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Sagging Middles
by Dr. Vicki Hinze
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What exactly is a sagging middle?
When you start writing a story, you begin in this fireball burst of enthusiasm. You usually know the beginning and end. It's how to get from beginning to end that stumps you— what actually happens. That's the middle. And if you're not careful, it'll sag under the weight of the story.
Sag?
Along about the end of Chapter Three, that fireball fizzles to a flame, and it hits the writer that now comes the work. The initial enthusiasm dies out and, when it does, unless the writer gets fired up, s/he fails to sustain the conflicts or to move the story forward to its logical conclusion. Now, no writer wants that. It's hard to write an uninspired middle that lacks direction and purpose, and it's even harder to read one. So how do we writers avoid it?
It helps us to think of the book as a bridge. The on-ramp to it is the story's beginning. That's where the main characters, their goals, motivations, and conflicts are introduced. The middle of the story is the bridge itself. Your job as a writer is to get the people on the bridge and keep them there until the end of the story—the off-ramp.
Now, picture this bridge as one of those rope and slat jobs that crosses an expanse in the jungle. Below the bridge is a raging river.
In the middle of the book, if you fail to:
You're putting too much weight on each rope. What happens to overstressed ropes?
Like over stressed people, the ropes start to snap and unravel.
You can't keep everyone on the bridge or get them successfully off the bridge with snapping, unraveling ropes. Your bridge's middle sags, and you dump everyone in the river.
Often the middle of a novel sags because the writer has not created sufficient conflict to sustain the story.
Remember, conflict is the story=s spine. It creates motivation in the characters not only to act, but to act now.
Conflict creates immediacy, evokes strong emotions—and it often offers new perspectives that deepen the existing conflict or create a new conflict.
An example. In TRUE LIES, a husband believes his wife is having an affair. She doesn't know he's a spy. So he's living a secret life. But that alone isn't enough to sustain a lengthy conflict.
In a set-up to expose his wife's infidelity, the husband anonymously hears his legal assistant wife say just once, she wants to take a risk, to accomplish something out of the ordinary. Something not boring.
Knowing his wife is less than satisfied with her life, the husband sets out to give her the thrill of an adventure. That deepens the conflict.
And when enemies of the spy attack the husband and wife, that conflict twists and deepens further. The adventure turns real—and the costs of failure are higher.
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