Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Shakespeare wrote, “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.” How true when it comes to writing. You might start your manuscript off with a bang and know that the conclusion is solid. But many a book has been undone by its sagging middle. Have you created a book that holds the reader on tenterhooks throughout? The middle of the book is treacherous territory because you have to create enough tension and interest to keep the reader engaged until the end.
The most obvious mistake that leads to a “hammock” middle is lackluster plotting. If your characters are just going through the paces of what was established at the beginning of the book, the middle droops. If the writer isn’t sure how to quicken the pace but is simply marking time (and word count) until the dramatic conclusion, the middle won’t be interesting.
But other, more subtle problems can cause the reader to wonder why he or she should keep reading.
Avoid changing the POV
An example of a novel that failed to keep good pacing, in my opinion, is Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. In the middle of the book, the author made a move that stopped the novel’s pacing dead in its tracks. The scene is a gala event that all of the novel’s main characters will attend. The tension is running high at this point, and the reader realizes that the characters’ actions have brought them to a pivotal point of major conflict. So I entered the middle of the novel with anticipation.
But the author chose–for this one scene in the book–to move into the omniscient point of view. As a reader, that effectively disengaged me from everything that happened in the scene. Suddenly I’ve been transported from seeing events from either the point of view of the black hired help or from the point of view of one white woman to, in effect, being plopped up on a balcony overlooking the room and watching each character fall apart in her own way. But I didn’t care! All the energy was drained from the scene by removing me from the interiors of the characters.
Avoid using a new writing device
Another novel that has, in my opinion, a flaw in the middle is The Madonnas of Leningrad. This story takes place in the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad during WWII. The museum is being guarded by those who worked at the Hermitage, to save it from destruction. The workers are starving to death, as is everyone in Leningrad.
The protagonist is on the roof of the museum, reporting any fires started from German bombs. Suddenly the novel moves into magical realism, which we haven’t seen in the first portion of the book, nor will we see anywhere else, and a statue of a Greek god comes to life, rapes the protagonist and leaves her pregnant–a virtual madonna of Leningrad.
As a reader, I was unprepared for this pivotal scene because it seemed to have been dropped into the midst of the book as if from some other novel. Now, if the author had used magical realism earlier, this scene would have made sense. But standing apart from the rest of the novel, while certainly shining a spotlight on this important scene, turned out to be disruptive to the book’s flow. (I thought the book was masterful on so many levels that this misstep was especially disappointing.)
Why did these two authors, who wrote such strong books, make what I consider mistakes? I think it’s because they were working too hard to make sure the middle of their novels didn’t sag.
Lessons learned
What can we learn from these sagging middles?
- Realize that you make promises to the reader in the first part of your book about what to expect throughout. Keep your promises.
- If you plan a significant scene in the middle of your book (which is a good way to keep it from sagging), plant the seed for that scene rather than abruptly changing course. Rather than propelling the reader forward, these abrupt shifts stop the reader because of the introduction of a new writing devise.
- Keep in mind the importance of creating an arc in your book, even with nonfiction; so the reader has a sense of increasing conflict as the book unfolds.
What techniques do you use to avoid your book sagging in the middle?
TWEETABLES
What causes a novel’s middle to sag? Click to tweet.
Unfortunate writing decisions. Click to tweet.
Bring in a guy with a gun.
My husband keeps suggesting this.
How about snakes?
Only if they’re poisonous or a large enough constrictor to eat a small woman or child. A knife is always good, even for stone-age historical.
9 Diamondbacks.
Muahahaha.
Pit vipers – a great choice! Maybe throw in a copperhead as well. That way you have the risk of a strike without even a rattle to warn your victim. I think they’re a much prettier snake, too.
Nine Diamondbacks?
A baseball team? 😉
Elissa? Hahahahaha!
Did I read something similar in Plot and Structure?
How timely your suggestion! I did this just this morning before checking my email. (Really.)
For real? Or in a book?
Just thought I’d check…
I joke with my friends about adding ninjas. Or explosions. Or exploding ninjas.
Interesting essay, Janet! Thank you for this.
* Tom Clancy, in his earlier books, was a master at avoiding the Sagging Middle. Even though there was a lot of exposition which didn’t have much action, he kept both pace and interest alive by using frequent POV shifts (his narratives were omniscient). The individual ‘scenes’ in the middle were short – usually 1-2000 words. Good examples are “Red Storm Rising”, “Code of Honour”, and “Rainbow Six”.
* Arthur C. Clarke addressed this very topic in “The Lost Worlds Of 2001”, in which he described the writing of “2001” in parallel with the development of the Kubrick film. It’s interesting to see how he went from something of an ensemble work to one in which he realized that only one protagonist, David Bowman, could and should carry the story (harking back to “Moby Dick”…’And I alone survived’…and the Odyssey).
* One memorable passage in “The Lost Worlds” is Clarke’s description of writing 5000 words, exploring the moons of Jupiter; he called the writing ‘dull work’, and it didn’t make the final cut. If it bored him, what would it do to a reader?
* I like to think of storytelling using the ‘white water analogy’. If your river trip is fully taken up with class IV, V, and VI rapids, you can’t catch your breath, and the trip isn’t memorable. It’s just a blur of spray and rock and “Whoa, we just lost that lawyer from Peoria!”
* You need flat water for a physical and emotional debrief after riding the maelstrom, but in its movement there should always be the current calling you to that next halo of mist, and the distant rumble of action ahead. Otherwise you’ll just have set-piece panic alternating with tubing down a South Texas river in an inner tube, a case of Bud balanced on your lap.
* Functionally, I write to where I can see the ending, and then write the ending. The middle becmoes a bridge, as direct as possible, to get there.By the time the ending’s apparent, the character development is already set, and when the end is written the story arc is set as well. Writing the middle becomes a clearly defined ‘bridge’ in which the necessary actions are fairly obvious, to get the characters and plot through the gap.
* And when that doesn’t work, one can always avoid a Sagging Middle with a good diet and a lot of sit-ups.
I really like the white-water rafting analogy, Andrew.
Boring the writer, boring the readers–that sums it up, Andrew. I’ve left many a book unfinished because my life was more interesting than the middle of the story.
*But what about “The Long Winter” and “A Painted House” and other books where boredom is part of the story? Endlessly twisting hay or picking cotton? Sometimes my own life is boring, but God’s got a plot line that should keep me engaged. No purposeless middle from the Author and Finisher of my faith.
Shirlee, “A Painted House” is my favorite John Grisham novel. I love the slow pace with tension inserted at just the right moment.
Andrew, it’s always good to hear from you.
This weekend my son showed me a new exercise to “strengthen my core.” I never thought about applying it to my story.
Take care!
Janet, I’d like to make an observation drawn from personal experience. Whenever I’ve become expert at something, I become aware of bothersome details that never would have bothered me if I didn’t “know better.” Who (besides me) reading this blog is bothered when explosions in space are accompanied by noise or when hand-held lasers generate intense enough light to instantaneously slice through a body? (There are lasers that might, but you’d need more than a good sized cart to transport the power supplies. My biggest laser had its own 440 V breaker box inside my lab and garden hoses to carry enough cooling water through the laser head to keep it from catastrophic overheating, and even it couldn’t burn through a body like that.)
*Before I was writing fiction and spending uncounted hours studying books on the craft (thanks, James Scott Bell!), I would never have recognized, let alone been bothered by, the shift from 3rd person limited to omniscient POV in “The Help.” I might even have liked it as an exciting switch-up that gave insight far beyond what comes through a single character’s eyes.
*I wonder if craft details that grate on our nerves and pull us out of a story because we are unconsciously dissecting a novel as we read have any effect of significance on the general reader.
*I spend endless hours trying to craft my novels to please the experts, but does that really add to the enjoyment of the normal reader?
Carol, when talking about my boredom with some novels last week, my brother noted that I don’t read like a reader again, but like a writer. Though I won’t beat my chest and say, ‘Yes, I’m a writer,’ yet, I grasped his intention. I notice redundancies in books now, words and phrases repeated often. I also compliment and sometimes get excited when I see distinct creative writing (like I did three days ago when reading GRACE by Max Lucado).
While most readers might not care about the aptness of the craft, they would be pulled out if it is shabby or drab…
Michael, do you enjoy reading less or more now you are a writer, too? I find it has sucked some of the pleasure out of simply reading.
Carol, don’t know what Michael will say, but for me, writing hasn’t diminished the enjoyment of reading. I can live with dichotomy.
Writing hasn’t affected the fun reading brings. Being a person who didn’t start reading early enough, I do as much as I can now to hopefully cover up. The only issue is that I get this form of internal editing when I read novels…
Janet, thanks for your post today. It’s definitely a keeper!
I’m reading a book right now, and the POV keeps shifting between five characters so far. I guess this will keep it interesting, but it’s almost too much.
A gun? My hero wants to teach the heroine how to use a gun to protect herself from the bad guy. Maybe I should play that up more.
Thanks for the tips!
Jackie, I love more complex stories where you spend time inside the heads of multiple characters. At a minimum there should be the hero, the heroine, and the principal antagonist that you get to know at the deep POV level. I wonder whether the mantra of “no more than 2 POVs” is leading many to simplify their plots more than I like as a reader. *
Personally, I don’t like 1st-person novels that much because they adhere rigidly to a one-headed POV and fail to convey so much of what is going on in the story world. I’ve read a 1st-person novel from a well-known author I love who usually writes in 3rd person. I finished it out of a sense of obligation, but it was a pale shadow of her more complex 3rd-person works.
*Andrew might have a better suggestion, but I’d let him teach her with a semiautomatic pistol. I’d have her keep forgetting she has to load the first cartridge herself before it will fire the first round. Then she can have a super tense moment when she forgets under pressure, giving the villain a chance to get too close.
So interesting. This is such an individual taste thing. I read Rick Riordan’s first Percy Jackson series in first person and then his Heroes of Olympus series that is in third person limited with 3-7 POV characters per novel. The second series was certainly more complex. But I enjoyed the first person series so much more, although I enjoyed the second. I think nothing brings a snotty teenage character to life quite like first person. So much fun! But then again, not everyone loves a snotty teen character.
Kristen, I don’t normally read YA, but I think I would probably find the 3-7 POV series much more to my taste since I enjoy complexity. I definitely agree that the narcissism of a teenager could be captured perfectly in a 1st person POV. We were junior high youth group leaders for several years (had a blast-it’s a fun age group), and my own kids are only in their early 20s. A 1st person POV definitely fits most of real high school kids I know.
Carol, I’m, of course, not advocating one type of POV over another. My point is that switching from one writerly POV decision for one time in a novel is a poor writing technique. It doesn’t mean a writer can’t make it work, but often there are more elegant solutions that work better for the reader.
I remember Joyce Carol Oates’s Dark Water in which she was in a drowning person’s head for every scene of the book except the last. And that scene was told from the POV of the man who let her drown. Major writing technique violation. But there’s no other way she could have written the book and managed that chilling conclusion.
Interesting post, Janet. I didn’t remember that scene in The Help. 🙂
*One of the things Susan May Warren teaches is to make sure you have obstacles that keep your character from getting to their goal. Each obstacle should be bigger and worse than the one before it. The characters grow and choose (good or bad) after getting through each obstacle. I suspect, when we craft these well, the tension is ramped up and the reader wants to know what’s going to happen next.
Obstacles are great, Jeanne.
I think, if we keep making the situation worse until the reader can’t imagine it being more dire, we’re probably in a very good spot for the plot resolution.
“omniscient point of view..effectively disengaged me from everything that happened in the scene.”
>>>I guess readers are different. I have never cared about “head hopping”, i.e. changing the point of view, either in different chapters or even in the middle of a scene. Whatever helps me understand what the characters are thinking and planning.
>>>Carol Ashby said about the same thing above. As a reader she didn’t notice shifts in POV, and even liked them. It was until writing experts told her it was a bad thing that she thought about it. My conclusion: It’s not readers who don’t like “head hopping”; it’s writing experts who don’t like it.
