“If I don’t get this book finished by the end of the month, my editor will kill me!”

“I have to get these revisions done so I can upload to Amazon ASAP!”

On top of that, most writers are perfectionists, and strive to make their stories better, more marketable, more interesting with each plot twist and character development.

It’s not surprising that we react to the pressures, both real and perceived, bearing down on us as writers these days.

Inspiration

But what happens to our inspiration when we’re struggling to go faster and get better? The same thing that happens during any panic attack or frightening experience — we forget to breathe. And when we do breathe, our breaths are shallow, filling our lungs only partially.

Hardly useful for keeping oxygen flowing to brain and blood and muscles.

But consider inspiration, from the Latin words “in” and “spirare” — to breathe in.

You can see that “spirit” also comes from the same Latin root, spirare, meaning to breathe. Our inspiration, our spirit, is synonymous with our life-giving breath.

So when’s the last time you took a mere 5 minutes to do nothing but breathe?

My own experience is that spending a small amount of time each day in meditation has increased my creative capacity.

What meditation is — and is not

Read a hundred meditation books and you’ll get a hundred different ideas about it.

For me, by “meditation,” I don’t mean plotting, thinking about my book, or pondering something I read in a spiritual writing.

Instead, I follow the breath from deep in the lungs and out through the nose, rest in that brief pause between breaths, then follow the breath back through the nose and down into the lungs again.

During this practice, I’m not trying to do anything in particular. I’m just breathing and putting my attention on that process. My mind will stray — the brain is a thinking machine, after all — but when I realize my mind is puzzling through a plot point or imagining a scene, I’ll gently bring my attention away from that and put it back on the breath.

It’s just a way of letting other parts of my mind explore and play with and work through the writing while my conscious attention is turned toward in-spirare – the breathing in.

You’ve probably read about how meditation is a great stress reducer and can calm the nerves, but there’s another great reason to commit as little as 5 minutes a day to it — it eases the mind and allows the brain to resolve those writing challenges in a different and usually more creative way.

Solutions that seemed out of reach are suddenly obvious. The “answer” to a difficult plot question will frequently present itself without any real effort on my part.

Listen to anyone who tells you that an idea occurred to her while in the shower or gardening, and you’re hearing someone who was tapping into that state of inner quiet.

So next time you’re stumped, try doing nothing. Better yet, cultivate a practice of doing nothing for a short period on a daily basis to keep the creative juices flowing!

• Excitement overload resulting in content exhaustion
• Conflict avoidance
• Just plain poor plotting

Let’s look at the symptoms in a different way.

Have a hard look at your own story and your experience in writing it, and check all that apply:

• When you get to the book’s climax, has the protagonist already achieved her story goal? When did she achieve it?
• Did the protagonist achieve goals that are unrelated to the original story goal?
• Did the story goal disappear or fade as the plot progressed?
• Did you run out of ideas around chapter 4?
• Did you struggle to keep writing until you reached the book’s climax?

If any of these questions resonate with you, keep reading and we’ll discover what can be done to remedy the dreaded Sagging Middle Syndrome.

The Basics: Raise the stakes

Conflict is built directly on characters having something at stake in the story. When the conflict dies, it’s because those stakes are set aside until pulled back out again for the climax (if even then).

Conflict begins when the protagonist conceives a story goal. (Many thanks to B.K. Reeves for pounding this concept into my head years ago.)  The story goal is the one thing that must remain tantalizingly out of reach of the protagonist throughout the book — until the climax occurs.

If you’ve ever tried to accomplish something that meant anything to you, such as winning a sports tournament, finishing a difficult project, or helping someone out of a terrible situation, there’s a very good chance you were emotionally invested in the outcome. Emotional investment is ripe for conflict scenarios, because just about anything that threatens that rosy outcome can be viewed as a “problem.”

This means conflict can arise from several areas:

• From the goal itself, which may appear to be terrifically difficult or even unreachable.
• From the protagonist herself, who may be fighting guilt or a sense of inadequacy (or myriad other things).
• From other characters around the protagonist who appear to be throwing roadblocks onto the path of achieving the goal.
• From external phenomena (weather, nature, global events) that are completely out of the protagonist’s control.

Unless you’re writing an epic thousand-page novel, probably one or two of these conflict areas are sufficient. Try to layer on too much conflict and the story tends to fail in other ways (too busy, disjointed, confusing, wandering, etc.). Sometimes less is more, especially if you’re working with a 325-page or fewer manuscript.

