Three Parts to Every Story: Middles
Following on from her article on Beginnings, Icy Sedgwick helps us to continue our stories and retain our readers’ interest.
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So you’ve gotten over the first hurdle, and actually started your story. You’ve got your first few scenes down, and things are going well. You may have a vague idea of the ending, you may know exactly what will happen, or you might be making the whole thing up as you go along. No matter what your method, what should you do to make sure you actually get to the ending? What can you do to ensure the middle keeps people reading?
Resist the Flashback
If you’re writing a very long story, or a novel, the temptation is there to use a lot of back story to explain the events of the story, or the motivations of the character. It’s understandable that what a person has been through in their past will inform their future but try to make sure that you don’t dump swathes of back story into the narrative, either in the form of flashbacks or just simple exposition. Every time you take the reader out of the present, it slows down the story, so try to pepper your back story throughout the narrative so the pacing doesn’t get bogged down. Readers really don’t need everything spelled out – they’ll be able to piece back story together themselves from a few carefully-placed fragments.
Who is Doing What?
The more characters and sub-plots you have, the easier it becomes to forget who is doing what, why or when. The moment thathappens, it’s easy to either write yourself down a blind alley, or leave too many loose ends throughout the narrative. You can certainly catch these during editing but it’ll make the whole process smoother, and keep the narrative tighter, if you keep track of your sub-plots and characters to make sure they’re all doing their job. Using a program like Scrivener or yWriter can really help with this.
Write With a Purpose
Even if you’re not entirely sure how things will end, try to write each scene towards something. If you simply keep writing in the hope that a story will emerge, the meandering plot will slow down the pacing and a reader will stop reading. If you have an outline then make sure you stick to it. Whenever you lose sight of your purpose, it will be too obvious to a reader that you didn’t know what you were doing.
Cut, Cut, Cut!
If you feel that you’re not making much headway, resist the urge to pad out the narrative until you get to the parts that you want to write. If the scenes are really that boring or awkward to write, then perhaps they’re unnecessary. Cut them out! If the narrative reads smoothly without them, then the reader will never notice their absence. If cutting them completely seems anathema, then highlight them, or cut them and save them in a separate file. You can always rewrite and insert them later.
Avoid “Middle Child” Syndrome
Beginnings are exciting because everything is new, and everything is building up. Endings are also exciting because everything is coming together for a grand finale. Middles, by contrast, can seem dull and lacklustre. Avoid thinking of them as the means to an end – the middle is where the plot gets interesting, where the real action happens. Without the middle, there is no story! So get stuck in, get your hands dirty, and really get to grips with the meat of your story.
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What about you? What other tips do you have for ensuring you keep writing throughout the middle stage? In two weeks time, Icy will be back with the final article in this series; how to finish your story in style!
Image courtesy of Oskar Widerberg and Literature & Latte.
Icy is a die-hard Northerner in old London town. She can still remember the days when she wrote her first stories in crayon. These days she favours a laptop, and cranks out weekly flash fictions, web-based serials and even the odd novel, usually about telepathic parrots, superheroes, Cavalier ghosts, and her own peculiar brand of steampunk.
Yet another great article Icy. Presently, middles are the most challenging aspect of my writing, and I have lots of unfinished stories to prove it, unfortunately. I’m one who gets stuck in that trap of too much backstory and when I realize I’m doing that I’m bad to throw my hands up and say, “oh well, maybe I’ll finish it later.” However, now that I’m outlining I’ve found the challenge of middles much, much easier to tackle. I used to be a seat-of-the-pants writer and am living proof that simply does not work. We have to know where we’re going if we ever expect to get there. I look forward to hearing everyone’s tricks for writing the middle.
My biggest problem is character development…I feel like I’m really rather useless at it! It’s difficult to sustain it, and of course “The Middle” is when it should be happening!
This is a very good article Icy. I’m like Deanna. It’s the middles that get me bogged down. I too have started outlinging for my longer stories. Still, even with outlining, I tend to get hung-up in the middle. I’m beginning to think I should write the beginning, the end, and then go to the middle.
I sometimes start with my ending and outline backwards, but the middle is definitely the point where problems can crop up.