Readers can easily get lost in reading a scene with head-hopping. I also think that it keeps the writer from creating as much depth in character development. A reader might not be able to analyze why a scene or a book isn’t particularly enjoyable to read, but it might be because of head hopping.
One thing I’ve done (to good or bad effect I don’t know) is work backstory into the middle of the novel—all the stuff the experts tell you not to put up front. Not long scenes, not even whole scenes. Perhaps 500 words here and there that will clue the reader in on what motivates the characters to act as they do, based on something that happened in their past. David Morrell did this with outstanding success in The Totem (his 1994 republishing of this; I haven’t read the 1979 original). Part of each chapter in the middle is backstory, and it helps to understand the characters. You also get a breather from intense action, which as a reader I like exceedingly.
I can see how tucking bits of the backstory could work well for the middle of a novel. As long as those segments aren’t lengthy. They can, as you say, be nice breathers.
I’ve read books where this was effective. I can’t think of the title of the book now, but I read a period novel set in the 1920s where the author referenced events in the protagonist’s past that she didn’t detail until later in the book. It made the middle the shining gem of the book, following a brilliant beginning but leading, rather unfortunately, to a very flat and lackluster ending.
Great food for thought, Janet. I suppose a sagging middle would be like tempting dinner guests with the promise of great appitizers and desert, but offering a disappointing meal they can’t wait to be done with.
And many won’t remain for dessert.
I can’t say I’ve mastered any of this, but I try to keep something dangling for the reader … something waiting to happen, something the MC is striving for, etc. And your post is so encouraging. If these best selling authors can’t get it right …. I suppose it’s a struggle all writers face trying to get it right. 🙂
I thought the same thing, Shelli. It’s encouraging to know there’s hope for all of us who keeping plugging along and strive to do better.
Great perspective, Shelli. All writers struggle with this. 🙂
I think I’ve gotten the “ahhhh, *now* they can relax for a minute…uh oh…maybe not!” thing down.
But it took lots of study and observation on how to pace the reader’s chance to catch a breath after an overtly emotional few chapters, and when to nail her/him with a whopper.
I quite enjoy the emails from beta’reader who type in all caps…WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??
I’m >>certainly not<< saying "come sit at my knees, younglings" but it's been fun to figure out how to tighten the middle without adding something that doesn't flow at all, is totally outside my voice, and is a pointless exercise in making the reader hang on when giving up is a real option.
Laura Frantz's Courting Morrow Little is my text book on how to continually ratchet up the tension for the reader, in a book with only one POV, to the point where the reader has to remember to breathe.
Reading CML is like building a rickety house of cards on a windy day with a storm on the horizon. And then just when you think you can breathe? Someone opens the window.
Love your analogies, Jennifer. And Laura is a master at maintaining tension.
Janet, this is great. Thanks for the insights. I just recently took a workshop with Erica Vestch on plot boarding. As a pantster, plotting sometimes feels restrictive but I’d heard using a plot board the way Erica does can help not feel so committed. (All you’ve got to do is rip off the sticky note that’s bugging you and ditch it!).
I digress…
Someone in the workshop asked Erica if this could be used *after* a novel is written but in editing stages. Erica suggested plotting your novel as is and look for holes. How many chapters are between the “explosions” of action and conflict? It helps see pacing and areas for improvement. This method has already helped me identify a few places my middle needed some help.
Teresa, thanks for sharing that technique. I can see how it would help not only to create the plot but also to find a plot’s holes.
I add obstacles, setbacks – those things I don’t want in my everyday life but need in my stories. From your post today I took away two reminders: plant seeds and keep promises made. In fact, each of these is related because there is a promise of life/action in a seed. Thanks for an informative post.
You’re welcome.
I think in heeding the advice embedded in ‘The Element of Style’ which says, “put yourself in the background,” a lot of saggy middles can be avoided. No one enjoys a day of just eating and sleeping and watching TV without something to pursue. At least I don’t. And Martin (my hero) should’t either.
I’m learning that a strong outline can really help the story stay strong through the middle. Having thought through the potential pitfalls helps me stay focused on my story arc and keep things moving.
I think knowing what’s up ahead for your characters would help to keep the novelist engaged too.