Premature… climax

When you get to the book’s climax, has the protagonist already achieved her story goal?

This happens more frequently than you might think. Usually what happens is that the protagonist has a goal that ends up achieved in some way prior to the climax of the story.

Let’s take an example from one of my critique sessions, appropriately anonymous-ized to protect the writer and used with her permission:

Our fair heroine is part-owner of a successful catering business she inherited from her father, and is fighting to keep it small, local, and intimate, while her headstrong but sexy business partner uses legal maneuvering to attempt to sell the business to a large food service corporation with an international reach. 

Now, this looks okay on the surface. The heroine has a story goal of “save her father’s business” and there seems to be plenty of conflict with the “villain” who is also “the hero” in this romantic tale.

Then what happened around Chapter 4 was that our fair heroine found out that the would-be hero couldn’t take the business away from her due to the rock solid nature of their business agreement giving her power to block the sale — and voila! the story goal evaporated.

What followed was a good 100 pages of arguing and fighting between these two people as they struggled to figure out how to work together and resolve their differences.

Because the story goal was not maintained throughout the book, the conflict ramped down rather than up. The climax became about sorting out the last argument rather than saving the catering business.

Now, I have to say that I’ve read many, many published novels that change the story goal. Some are wildly successful because the stakes go up (see Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass).

Others, in which the stakes go down (determining who’s right about the decorations for the next wedding is not the same as losing the entire business and your reputation), feel emotionally diffuse and vague. Don’t let the story goal resolve itself too soon, or morph into something less compelling.

The case of the vanishing story goal

In this symptom, the story goal drives the plot action — until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it disappears from the page completely. Characters forget they’re supposed to be achieving anything, and it’s usually while in the throes of passion with the bad guy/boy next door/vampire hunter/[your favorite character type here].

The story goal functions, then, as a way to get the characters together on the page, and once that happens, it’s unconsciously retired as an unneeded device.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a NY-published novel with this problem — no editor I know would let this go.

(And let me say, too, that the goal of this particular web site is not necessarily to “get you published,” but is instead to help you “tell the most compelling story you can.” Compelling means the reader makes an emotional investment in the characters and the story outcome, and turns the last page feeling satisfied with the book and eager to buy/read the next one.)

The vanishing story goal, in my experience, falls into the realm of the conflict-avoidant writer. That eagerness for everyone in the story to get along means that rich fields of conflict (and the resulting passion) are left unplowed. More on this concept later.

What story are we in again?

Let’s go back to the catering heroine fighting to save her business from her sexy but headstrong business partner.

On a subsequent rewrite of the story, the author attempted to extend the conflict through the sagging middle by introducing a subordinate who was embezzling money from the business.

Good solution, right? The business is still at stake, isn’t it?

Well, not in the same way. And certainly not with the same power.

The nice thing about the premise of this unpublished novel was that the conflict was close to home — two business partners with very different ideas of “success”  and who were struggling over how to move forward were also falling in love. That meant there were plenty of opportunities throughout the novel to have them go head-to-head over everything — from how to manage the kitchen to how much money to spend on new equipment to whether to hire her best friend who was also a four-star chef.

But the addition of the embezzler produced an easy partnership and changed story goal – the people in conflict suddenly banded together to find the bad guy – and the story on the page lacked conflict even within that whodunit arena. The hero and heroine weren’t using the embezzlement to continue exploring their fundamental differences.

Remember that true conflict between a romantic hero and heroine equals a passionate outcome. When the reader is faced with two strongly written characters who are each invested in their own story goal, the reader feels torn and agonizes over who to root for (though she’s always rooting for “the couple”).

Just as exercising causes tears in the muscle, and the tears in the muscle make the muscle stronger, so the story conflict causes tears in the relationship that then cause the relationship – that between the characters on the page and that between the characters and the reader – to strengthen.

The embezzler idea probably would have worked if it had remained a subplot and had been another point of contention between the main characters. But it became the focus of the book’s middle and simply a distraction from the main conflict.

Some practical solutions

Your job as a writer to prevent the protagonist from:

• Achieving that goal too easily (excitement-based plotting)
• Forgetting the goal exists (conflict-avoidance plotting)
• Achieving other goals unrelated to the original, primary goal (poor plotting)

So, what can you do to prop up a sagging middle?

