Where do middling middles come from? I struggle with it myself, I know how I want to begin and end the story, but the middle somehow doesnât seem ârightâ, and I feel like a lot of movies seem to struggle with meandering second acts as well. Where do you think that comes from?
Sorry my answer on this was delayedâthis ask came during my grading period and then finals at the end of our semester. T_T
Anyway, middlesâŚ
To be honest, the core of the problem is probably thinking of the âmiddleâ as a specific section of your story in the first place. We all know the montage: beginning, middle, end. But the truth is that while a story always requires a finite beginning and endingâit has to start somewhere and end eventuallyâwhat we think of as âthe middleâ is actually a vague, umbrella term encompassing everything from the moment your main plot starts rolling to the moment the story reaches its climax.
Rest under a read more:
Basically, this is the traditional plot diagram most of us learn in schools:
The problem with this is that it tends to create confusion about where the climax of a story is supposed to occurâlooking at this, you might be tempted to think that the âmiddleâ of the story should be an action-packed, important moment that really stuns the readers.
The truth of the matter is that the plots of most stories look a lot more like this:
The climax comes significantly later, typically only a chapter or two before the end of the book, and the âgeographicalâ middle (i.e. page 100 of 200 total), instead falls somewhere in the area traditionally called the ârising action.â
So where do boring, poorly-paced middles come from? Why do people struggle to figure out what to put in their storyâs âmiddleâ?
Off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons people struggle with middles:
1. Misunderstanding what ârising actionâ means and how it should be constructed.
If I ask my students to define ârising action,â the answer I usually get is âA series of events that leads up to the storyâs climax.â From a technical standpoint, this answer is correctâwe have to get from the beginning to the storyâs climax somehow, right?
But from a practical stand point, thinking of rising action as nothing more than âthe events leading up to my storyâs biggest momentâ inevitably results in a stale, linear, and inorganic middle. If every action and moment from the beginning of the story to the climax all contributes to the same plot, the result is typically a robotic, uninteresting series of events where characters feel less like theyâre acting for themselves, and more like theyâre toy soldiers marching to the authorâs ordersâtheyâre being forced to jump through a predetermined set of hurdles to get to someone elseâs goal, rather than being allowed to naturally change, develop, and exist outside of the storyâs main conflict.
All too often, the writing thought process is: âI know where my story startsâPoint A. And I know where I want it to endâPoint B. Now I just need to get my characters from Point A to Point B!â And thatâs⌠it. The sum total of thought put into the middle: just get from Point A to Point B.
But thatâs not how human beingsâand characters written by human beingsâwork. Weâre not linear; weâre messy. We donât take the right path every time. We backtrack. We get distracted. Weâre often juggling more than one problem at once. We avoid conflict like the plague.
Reducing the middle of your story to a vehicle for getting characters from Point A to Point B denies themâand your readersâcrucial opportunities for humanization, crucial opportunities to add depth and meaning to their plot, and in general limits realism and makes characters feel one-dimensional. If youâve ever sat through a middle where you just didnât emotionally engage with the characters at all, itâs probably because that middle was more focused on getting characters to the big climax than on allowing them to be ârealâ people or live for a second outside of the storyâs single main conflict.
Okay, all well and good for me to say this, but how do you fix it?
Rethink your rising action. Even in the most basic and brief of plots (i.e. vignettes or short stories), rising action is never a single straight line from Point A to Point B. If you want your middle to feel realistic and engaging, let it reflect the behaviors and thought processes that real humans experience:
Mad MS Paint skills.
If you want your middle to be more than a stale Point A -> Point B, then fill it things that make your characters human: small, unexpected challenges. Chances to overcome lower-stakes conflict to learn new skills and enforce character growth. Fill in details of their life with flashbacks and side moments that help us readers better visualize and empathize with them. Let them make mistakes. Let them struggle to find the right way forward. Let them think about things other than the main plot absolutely 24/7.
