Write to Life: Saga of the Saggy
Well, first off, I need to apologize for going MIA the past couple of weeks. Usually I do my blogs a month ahead of schedule, but the last two months have been unreal as far as deadlines, gigs, and family obligations. Not only was there no chance to blog ahead of time, I literally couldn’t seem to wrangle a spare fifteen minutes to post when my day rolled around (which it kept doing with shocking frequency).
But I’m back with this month’s post on writing. One of our regular readers, Traci Kishbaugh wrote: Also, here’s a subject I’d love to see covered…A strong opening, a strong ending, but the middle of the story is mush. Anyone else have this problem? And if so what do you do about it?” I’m always interested in a writer’s opinion on this because this is my biggest problem. I can write and write until my brain literally stops. I always have a very strong opening and ending, but my middle is always mush.
Ah yes. The saga of the saggy middle. It’s a common problem for beginning writers, so don’t feel alone. Basically it comes down to plot and pacing. And let me start by reassuring you that having a terrific beginning and a dynamite ending is excellent! You’re already ahead of the game.
All right, let’s talk about tightening up that flabby middle. The easiest way to do it is an outline. Now, before you start making those I-hate-to-outline noises, let me reassure you that an outline need not be some big formal paper with bullet points and Roman numerals and headings and subheadings. Basically an outline is a kind of checklist. It consists of all the important scenes of your story — the scenes you know for sure you want to write in the order you want to write them. That sounds pretty simple, right?
It is pretty simple.
By listing out all the important scenes that you envision — and then putting them in a rough order — you make sure that your story has enough of the highs and lows, the crests and lulls of good storytelling. That’s called Pacing. It’s very important to how your story reads.
A story that is all rush, rush, rush is just as boring in its way as a story that is too much reflection and discussion. What you want is a balance of action scenes and scenes of reflection but — and this is very important — something interesting must be happening at all times.
An outline allows you to see at a glance if you’ve got too many scenes of your heroine sitting around thinking and not enough of her out there sleuthing. It allows you to see if all the romantic subplot is bunched into the final third of the book or if it’s taking you too long to get to the first murder. (Rule of thumb is try and kill someone by page 50 — you think I’m kidding, don’t you?)
An outline also gives you an opportunity to see if you’ve got enough going on in your story — if you’ve really got a story (and I think next month we’ll talk a bit about Plot) or whether you simply haven’t figured out enough scenes, enough interesting events, enough action — in short, an outline tells you right away if you’ve got enough Plot.
Now one reason why so many writers dread outlining is because it means sitting down and thinking your story through — all the way through from beginning to end — and that’s hard work. It’s much more fun just to start writing and see where it takes you. But very often where it takes you is off the road and into the woods — and then you spend hours wandering around in circles trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
Take it from me, the easiest way to avoid that saggy middle is to outline. Questions, comments? Bring ‘em on!