• Start with a strong story goal for each major character. If the story goal is weak or easily achieved, it won’t generate enough emotional heat to capture the reader’s imagination. The “easy” goals are saving someone’s life, saving one’s own life, doing something altruistic. Whatever you choose, there should be an emotional component to the success or failure to reach that goal.
• Make every scene a stepping stone toward achieving (or failing to achieve) the goal. Each scene should see the heroine thinking about or doing something about reaching her story goal. If that’s not uppermost in her mind, then the story is threatening to go astray.
• Cut or edit scenes that don’t create goal-based tension. This is another way of working with the “stepping stone” item above. If the scene has the protagonist in it but doesn’t move her toward the goal, then edit it to include that element.
• Allow the protagonist to succeed (or not) at the climax of the novel, not before. That strong story goal and the motivation behind it is fuel for the opening, the middle, and the climax. Don’t pull the story goal out from the protagonist, but instead let it drive the action until the climax when the goal is resolved.

Whew! That’s a lot of stuff to keep in mind, but I hope this article sheds some light on how to keep those middles from sagging.

We’ll tackle it again from another direction when we look at character development. But that’s another article altogether!

As always, take what you like and leave the rest. Keep writing!

Sagging middles are a direct result of one thing: Lack of conflict.

A wise author once told my writing chapter that if you can’t seem to get past Chapter 3 in your manuscript, it’s because there’s not enough conflict. In my experience reading both published and unpublished works, that appears to be true of sagging middles as well. They sag because there’s nothing holding them up.

So let’s start by taking a look at how conflict can collapse — and take the middle of the book with it.

How exciting!

This is a classic problem. The writer is pumped up about starting the new book. She writes the opening pages — brilliant! — and sets up the characters to be motivated, likeable and interesting — fantastic! She ignores the paperwork on her day job desk thinking about the climax where the hero swoops in to save the heroine from the villain against all odds — fabulous! This is the Book of Her Heart, right? Write on!

But ultimately her energy is only invested in those areas: The opening, the setup, and the climax.

It’s a good start, but it’s only a start. How about the rest of the story?

This is the point where the writer loses steam. She probably doesn’t know she’s losing steam but the quality of the plotting goes way down. Scenes between the hero and heroine become bickering ego-matches. Extraneous characters create non-problems that the writer tries to make into big deals. Someone kills someone else, but it’s underwhelming. Twenty pages of sex occurs.

In other words, the writer is filling pages until some instinct or inner sense of timing tells her to start writing the climax — again, where her energy is invested. But the excitement factor is long gone within these 150-200 pages.

The conflict-averse

Among the writers I’ve worked with, many of them have been conflict-averse. They find conflict is great as a catalyst, but they want to quickly bring the characters back into cohesion and consensus. Rosiness (and reader boredom) then ensues.

Sustain the conflict across 200 pages? No way!

I don’t know if this is a gender issue (most of the writers I’ve worked with are women — nurturers, caregivers, teambuilding types) or if there’s something unrecovered lurking under the covers, but the tendency to allow the conflict to fade or resolve too quickly will kill a book faster than the hero shooting a puppy. Well, maybe not that fast. But pretty fast.

And yet, sustaining the conflict throughout the novel makes the payoff that much greater. In fact, keeping the conflict level high can frequently reveal that the original climax — which is the resolution of the greatest conflict in the book — is lacking in some way.

Poor plot choices

This might seem to be a result of lack of excitement or conflict aversion, but I’ve known stories where the excitement was palpable on the page and the conflict was definitely there — but the plot devices and character actions and decisions seemed arbitrary.

Editors might characterize this as “the story losing its way,” or “getting distracted” or any of a number of phrases in a rejection letter. If a revision letter comes your way, it might talk about “tightening up the middle” or “reduce or remove extraneous characters.”

In other words, the plot, while serviceable, doesn’t drive the stakes higher. Instead, it merely strings the characters along until they get to the “meat” of the story again.

This is actually merely a technical problem rather than one of energies, which makes it a bit easier to resolve.

Where do we go from here?

Part 2 of Why middles sag will tackle that question and provide some practical ideas for tightening and strengthening the story.

But what does that mean?

Let’s break it down and look at some causes and remedies.

Unsympathetic? What???

The simplest way to tackle this problem is by realizing first what “unsympathetic” means: It means the reader can’t relate to the character.

Every reader picks up a book unconsciously wanting to root for the protagonist — to be engaged with her, to identify with her, to want what the character wants.

If the protagonist lacks the quality of being understood on an emotional level, she’s viewed as unsympathetic.

What causes this rift between reader and character?

