Archive for the ‘Craftwise’ Category
In the previous post, we saw that sagging middles are a symptom of an underlying problem. The problem might be:
- Excitement overload resulting in content exhaustion
- Conflict avoidance
- Just plain poor plotting
Let’s look at the symptoms in a different way.
The “sagging middle” is one of the most common ailments of any novel, romance or otherwise. You recognize them — the characters are suddenly talking about nothing much, there’s a sense of aimlessness in the story, nothing gripping is happening – and then there’s a sprint to the climax and denouement.
Sagging middles are a direct result of one thing: Lack of conflict.
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