The perils of writing the middle

Aka the Bermuda Triangle of novel sections

Hello and happy Friday! A few notes before we dive into today’s newsletter.

Episode 4 of Writing in the Dark is out! In this episode, Ralph (my co-pilot to Jupiter) and I talk about how we got started writing. This is the first part of a 3-part episode that dives deep into the evolution of our writing identities. Hope you’ll give it a listen.

Registration is open for Live Storytelling (July 1) and Memoir (July 15) at the Carrboro ArtsCenter this summer. Beat the heat, tell your story.

Friend, I hope to see your face soon. Till then, keep writing.

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I like to joke that the hardest section of a novel to write is the one you’re currently working on. But hands down where I see folks get lost the most is the middle. And I’m there now, trying to doggy paddle my way across the vast sea of Act II without drowning.

In Act II, according to traditional structure, we see our protagonist in their “new world.” This could be literal, where a character is exiled or travels to a new place and must figure out how to survive in this new terrain. Mostly though it’s metaphorical: the ground has shifted because of the inciting incident in Act I and its aftermath and now the protagonist must navigate this new reality, using the skills and attitudes deeply ingrained in them, which are going to fail them at some point, usually late in Act II.

What’s tricky about Act II is the story still needs tension and conflict. In the craft book Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, some of Act II is referred to as Fun and Games. This doesn’t mean that your characters are just hanging around and playing, but the pace of Act II is often slower, with multiple scenes showing a character adapting to the new world, learning a new skill, maybe trying out a new identity. Very often there are new characters introduced. In some of those scenes there’s actually pleasure and lightness—a new skill mastered and executed successfully, a new friend along for the ride—which can be a sweet relief from the pressure of whatever Act I contained.

The hardest part of writing the middle, I think, is holding onto tension when the story slows down. In workshop and in my own work, I see a lot of boring, shaggy middles, where things are happening but they aren’t charged. Another middle mistake I see is the ping pong match, where the story goes back and forth about whether something will or won’t happen. There’s only so long a reader can hold the will they or won’t they question before they lose interest.

In the middle, the tension ought to escalate—the story should become more complicated, with higher stakes. So how do we get there?

One part of my strategy for the middle is to employ Ralph Walker’s mantra, Make it Worse. Usually in Act II the protagonist does acquire a new skill and/or successfully adapt in some way. To introduce tension again, we can shift the story so that new skill is no longer sufficient to meet the challenge ahead, putting them back in the underdog role. And since we’ve already been rooting for them, we’re going to feel that frustration deeply and root for them harder. The more our protagonist struggles, the more we will want to see them triumph.

Another useful way to approach the middle is through the lens of external forces. In Act I, we often see a lot of reaction to the inciting incident (as we should). In Act II, we can use simple external circumstances that are out of the characters’ control to create pressure and tension. This is where the car breaks down, the kid gets sick, the pipe bursts, it starts pouring. This stuff happens All The Time in our day to day life, messing things up constantly. But we don’t always remember to put it in our books.

Which brings me to this uncomfortable reality: At some point, you’re going to have to let your characters, the imaginary friends you created from your heart and soul, suffer. You’re going to have let bad shit happen to them. A lot.

If you spare your characters, you’re doing your novel and your readers a serious disservice. If there’s no suffering, at some point your readers will set your book down and go find another narrative full of heartbreak and disaster. I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but it’s true: the story starts when something goes wrong. The story continues because more stuff goes wrong. And the reader hangs in till the end because we read to learn about the world, about ourselves, to feel the comfort of knowing someone else has endured and survived.

I want to be clear that writing middles can take a lot of time and a lot of false starts. I go down a lot of roads before I find one that feels solid, a lot more than in the beginning or end of a book, which I usually have a clearer picture of when I begin. I add thunderstorms, empty wallets, missed appointments, phones without charge. And I look for the characters who thus far have been extras, hanging around at the periphery without their own backstory and desires, to see if there’s something more there that affects my main characters.

I also want to pause for a minute and challenge everything I’ve just said, starting with this conflict- and tension-based approach to Act II. This follows from very traditional models (as outlined in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, The 90 Day Novel, or many other craft books). But there’s no reason we have to follow the model (which is very ethnocentric and flawed in other ways—see Matthew Salesses and Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode for more on that). If a narrative has a great voice, a reader may be very content to listen to that voice say whatever it wants. I can’t say I love a slower novel, but I certainly get it, and we are seeing a lot of unconventional structures these days. If the above turns you off, write deep into character. Tell us Everything and see how that feels on the page.

Whichever way you go, it’s critical to remember the mental game. Even harder than sussing out the middle is keeping the faith in that murky storm. While we wander around the middle, it’s easy for our inner critic to say See, I told you so. You are lost and confused and you’re never going to figure out this book. This is when I gently respond that yeah, things are a little muddy right now, but that’s what the creative process is all about. Be patient. We’ll get there.

Keep writing, friends.