Category: The Middle

Posted in Plot, Scenes, The Middle, Thinking

Plotting the Middle–One Attempt to Find a System

Posted on by beckylevine

I don’t know about you, but my brain does strange things in the early stages of thinking about a novel. Many of those things are strange in a good way. Others, not so much.

Lately, as I spend time with my current WIP, I’ll be immersed in some wonderful, creative brainstorming about my hero or another character or a setting, and my mind starts going off in tangents about scenes that need to happen or about the big, dramatic choices my hero will have to make by the end. Fun things like that. And then, all of a sudden, I’ll have one of two thoughts. They are:

  • I have WAY too many actions/events that have to happen in the middle of this story!
  • How in the WORLD am I going to find enough actions/events to fill up the middle of this story?!

Note: Exclamation points denote panic.

Double Note: Yes, I realize those thoughts are extreme opposites. Donald Maass would love me as a character.

The point, today, is that I did spend a little time the other day thinking, again, about how to plot out that middle. How to find a way to place it–as a craft element–somewhere between a dense, overcrowded mess and a gapingly empty maw. And here’s what I came up with.

I’m getting a pretty good idea of what both the beginning and the ending of this story need to be doing. As I work, my brain goes back and forth between those two points, thinking about how they connect and what layers they share.  And I’m making myself slow down a bit and think about ways to weave those threads through the middle.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I’m writing a story about a tortoise and a rabbit. No, let’s call that second character a hare. The hare challenges the tortoise to a—okay, you know the story. You’re probably thinking it’s a pretty simple plot (which makes for a good example!), but there are a few layers here. We need to show the hare’s speed, and its cockiness, and its lack of manners. We need to show the tortoise’s slowness, its confidence, and its style.

Let’s take one set–speed and slowness.

In the Beginning, speed is strength and slowness is weakness. By the End, the tortoise has reversed that valuation–slowness can be power and strength may not be so good over the long haul. (Sounds like an ode to my running, but let’s not go there.) Obviously we can’t just snap our fingers and have that change happen–that’s wishful thinking, not storytelling.

We need two or three plot points in the Middle to make the change happen.  And this is where I’m taking a few minutes, to ask myself, “What could those plot points be?” And for each thread I think about, I’m making a quick list of possiblities…like this:

  • The hare could laugh at the tortoise and all the other animals for being slow.
  • The tortoise could stop in the middle of the race to help a young animal that is hurt or lost.
  • The other animals could have a meeting and decide to help the tortoise.
  • The elephant could fill up its trunk with water from a nearby lake, then flood the path so the tortoise could swim the race.
  • The bees could magically polinate a nearby field of poppies into bloom, so the hare would fall asleep–oh, wait, that’s another story.

Anyway, you see the point. Each of these possibilities could (I’m not necessarily saying should!) be a scene in the story. In sequence, they show the progression from the hare being the one with power, to the tortoise earning the strength and support of friends and turning the tables on his long-eared antagonist. Et voila, some of your middle is filled.

What do you think? Is this a possible tool to help make that middle less scary, less intimidating? Do you have techniques you use to plot your way across the void? I’d love to hear them, because–whatever may or may not work–I’m pretty sure I’ll be trying them all in the next few months!

Posted in The Beginning, The End, The Middle

Beginnings, Middles, & Ends–What Goes Where?

Posted on by beckylevine

Friday, I had a pretty productive day. I sat down and did some thinking about some new scenes in my WIP, and I ended up with a basic plot arc–styled after Martha Alderson’s Plot Planner in Blockbuster Plots-Pure and Simple. I took a photo and posted it on my other blog, if you want to check it out.

As I worked on the plot arc, though, I could see all these threads that I don’t have woven in yet. This is fine, obviously, since I’m just getting started. Still, too many loose story threads, just like too many loose threads on my clothes, can drive me a bit nuts until I get them a little more tucked away.

So this morning I’ve been browsing through some writing books–reading up on beginnings, middles, and ends–and trying for an early placement of some of these threads. This seems to help me look at the rising (hopefully!) tension of the plot, to think about where the big things should happen and how I can build to those spots. For me, it’s mostly about what happens:

  1. Before the hero’s first threshold–that inciting incident that is a microcosm of the whole, big story problem.
  2. After the hero’s death (symbolic or otherwise)–when they face their worst crisis and make their most important (and hardest) choice.
  3. Everything in between.

