The End

I am a strict believer in writing through anything tough. Which is exactly what I do when I get to the dreaded middle.

When I first started writing, I would revise and revise and revise. I never finished anything because I was so busy revising things that I didn't like. And I didn't like everything.

And well, let's face it, not finishing anything is sort of problematic. But I was saved--by NaNoWriMo. I stumbled across a website forum of writers all taking about nanowrimo, and I had no idea what it was, but they all kept talking about it and asking each other if they were going to do, and I hate being left out, so I checked it out.

It taught me two very valuable lessons.

1. 200,000 words is not actually appropriate novel length. (I'm a little embarrassed to admit I'd written several very lengthy manuscripts--which were mostly character studies with no plot--and they were all over 200k words. I had no knowledge of word length until I got involved with NaNoWriMo.)


and


2. I needed to Just. Keep. Writing.

Word count is thankfully something I've made myself familiar with and kept in mind while writing in the future, but Nano challenged me to keep going, to forget how crappy the beginning was, or the deus ex machina plot disaster going on in the middle, or the flat characters and absent motivation. It taught me to push through all that, and get to The End.

Which was something I really needed to know how to do.

After I survived my first Nano and finished the first draft of a manuscript, I went through and read it. There was a lot to not like--there was a ton of stuff I threw out and rewrote, but I had a framework, and revising from there was so much easier for me.

So now, I'm working on a new project. It's a little different than things I've written before, and I've written some scenes that are way too rambly, dialogue that's way too stiff, and worldbuilding that borderlines the definition of info dump.

But if I stopped and revised now, I would get lost in the frustration of those scenes. I might even get stuck in a loop of rewriting the same scene time after time after time. (It's happened more times than I care to admit). Instead, I grab some kids--the sour patch kind--and I keep writing. I ignore the stuff that makes me want to groan, because when I finish and I reread the manuscript, there will be stuff I can keep too, scenes I love, even scenes that amaze me because they're good.

In my WIP, I'm almost 20k words in, and I know I'm going to rewrite a lot of the beginning so it flows more smoothly, but about 5k words ago, I hit a stride, and that makes all that grumbling through the beginning is worth it.

***

Liz Norris briefly taught high school English and history before trading the southern California beaches and sunshine for Manhattan's recent snowpocalyptic winter. She harbors dangerous addictions to guacamole, red velvet cupcakes, sushi, and Argo Tea, fortunately not all together. Her first novel, UNRAVELING (Balzer+Bray April 2012), is the story of one girl’s fight to save her family, her world, and the one boy she never saw coming.

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Four tricks for making your middle more interesting

Middles are TOUGH. Whether it be the middle of a book, or the middle of a series (dreaded Middle Book Syndrome!), it can be hard to keep the story momentum going, keep the surprises coming, and keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

The alternative is letting the reader wonder when something interesting is going to happen. *shudder*

I have a few tricks for keeping the middle interesting.

1. If it isn't interesting, skip it.

For real. Just chop it out. If you're bored by it, the reader will be to. Cut it. No one wants to read boring.

2. Blow up something.

It doesn't have to be a literal explosion (though it can be!), but external conflicts are filled with potential. Who did the exploding? Why? Was their goal accomplished? How does it affect the protagonist? What will the protagonist do about it? Basically, complicate things. No, REALLY complicate things.

3. Have someone change sides.

What if a bad guy becomes a good guy? (Can the good guys trust him/her?) What if a good guy becomes a bad guy? (Did s/he really change sides, or are they secretly a double agent?) Or-- It doesn't even have to be as literal as that. Take a character's (and therefore reader's) assumption and turn it over. NOW what happens?

4. Tell the reader a secret.

I think too often we try to keep the really good reveals for the end. And while, yes, some must be held for the last moment, think about what you're holding back. How would it change things if the character knew . . . earlier? What would they do? How would they react?

What about you? Any favorite tricks for dealing with the middle of the story?

--

Jodi Meadows is the author of INCARNATE, book one of the Newsoul Trilogy. (January 31, 2012 - HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books.)

She lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, a Kippy*, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut. You can find her on her website and blog.

*A Kippy is a cat.

Slogging Through the Middle

The scene has been set. The main characters introduced. There’s trouble in paradise, enough to build the intrigue. Enough to tell you something big is coming. Now, you just have to get there.

