How to Fix a Saggy Middle | Novel Writing Advice

hey guys it's Ellen Brock novel editor today I'm going to talk about writing the middle of your novel a lot of writers struggle with the middle of the novel they don't know what you go there or they start writing it and it's kind of boring the story seems to me and ER or maybe they feel like they're just introducing random obstacles and conflicts just to make the story take longer so why does this happen why is the middle so hard to write usually the issue is a lot more complicated than just the middle of slow or the writers needs to brainstorm new ideas to fill up the middle of the book usually this is a problem with how the writer is conceiving plot structure to begin with I blame at least in part some of the education we have about story writing a lot of the time in school we're told set up the goal then put some obstacles in the way of echo and then have the character either achieve or fail to achieve the goal and that might work great in fifth grade English class but when you're looking at a novel usually not all the time but usually that's too simple it's too basic and the story is going to be a lot more complicated than that if you set up the story goal at the beginning of the novel so the character knows what they're trying to achieve basically what the climax is going to entail at least in part so they know who they're going to fight or they know what they're trying to obtain if they know the basic goal at the beginning of the story and you put them on the right path at the beginning of the story so they know the goal and they're heading appropriately towards that goal you're going to have a really hard time sustaining an entire novel length work so there are a couple of ways you can address this problem you can give your character a different goal at the beginning of the story one that is not the primary goal of the novel or you can put the character on the wrong path so they know the goal but they're not heading in the right direction towards that goal most characters do not know the story goal at the beginning of the novel they have a goal at the beginning of the story but it's not the goal it's not the main goal of the novel for example Harry Potter doesn't know that he's going to fight Voldemort at the beginning of the story if he knew that at the beginning of the story it would have become a very different novel because instead of casually getting his supplies and getting on the train and making friends and playing Quidditch he would have been directly training and preparing for his fight with Voldemort all of that potential for the fun set up an introduction into the world would have been vastly different another example is Fight Club at the beginning of Fight Club the narrator is not intending to create a Fight Club or Project Mayhem he's just trying to cure his insomnia so he have a goal to cure his insomnia but it's not legal if he has vehicle to create the Fight Club to create Project Mayhem it would have been a very different story and it would have progressed a lot faster so you can get the sense of why if you were to introduce the main goal straightaway how that would contract the story if harry knew that he needed to fight Baltimore most of the setup wouldn't really make sense or would have been a lot faster paced and would have had a different focus there are stories where the main goal is set up at the beginning of the story this is fairly common in mysteries or thrillers where the protagonist will start investigating the murderer or the crime pretty early on so they know what they're trying to achieve basically from the beginning and stories where the main goal is set up at the beginning typically what happens is the character is on the wrong path so the character is either following the wrong suspect or following incorrect clues or maybe something happens so that they were following the right Clues but some event causes them to need to take a new tactic so there's stepping-stone goals the goals that are going to lead to the big main story goal change at several points in the novel to create twists in turns and to make the story more exciting so rather than just having a direct straight line from knowing what the goal is to logical steps to get towards that goal they character might head in one direction and find out that they're completely wrong and have to turn back and completely rethink their entire plan and that can serve the same function of creating a more complicated story what doesn't work is putting your character on the right path with the right goal there should be something that your character is doing wrong or some event that causes the previously correct path to become the wrong path if your character is on right path and they know the correct goal from the beginning you're really left with nothing other than delays just to slow them down to stretch out the story you're also going to run into a lack of twisting terms and interesting dynamics plot points because basically the whole story is laid out in front of the reader the reader knows what the goal is the character is moving towards that goal all the reader needs to do is basically just wait until the character gets there that's not very exciting it doesn't really pull the reader into the story and that's when you can end up with a very tedious boring dragging sort of middle so to summarize if you don't know what you happen in the middle of your novel or you've written the middle and it seems kind of boring or meandering chances are the story is just too simple and you need to add more complexity either your character should have a different goal at the beginning of the novel they should be on the wrong path to be any of the novel or they should be on the right path but the right path becomes the wrong path because of some sort of plot event this will add a lot more complexity to your story it will make it more exciting and dynamic and it will help you to create more plot points so that you're not stuck with so much empty space in the middle of your novel so much space that you have to figure out something to fill up it just makes the whole writing process a lot easier and it makes the story a lot stronger I really hope this video helped you to strengthen the middle of your novels tomorrow I'll be making another video about writing the middle of your novel so if you're still struggling come back and check that out this video was part of my novel boot camp series I'll be back with more videos the rest of this week as well as three videos next week I'll also be hosting a query critique on my blog if you want to check that out the link is in the description happy writing guys do they want to see you come here come on help say hi hi hi it's me Toby hey

Channel: Ellen Brock

Views: 29,105

Rating: 4.9782491 out of 5

Keywords: novel, writing, middle, sag, boring, dull, slow, saggy, structure, story, fiction, writer, how to, creative writing, editor, characters, plot, ellen brock, novel boot camp

Id: 4hp_7e3E7CY

Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2017