Here are a few things I came up with, in general terms, for what we should be doing in each of those sections.

Beginnings

  • Introduce the compelling hero
  • Establish the hero’s story goal/problem
  • Create a push/pull tension for hero around that problem
  • Establish the primary/most threatening antagonist
  • Establish the story world
  • Disturb that story world (seriously disturb it!)

Middles

  • Strengthen hero’s goal & opposition to that goal
  • Amp up the stakes for hero
  • Amp up the stakes for the antagonist
  • Strengthen and complicate character relationships
  • Throw in some new, surprising information (Thanks to Jordan E. Rosenfeld, in Make a Scene, for this one.)
  • Establish a sense of death hanging over the story world (And thanks to James Scott Bell, in Plot & Structure, for this one.)
  • Set up hero to make big choice, while making it “impossible” for hero to make that choice
  • Seed and (later) reveal secrets.

Endings

  • Resolve all story threads
  • Test, one more time, hero’s big choice
  • Show the impact of that choice choice–on hero and the whole story world

What about you. When you plot, do you just work through scenes in the order they play out? Or do you, like me, try to position them in one of the main sections of the story arc? And, please, freel free to tell me anything I’ve missed! 🙂

Posted in First Drafts, The Middle, The Writing Path

Making it through the Middle

Posted on by beckylevine

Saturday was November 15th. For NaNo writers, that’s halfway through. I’ve been following people’s journeys on blogs and Facebook, and some people are already finished with their word-count goal (yay!), others are still working hard to get there (yay, again!)

Theoretically, a lot of NaNo-ers are somewhere around the middle of their novels. The MIDDLE. Whether you’re trying to write a whole book in thirty days, or just trying to write a whole book, the middle is often not a fun place to be. Lots of us start out on our projects knowing the start of the story and where we (for now) expect the story to end. We may even have a few big scenes that we know are going to happen along the way.

We rarely, though, have the whole middle figured out.  And that middle, while we’re drafting, can feel vast, bottomless.

In my critique group, we do a lot of brainstorming and, funny enough, lots of that brainstorming is about this middle section.  I thought I’d share one way we go at filling up that big space.

Take a look at your characters. All of them. What have they done so far and what should they be doing next. I literally make a list down the side of a piece of paper of my hero and the rest of the main characters. Then I write down where each of those characters are in their story arc. I might also write down (at the far side of the paper) where each of those characters needs to be, on that arc, by the end of the story. When you’ve got those lists, think about what each character could do–just one thing each–to make progress toward completing that arc.

The other way to look at their progress is goal-based. Each character has a goal. If you get stalled, see where each of your characters are in terms of achieving that goal (or failing to get the goal, if that’s where they’re headed). What can those characters do, what next step can they take, to push forward on their goal path?

Don’t forget interactions. You want these characters, especially your hero, taking steps that put them into contact, and conflict, with each other. Juxtapose your hero, on another sheet of paper, with the other characters. What action, discussion, or argument does your hero need to have with each of these characters, to move the story along?

If you’re still stuck, there’s one more trick. What information do you need to give to the reader. What do you know—about a problem, or a clue, or a piece of background story—that needs to show up on the pages? Once you’ve thought of that, go back to the characters again. Who can help you reveal that information? What pairing, usually with your hero and somebody else, would give you a chance to show the detail, rather than tell it?

And the biggest, most important thing: don’t stress. When you’re stuck, remember that you don’t have to fill up the middle all at once. All you need is the very next action. That action may not be perfect; it may not even be the event you end up using in the next draft. Don’t worry. Just pick it and write it and keep going. Worry about changing it or fixing it later, in revision.

Right now, whether you’re NaNo’ing or not, your goal is to get across this middle. Remember Red Light, Green Light? How many times did Baby Steps win over Giant Steps? Plenty. So Baby Step your way across the middle and, sooner than you think, you’ll have the finish line in sight!

Good luck to all of you!