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| Rachel Hauck |
Hey everyone, Annette here. With NaNo behind us (raise your hand if you participated), we've got some editing to do. Or perhaps you're plotting and need some advice for that pesky Act II. Thankfully, seasoned author and writing coach, Rachel Hauck, is here today to help us keep the middle of our novel from sagging. Read on!
Advice for that Sagging Middle
by Rachel Hauck
Tony Horton is the
king of getting a body into shape. His methods work. His Ab Ripper X routine is
fifteen minutes of 339 core moves. Halfway into the routine, you want to quit.
But you know you can’t, so you cheat. Instead of doing all the reps in a
series, you do it halfheartedly or only half the moves.
Fine. As long as you
keep going and work harder the next time. That’s the way you build
up endurance. The way you build your abs. Doing all of the reps all of the
time.
It’s the same with writing the
middle of your novel.
You have to “work
out” the middle of you book. Rip it! Get it lean and mean. A lot of times, the
middle of a book gets fat and fluffy with nothing more than a rehash of what
was set up in the beginning of the book.
The middle of the
book is the character journey. It’s where everything goes wrong, gets dark, scary, and ugly. Where all hopes and dreams are crushed! You have to up the
stakes, advance the plot so it becomes darker and darker—worse and worse until
you arrive at the Black Moment.
This is probably the
hardest part of writing a novel.
Authors can easily
plan a perfect opening with an exciting Inciting Incident, and determine the
Black Moment then wind it all up with a Happily Ever After, but boy, how do you
get the middle of the novel to hold strong?
1. Do your homework
up front. What is the story about?
2. Once you’ve determined what the
story is about, build those internal and external conflicts. A lot of time when
I read a book where the middle is soft and fluffy with no real tension it’s
because the internal and external obstacles are not high or dark enough.
3. Turn the story inside out and
upside down. What does your protagonist want? What’s this story about? Now,
create all kinds of obstacles that keep them from that goal. The middle is
about overcoming those obstacles.
4. Resist the urge to solve every
problem. Resist the urge to have folks get along. Bring a problem from chapter
two or three front and center in chapter one.
5. Drop the bomb. It’s easy to hold
off too long on the big reveal— the wow moment that blows up everything for the
protagonist. We often plan this as the Black Moment but many times that bomb
can be dropped into the middle of the book! Once you see where the story
shrapnel lands, you can develop a new and even better Black Moment.
If you hold off on a reveal, the
middle of the book can become muddy and the writing circular by rehashing the
same issues with the protagonist.
Keep the tension taut with dialog, and don’t let that
middle sag.
~~~~~
Learn more about best-selling and award-winning author, Rachel Hauck at her website.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rachelhauck
Twitter: @RachelHauck
~~~~~
Revealing the beauty
in other women might be Ginger Winters’s specialty—but it will take an
unexpected kind of love to help Ginger see the beauty in herself.
Ginger Winters drapes
her hair over her right shoulder and adjusts the scarf around her neck to cover
her scarred, withered skin. She’s had the scars since she was twelve, but
she’ll never get used to the ugliness.
The fire changed
Ginger’s life, but out of the pain and humiliation of her own disfigurement,
one quality unexpectedly emerged: a gift for bringing out the beauty in other
women. In a twelve-year ascent from top salon jobs in New York, Atlanta, and
Nashville, Ginger traveled the world as personal stylist to country music
sensation Tracie Blue. The success was almost enough to make her forget her own
appearance.
Almost. Now that
she’s opened her own salon in Rosebud after a dozen years away, the truth is
staring Ginger in the face again: she’s still that girl, ugly and
scarred, forever on the outside looking in. And this weekend she’ll be looking
in as “beauty-maker” for the Alabama society wedding of the decade.