Writing the middle of a story can be tricky. There are four major elements I try to keep in mind during this section: tension, action, pacing, and relevance. The first three are fairly straightforward. Tension, to me, is putting the pressure on. Keeping your hero apprehensive rather than relaxed. Forcing her to act or react, and contemplate her decisions. The action increases here. Conflicts keep coming – some physical, some psychological. Moral dilemmas arise and mistakes are made, but your hero must keep pushing on, because if she slows down xyz will happen. The cops will catch her. She’ll be infected by zombieitis. Her best friend will be eaten by polar bears. The mounting pressure forces her to adapt and make changes, to shed her old skin in order to survive, so that when faced with the final showdown, she’ll be ready.

Now, just because I try to keep these things in mind doesn’t mean I always succeed. Hence my fourth element, relevance.

Typically when I start a story I have a pretty solid beginning, a few ideas for some cool scenes in the middle, and know how I want it to end. But once I get past the intro I find myself wandering. Adding too much background. Creating conflicts to challenge my characters that don’t necessarily add to the story. In the beginning these conflicts seem to fit the theme at least, but inevitably, somewhere along the line I’ll have the bright idea to take my hero down a totally different path. Maybe it’s a road trip off the grid. Maybe it’s the random introduction of vampires. Maybe I just blow a bunch of stuff up. It always makes sense at the time.

This is why ARTICLE 5 was over 500 pages when I first sent it to my agent. And even after three rounds of revisions with her, it’s why my editor later said, “We need to cut these 50 pages.” Fifty. Pages. I heard the term “tightening up” a lot during that time. Like I was putting ARTICLE 5 through boot camp. It turns out this is exactly what I was doing.

I hear a lot of writers struggle with the middle section because they get bored, or slow down. My problem is the opposite. I love the middle section. I love it too much. I write myself right down Tangent Road, and then end up pulling my hair out because I can’t find my way back to the end. This is why relevance is such an important concept for me to consider. I’ve recently started expanding my outlines, and this helps, but for those random sparks of “brilliance” that occur midstride I try to remember to ask myself one question: how does this scene relate to the story? If it takes more than a minute to respond, or if the answer involves something along the lines of “because it would be awesome,” it usually needs to be cut. It’s not a perfect system, but hey, I’m still learning.

Kristen Simmons is the author of ARTICLE 5, the first installment of a dystopian trilogy, which will be published by Tor Teen in February 2012. Learn more about her at her here, on goodreads, or on facebook.

Cream Filling

The pants'ers are going to argue with me on this (I spent a long time arguing with myself), but in order to make it through writing the dreaded middle of a book, I really feel you have to understand your beginning and end.

Let's pick this apart a little...what IS the middle? It's a whole lot of information and actions that you're not going to really care about--might not even make sense--without the beginning of the story. And if you take away the ending, none of the actions or information given are going to go anywhere either.

This is why most writers hate the middle. Because everything that takes place in the center of the story has to make that brilliant concept or idea hold up. THIS is where you sit down with your amazing hook about futuristic germ people falling in love despite their dystopian disinfectant environment and have to ask yourself...but what actually happens?

I'm feeling a little lazy, so let's think of the beginning and end of Twilight (JUST the first book) out of context:

Beginning: Human girl meets sexy/angsty/tortured boy.

End: Girl gets the freaking CRAP beaten out of her by a total psycho with a grudge.

Without knowing the middle--OH, he's a sparkly vampire who wants to love, but has trouble restraining eating human girl--it's difficult to really care about the tortured boy or whether the girl will die in the end (if you have a stone cold heart like me).

Vice versa, would you care about a girl who is in love with a vampire stalker for no apparent reason? (don't answer that question). The middle is just as disappointing on its own without the rest of the donut...and so Edward Cullen is basically cream filling (go wherever you want with that).

My point, if I haven't lost you completely by now: Even though the MIDDLE is the place where most of us tear our hair out, consume vast amounts of sugary foods, and ask ourselves why we ever thought this stupid idea could work in the first place... It's because the middle is where your concept transforms from IDEA into STORY. And if there's nothing of substance in there, all you'll have in the end is a disappointing donut.

Emily Hainsworth is the author of THROUGH TO YOU, (Fall 2012 Balzer+Bray / HarperCollins), a sci-fi novel about a seventeen-year-old boy grieving for his dead girlfriend until he discovers she's still alive in a parallel reality--one where he's the one who died. For more information, visit her website.