you don't, you can't really pick your way through the bog/swamp/forest because you don't know where you're going. You are wandering through that messy, messy middle, that muddle of characters and incidents that you think will get you to the end.

 I used to write my way out of the middle. That's a good way to have a 600 page first draft of a 225 page novel. Even then, you might still feel that you haven't arrived where you wanted to go. Especially if you didn't know where you were going to begin with.

Organization has always been a big problem for me. Organization is so big, so overwhelming. Outlines have never worked for me. I was the student who wrote a term paper first, then went back and wrote the required outline. That doesn't work so well with fiction.

One of my mentors in the Vermont College MFA program, a writer known for extremely spare writing...not a wasted word anywhere...told me this. (Paraphrasing) Don't worry about the last scene or chapter. Think about how your character changes throughout the story. How is she different at the end? Build a bridge between the two things you know...how the story begins...and how the character is at the end. Build a bridge, inch by inch through the unknown.

This is a variation on the answer to the question, "How do you eat an elephant?" Answer: "One bite at a time." This is not working from an outline. It's working from the question: "And then what happens?" What starts your character's journey to change? Then what happens? What happens because of that? Cause and effect, cause and effect. Getting your character into as much peril as possible without killing them. (Although in frustration, I've often thought of loading my characters into a car, and driving them off a cliff, Thelma-and-Louise-style. "And then they all died. The end!")

I don't write in sequence. I mentioned earlier that I write final chapters first. That gives me a "ballpark destination." Of course that chapter will be re-written, or even discarded over many drafts, but it gives me someplace to head. I am standing in the first couple of chapters, and I see where I want to wind up. But how do I get there?

A scene, and incident, a bit of conversation will come to mind...and I write that. I don't know exactly where it is in the bog/swamp/forest...but it's in there. I don't worry where. I write as much as I can around that incite...and then wait. Another bit will come to mind. I write that...and again, don't know where it comes in the character's journey. I keep doing this until I finish what I think of as a first draft. (No one else would think of it that way!)

Second, third, and who-knows-how-many-drafts--I sort out theses hopscotching scenes, written in no particular order. I arrange and rearrange them. Reading through them sometimes causes me to throw a few out, or consolidate, or to have a Big Revelation.

Once these scenes are in an order that makes sense, I begin bridging those scenes. What characters, information, emotional change needs to occur next? I think of this process as building connectors between a bunch of lily pads. They're all floating in the same pond, but I need to connect them to get to shore (the last chapter). Frogs can hop from pad to pad...but readers need connections to get from episode to episode.

This works for me because my mind doesn't work in a linear fashion. I have ADHD and problems with executive function (the part of your brain that plans and orders tasks.) My mind hops around, and I can't help it. So instead of fighting against it, I've harnessed it. I've written and published 10 books and two short stories working this way.

Does it work? Judge for yourself. This is how I wrote this post.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

2 Tips for Bridging the Middle Plus 2 Book Suggestions

Today I have the honor of kicking off our next TeachingAuthors topic: "Messy Middles." But before I get to my post, I want to congratulate the winner of our latest TeachingAuthors giveaway:

Carl!

Carl will soon be receiving an autographed copy of Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons: An Enslaved Woman Fights For Freedom by my fellow TeachingAuthor, Gwendolyn Hooks. Our thanks to all who entered. Be sure to stay tuned--we'll have one more giveaway before the year ends. 

Now, for today's topic: It recently occurred to me that, while we've discussed story beginnings and the inspiration for them, we've never devoted a series to discussing middles. The reason? It's not an easy topic to address.

I'm currently teaching a writing class at College of DuPage called "Beginnings, Middles, and Ends," which is named for the book by Nancy Kress that we use as our class text. In the text, Kress herself has difficulty providing a precise definition for what we mean by the middle of a story.  She describes it in part as follows (italicized in the text):

"The middle of a story develops the story’s implicit promise by dramatizing incidents that increase conflict, reveal character, and put in place all the various forces that will collide at the story’s climax."

She goes on to say:

"In other words, the middle is a bridge—sometimes a long, winding bridge, sometimes a short, direct one. At one end of the bridge, the story's beginning introduces characters, conflict and (sometimes) symbols. Then in the middle, these same characters, conflicts, and (sometimes) symbols move across the bridge . . . . Some people change during their journey across the bridge; some don’t. Conflicts deepen. People become more emotional. The stakes may rise. By the time the characters reach the other end of the bridge, the forces determining their behavior are clear. At the far end of the bridge, these same forces will collide (the story’s climax)."

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Building that bridge can be a tricky process, especially if you're a pantser like me. (As I explained in this post, pantsers are writers who don't plot a novel in advance, but instead write by the "seat of their pants." The opposite of a pantser is a plotter--a writer who creates an outline or some sort of road map before actually writing the story.) 

While middles can cause problems for picture book and short story writers, too, the two tips I'm sharing today are probably most useful for novelists.

1. Feel free to write your story out of sequence.

When I was working on the middle of my first novel, Rosa, Sola, I got stuck. I didn't know what should happen next. After banging my head against a wall for a few days, I realized that I DID know what needed to happen a few chapters ahead, near the end of the novel. So I wrote that future scene next. I then created a patchwork of scenes to fill the gap--working on each scene as it occurred to me rather than in the story's chronological order. This seems such an obvious solution now, but when I share it with my writing students it often has the same AHA! effect it had on me at the time.

Image by sewingdirectory from Pixabay

 2. If your story takes a wrong turn, becomes boring to you, or you lose energy for it, reread it from the beginning and stop at the last scene where you're still interested/engaged in the story. 

I ran into this problem while writing Playing by Heart. I got to a point in the middle of the novel where I couldn't move forward. I realized it was because I didn't like the story anymore. When I reread the draft, I discovered that my protagonist, Emilia, had made a choice that was out of character, and that had sent her on a detour that made no sense. After I cut that out-of-character scene and all that followed, I was able to get the story got back on course.

My two book suggestions if you're having middle troubles: 

As you might guess, I recommend Kress's Beginnings, Middles, and Ends to writers struggling with middles. In addition to helpful tips and concrete examples, the book includes practical exercises to use on your own projects. The book is from Writer's Digest Books' Elements of Fiction Writing series and was initially published in 1993. Even though the publisher re-released it in paperback in 2011,  some of the content is a bit dated, but overall I think it's still a valuable tool for addressing issues not only with middles, but beginnings and ends, too.

By the way, if Kress's book sounds familiar, it may be because I included it on a list of twelve writing craft books I recommended in a post several years ago.

James Scott Bell was the author of not one, but two books on that list. My second suggestion for those dealing with middle issues is another of his craft books: Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between. I heard Bell speak at a writing conference about the approach he takes in this book, and it sounds like an intriguing one. I have to confess, I haven't tried it yet myself, but several authors I know have found the book helpful. If you've read Bell's book, please share your response to it in the comments. And if you have any suggestions for coping with messy middles, do let us know!

Don't forget to check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup hosted by Karen Edmisten.

Remember to always Write with Joy!
Carmela