Imagine this scenario: You’re walking in the park and overhear a woman speaking sharply to a small, tearful child who is quivering and clearly upset. The woman continues in an angry voice, leaning over the cowering child.

What’s your first thought? That the woman is being cruel? That an unjust punishment is about to be administered? Are you wondering whether the child will grow up to need counseling?

A rift between ourselves and the woman — a judgment — has occurred in our minds.

But what if we were to rewind the scene in time, and we see that the child has nearly run out into a busy street? Does the woman’s fear, displayed as anger in this emotional moment, seem more reasonable?

Understanding why someone is doing what she’s doing is often the key to invoking our sympathy.

The Breakdown

A character can be viewed as unsympathetic for a handful of similar reasons:

• As shown in the example above, we don’t understand why the character is doing what she’s doing.
• We don’t like the character’s actions.
• We don’t like the character’s attitude.

Sometimes this disconnect between reader and characters will have the reader shaking her head and calling the protagonist TSTL — Too Stupid To Live. Sometimes it means the reader gives up on the book entirely. Sometimes it means the reader continues reading, but is sure to tell her friends about the unsavoriness of the character — and if the character in question is the protagonist, the reader is unlikely to buy the next book.

So let’s see what can be done.

Motivation, or lack of it — and what kind?

The most common issue I’ve seen when judging contest entries is that the motivation is not convincingly put on the page. The writers thinks she has properly motivated the character (and sometimes when I talk with a writer, she explains the motivation to me in a critique session), but the motivation isn’t on the page.

This results in characters appearing to make decisions or act “out of left field”. Because we don’t understand the “why,” we have a hard time emotionally connecting to the character.

But a more elusive and baffling problem is this: The writer has pointed to the “why” in terms of its mental component, but not attached the emotional component. If the character is not considering the act in terms of what’s at stake for herself or someone she loves, then the motivation will be difficult to follow or believe.

Character actions, if motivated on the page both intellectually and emotionally, are usually sympathetic — the reader can relate to what the character is trying to achieve.

My way or the highway

Characters can be viewed as unsympathetic when their attitudes and behavior are cocky, superior, and/or condescending to other characters. Great for a villain, but not so good for the heroine. Fully-armored characters don’t need the reader’s engagement or sympathy.

“But wait!” a writer might shout. “My character is supposed to be cocky in the opening pages!”

I’m not saying the character should start out perfect from page 1. But I am saying that if we want readers to engage with and relate to our character, there has to be a chink in the armor the reader can squeeze into so she can get “into the skin” of that character. It’s another way of understanding the “why” motivating the character.

• The simplest chink in the armor is doubt. Even if the character’s walking around believing he knows all the answers and has the world by the tail, a smidgeon of doubt can go a long way toward making him more palatable. That doubt can be used to fuel his internal conflict and raise the stakes as the story progresses.
• Keep in mind, too, that characters don’t walk around in Universes of One. If the hero has an attitude, have him butt heads with another character of equal competence rather than surrounding him with incompetents or sycophants. Otherwise, he comes off as a bully, which is a character type notoriously difficult to relate to.
• Most attitude “problems” are the result of deep-seated and unacknowledged fear. Allowing that fear to surface at opportune moments can deepen the psychological storyline as well as the plotline. Show us glimpses of the heroine’s vulnerability.

A Last Thought

Sympathetic characters — characters we can root for — are those we understand at an emotional level. They are also characters who, even if they start out mean and tough, are fundamentally worthy of our emotional investment. In other words, they’re redeemable.

And finally, as with all suggestions you read on this site, take what you like and leave the rest.

Have your characters ever been critiqued as unsympathetic? How did you remedy that?

It can be dark and passionate or light and airily romantic. It can be laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving, or tragic.

It’s your creation.

It’s your deepest emotional truth poured onto the page.

It’s unflinching and courageous.

It doesn’t care what others think.

It’s the book that carries your dream — of finishing a novel or being published.

It can be the first book you ever write, or it can be the one you’re working on right now.

Do you feel excited just thinking about it? Do you lie awake at night mulling over your characters and that great scene? Can you not wait to get to your desk or laptop or writing tablet each day?

That is the Book of Your Heart.

Does this mean everyone who comes to this site will become the next Nora Roberts?

Hardly. But it does mean that, if you have the desire to write and the willingness to put in the work, you can complete a story that resonates in your heart and soul, that sings to your unique music, and perhaps even nets you the appreciation of a dedicated readership.