It is true that events needs to ramp up as the story progressâthe conflict needs to get more and more personal, more and more âthreateningâ or at least important to the main character (and therefore the readers)âbut instead of throwing all your chips down on one massive climax, build in some smaller scale conflict moments throughout the âmiddle,â some tiny climaxes along the way, each one helping your character learn something new about themself, others, the world around them, yes, even the main plotâŚ
Except when writing the shortest of short stories, just like real life, your plot should (usually) never present just ONE challenge to its protagonist. Every major event in our human lives is a complex, interconnected network of prior experiences and growth, trial and error, emotional baggage and interplay between people. Thatâs what good middles are full of. If youâre struggling to figure out what to put in your storyâs middle, itâs probably because youâre so fixated on âPoint A -> Point Bâ that you havenât given enough thought to the complex journey in between. Donât let your set-in-stone plans for the storyâs âendâ distract and limit you or your characters!
This is already really long, but I did say there were two possible problems with middles, so:
2. The climax happens prematurely. Donât look at me, I didnât pick the term.
Oftentimes a story seems to wander and lose focus before reaching its big climax, because of rising action that lacks depth and pizzazz. But the opposite problem can also occur: itâs possible for the rising action to be way too short, resulting in a climax that comes too earlyâcloser to the geographical middle of the bookâleaving a ton of space for falling action⌠But the author had nothing good to put there.
If youâve ever seen a movie or read a book where there was an awesome, moving, incredible scene in the middle, and then it just seems to drag on and on before finally petering out with a whimper instead of bang, whatâs going on is that the author jumped to the climax too early, with nothing solid or meaningful to fill in the gaps afterward. As a result, there are a bunch of included âhereâs what happened after everyone went homeâ scenes, often with very little emotional pay-out, leaving readers wondering why the story is still⌠going⌠on⌠(And itâs usually still going on because the author had some epilogue idea in mind and realized they had to fill the gaps between the climax and the epilogue, see Problem #1 again.)
While it is possible to write stories where the main explosion of the conflict occurs in the dead-middle of the book/story (hell, you can even write stories where the major climax occurs FIRST), doing this requires you to shift the goalpostsâitâs no longer a âcharacter grows and, in time, overcomes main conflict and gets a happy ending;â instead, itâs âthese characters experienced an intense conflict⌠now hereâs how they handle and cope with what comes after.â When the climax happens earlier than âthe end,â the focus of the story has to shift to really examining the aftermath, the implications and effects of the climax. Unless this shift occurs and the story becomes one of hurting, healing, and reflection after a massive conflict/upheaval, then we end up with a meandering second act that never packs the punch readers really want as the story winds down.
So like⌠donât do this unless you really know what youâre doing, I guess? (Or youâre willing to fail until you figure it out, that works tooâŚ)
tl;dr: My tips for writing a good middle are:
1. Plan out several smaller scale moments of conflict, several âminiâ climaxes/challenges for your main character to overcome as the story progresses. These smaller scale climaxes are excellent moments for your characters to learn new skills, gain more knowledge, or grow as people, which will then help build up to the major climax. Use these smaller scale âhigh pointsâ to keep the middle feeling action-packed while also preventing the story from feeling like the characters are just robots marching from Point A to Point B.
2. When trying to plan out mini conflicts, think about A) what skills, traits, knowledge, etc. your character NEEDS to learn/develop in order to ultimately overcome the main conflict. What are some realistic and interesting ways for your character to gain these skills/knowledge/emotional growth, etc.? and B) In what ways can you involve other characters in this? These miniature moments of challenge and struggle are EXCELLENT places for clashes and connections between characters to grow and deepen.
3. Remember that characters are generally written by humans and should act like humans (seriously, even fantasy characters need to have a bit of humanization to them, or your readers wonât be able to care about their stories), so unless you REALLY have no spare space in your story, plan for mistakes, backtracking, misunderstandings, distractions, flashbacks, side plots, etc. Let your characters live and breathe in the middleâdonât mindlessly force them on a linear path towards your goal for them. LET THEM LIVE, GOD.
4. Unless you intentionally are writing a story about aftermath, recovery, or how people handle a traumatic experience, save the major climax for near the end of the story. Donât put the moment of highest emotion and struggle and meaning in the dead middle of your book and leave yourself with five more chapters to fill and nothing but epilogue content to fill them with. Donât be fooled by the pyramidâthe climax in most stories comes in the last few chapters!
Phew, I think that about covers it. Hopefully this is what you were looking for.
