Go on until … (Middles)

Every story that’s complete has a beginning, a middle, and an end. They may not be written or presented in that order; one or more elements may be implied rather than stated, or left out entirely; but the story has them.

Middles are the hard part for a huge number of writers. There are a variety of reasons for this, ranging from the writer’s tendency to get distracted by shiny new characters/background/plot to the difficulty of developing and portraying a plausible way of getting the hero from farm hand to dragon-slayer in the three weeks that the story is supposed to cover to the writer’s impatience with making up and slogging through the things that have to be covered before the writer can do the boffo ending. Nevertheless, very few stories can just leave out the middle. Detective stories aren’t satisfying if they go straight from “Captain, the butler has been murdered.” to “The detective arrests the murderer.” Cinderella doesn’t work if the invitation to the ball arrives and the next scene is the prince checking to see that some glass shoe fits and then proposing. Lord of the Rings isn’t particularly interesting (or understandable) if it starts with Gandalf telling Frodo that the One Ring has to be destroyed, and the next scene is Gollum grabbing the ring and falling into the Cracks of Doom.

If the important thing about beginnings is that something disrupts the character’s life, the important thing about middles is a sense of movement. The character is getting somewhere. Neither the protagonist nor the character may know exactly where (though most non-pantser writers find it a lot easier to write the middle if they have at least a general idea of where the story is going). “Getting somewhere” may mean that the protagonist is moving closer to his/her goal, or to the solution of the story problem (whether they realize it or not), or it may mean the protagonist is moving farther away from their desired outcome (again, with or without recognizing that that’s what they’re doing).

“Getting somewhere” also does not imply steady movement in one direction. Even if the protagonist is trying to find out who the murderer is, get to the ball, or drop a ring in a volcano, there are ups and downs. Setbacks can come from other characters, unintentionally (as in lying about where they were at the time of the murder, in order to hide their affair), or intentionally (as in destroying Cinderella’s dress to keep her from attending the ball). They can come from nature (the blizzard that forces the Fellowship to backtrack and head through Moria). Setbacks can also be the unintended consequences of the protagonist’s actions—the chickens coming home to roost (which can add a layer of “Protagonist Learns Lesson” to other plot-patterns, even when the main story focus is on getting the romantic partner or destroying the One Ring).

Unexpected assistance can come similarly, from other characters (intentionally or not), from landscape or weather that helps the protagonist, from unexpected helpful twists that result from thing the protagonist did a while back. Or the “ups” can result simply from the protagonist’s grim determination to continue in spite of all the obstacles they’re facing.

From a writer’s perspective, “getting somewhere” usually means “getting through the miserable middle so I can write the good part.”  This means that the writer’s experience of the middle often mirrors the protagonists—there are days when lots of words get produced and everything seems to be moving forward, days when the writer is totally stuck (even though they think they know what should come next), and days when the writer has to rework or dump paragraphs, scenes, or whole chapters because things have gone badly off-track.

As with the protagonist, the solution for most writers, most of the time, is to slog steadily onward with grim determination. The catch is that “slogging onward” sometimes means backtracking through the Mines of Moria rather than trying to continue on through the steadily worsening blizzard. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to pause and think—about where the story was going, whether it’s still heading in that direction, and whether one needs a new and different path to the story’s original destination, or whether the story’s new direction will lead to a more satisfying conclusion than the one the writer originally intended.

Ultimately, the important thing is to keep moving. If you sit around in the blizzard thinking for too long, you (and your story) will freeze to death. Backtracking to a safe pausing-place is still moving. A safe place to pause, for the writer, is one where one has options to consider. The pass is full of snow, but the Mines of Moria are still a possibility—dangerous, but so is this whole journey. An alternative is to consider which of the characters’ options would be the most fun to write, or which would provide the greatest opportunity for the writer to throw in an unexpected cave troll or Balrog. This is where the advice to “have ninjas jump through the window” turns up—it’s not really about the ninjas, it’s about what the writer can do to make the story fun and interesting to write again. Because generally, in my experience, if the writer has fun writing it, the readers will have fun reading it.