October | 2023 | Novels Now

This month’s topic from our organiser, Skye, is ‘How to Fix a Sagging Middle’.

I imagine every writer has been there. Things are going along just fine when you realise that is a problem. The protagonist needs things to be going from bad to worse in order to retain reader sympathy, empathy and interest.

It’s occasionally the moment when my brain says something on the lines of:

“That’s why she didn’t open the garden shed!”

It, my brain, was building in a little foreshadowing. At the moment of writing the sentence about not opening the garden shed, I would likely have been wondering what it had to do with anything so far written about but, Bingo! its moment has come.

However, such luck cannot be relied on so how does one deal with a sagging middle?

One can introduce a new character. Obviously, this new person will have a position that makes their arrival appropriate or even inevitable. Perhaps your story is set in an hotel and the premises have just received their annual certificates of fitness to function. How about having the character who’s been pacing the boundaries arrive and ask whether your central character knows the bridge leading out of the village to the hotel’s drive is to be closed for three months for repairs?

One can look closely at the scenes just completed and wonder whether they would be more arresting if written in dialogue.

One can go right back and see whether there are any narrative strands that have had less attention than some of the others that made it through. This is similar to the luck of remembering some foreshadowing but involves the writer in consciously inserting foreshadowing or reinforcing a passing reference.

The solutions found by my fellow robins are on their blogs, accessed below.

On 1st November Ulverscroft large print publishers will be releasing a library edition of Christmas at Maldington. Here’s the cover: