The Dreaded Middle

I briefly thought that my Loft class was cancelled, but four new students materialized out of nowhere last minute, so I'm back on. 

The course officially opened on Wednesday morning. One of the first things I always ask my students is: Is there any aspect of writing that you struggle with the most?  I ask this so that if a majority of people struggle with a similar thing, I can expand whatever lecture that falls into. 

This class is on-line and, as intimated in my opening, not hugely populated. I have about five students, though only four have actually checked into the course work so far.  The people who are on-line are fairly engaged, answering questions I posed and asking some of their own. 

Two people--so 50% of the active class--say they struggle with middles. They get lost, lose their way, and sometimes fizzle out of the story completely. 

I dug out my Writer's Digest Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress, because I've never tried to articulate my own process for getting through the middle beyond "I guess you just  put your nose to grindstone" or "I dunno, just keep writing to the end?" 

Which, at least I realize is not at all helpful.

In re-reading (though I'm not sure I ever made it all the way through to the end when I bought the book,) I realized that a lot of writers find their way into their stories and don't know some key things that would help make that middle bit less overwhelming.  One of them is:

• Whose story is it?

I had a novel, my fourth one as Lyda Morehouse, Apocalypse Array, where I thought that I knew who the story was about, who the main characters were. I had several points of view in that book, and it was only when the deadline was only about two weeks away when my wife read the manuscript I thought was finished and said, "But this character's story, it doesn't actually add to the plot does it? It doesn't fit and doesn't go anywhere." I was so furious! My wife isn't even a writer! How dare she.... be right.

Characters have to change, they have to grow in some way.  If you have multiple viewpoint characters, they have to have that moment when their stories all intersect--all reach for the same thing (even if it's not a similar plot point but instead a similar emotional or thematic 'thing.')  

I rewrote an entire fifth of the novel in two weeks. I ripped out the character who didn't belong and inserted one who did. I did it all in two weeks. 

That book won me the Special Citation for Excellence Philip K. Dick award.

And now we come to the real epiphany I had about middles. They are scary when you're married to your beginning, when you think that what you've written is somehow written in stone. Middles are surmountable when you realize beginnings can shift to accommodate where you went, where you suddenly realize you want to go, what your book or story is ABOUT. 

It's not middles that are so dreadful, it's the fear of revision. 

If you are willing to tear it all up and do it over, you realize there's nothing to fear.