How do authors fix a SAGGING MIDDLE? Or for that matter, what IS a sagging middle? For the uninitiated, a sagging middle is when you suddenly feel like you're slogging through mud. Nothing interesting is happening and you feel like tossing the book aside and finding something else to read. Some authors never figure this out based on reviews that suggest the book dragged and readers lost interest. But even good authors, best-selling and award-winning authors don’t always find it an easy thing to get past the anchor someone just threw out. Hammocks have sagging middles for a reason – to make you comfy enough to fall asleep. Not what an author is aiming for.
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We all start off our books fired up with this new, fantastic book idea. We might have been inspired by something that happened to us or someone we knew, or even events of the day that capture the interest of the whole country or the world. And it seems like a sure-fire novel idea. We might have created characters we absolutely love and thrown them into a cauldron of hot water to start off with a bang. But suddenly, halfway through the water is only tepid. Our characters are still loveable, but maybe not as heroic as we thought. Maybe they are kicked back in their loungers, thumbing their noses as us saying, “I fixed my problem so I’m just going to retire now. Your turn.” Or maybe the premise itself began to have a lackluster feel to it. So, now what?
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When you’re writing a mystery, or suspense, the old saw when you hit a sagging middle is to kill someone. Another dead body is always good for jump-starting a stalled-out mystery, and it worked well for me, the pantser dealing with an unplotted mystery. I killed off my only witness and it added a ton of stress for my heroine and conflict for the story. Of course, you might be writing a romance where, presumably, there are no dead bodies. Just a dead romance. Or maybe it’s a suspense with the suspense suspended? How do we fix a sagging middle.
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That new dead body is actually upping the stakes, which is one of the ways to fix a sagging middle in any story. Other options are adding a twist, a set-back, new action or cutting details, scenes and stuff you loved, but realize are going nowhere.
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Let’s start with the last thing I listed – cutting. We do love our babies and sometimes we fall so in love with our words we don’t want to cut anything. But there are times when the neatly crafted stuff we have is going nowhere, does not drive the plot forward and detracts from the plot and the character’s quest. If you can say yes to any of those, it’s time to cut. I often save cut scenes and sections to a separate file folder because it might be perfect somewhere else, perhaps later in the book or even in a totally different book.
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A set-back is another good way to generate tension. I have a brainstorming partner I call my personal mayhem because she comes up with the most awful things that could happen to my babies. I love my characters and tend to want to protect them from getting hurt so I really appreciate Mayhem’s ideas to get me focused on keeping the tension going in my story. If everything is going too smoothly for my protagonist, it’s time to throw a monkey wrench into her life and shake things up. Your heroine might have the best float ever and this year she just knows she will win best in the parade – so perhaps what’s moving that float breaks down. Or the homecoming Queen who was supposed to ride on it looking beautiful and waving to the folk along the parade route gets sick. When everything is going right for your hero or heroine, something needs to hit a snag.
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If any of you has watched many of the Hallmark movies you get the idea that each new setting is bucolic and peaceful, small towns where there’s little dissent and all is right with the world. And maybe that’s what folks who tune into these movies want, but some of us want more. That’s when the twist comes in. Not everything is as it seams. Perhaps there’s an undercurrent in this wonderful small town that didn’t appear at first. Like that Grinch perched above Whoville with his plans to steal Christmas. Cindy-Lou Who and all the rest of the Whos in Whoville are happily anticipating a wonderful Christmas, but the watcher sees that evil Grinch and knows what’s coming and that knowing adds the tension.
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Hallmark movies are also tediously predictable: Someone left town years ago planning never to return, but here they are for one reason or another and faced not only with whatever brought them home in the first place, but also with the love they had in high school who they left behind. And somehow that love is never happily married which means they can pick up where they left off. And it’s a romance so we know they’ll figure out what went wrong and find a way to fix it. And we all know there will be a happy ever after. But in our own writing, we want more. We don’t want our readers to know the plot is going to work itself out. So, it’s time for a twist. A betrayal from someone your protagonist trusted or was counting on to be in their corner. Or it might only appear to be a betrayal -- just don’t let the deception be too easily fixed.
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Action is always good for a jump-start. If it’s a suspense or adventure, action is a given anyway, but even something as simple as an argument between your protagonist and another important character can interrupt what was going smoothly. Maybe an uninvited guest shows up at the most inopportune moment. Or a faucet broke and suddenly the whole house is in mayhem trying to find a plumber on a weekend because your protagonist is a real estate salesman who was prepping for an open house.
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And last, but certainly not least – up the stakes. Add another problem. Add a time crunch. Maybe your detective is about to break the case, certain who the killer is, but is tying things together to get enough to nail them and make an arrest -- and someone else goes missing. Maybe there’s an abduction and there’s a ransom demand. Or your protagonist’s plans were going along very nicely, and someone changed the deadline for their project. If your hero or heroine thinks they have a week before something important is going to happen and suddenly, they find they have only two days, that seriously ups the ante and puts them in tension.
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However you choose to fix your sagging middle, just keep the mantra in mind that you can’t solve the character’s problems too early in the story, otherwise there’s no reason for the reader to keep reading. Like those Hallmark movies – I turn them on when I’m wrapping Christmas gifts or sewing them – because it’s fun to have something I don’t have to concentrate too hard to follow and if I need to leave in the middle, I already know how it’s going to end so I don’t miss much. Your stories need to avoid that – you need your reader glued to every page until that very last moment when all is solved, and all is now right in your character’s world – and, of course, the reader needs to leave satisfied and glad they spent the money and the time on your book.
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Now, let's go see how some of my fellow Round Robin Bloggers fix their sagging middles:
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Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-322
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
How do authors fix a SAGGING MIDDLE? Or for that matter, what IS a sagging middle? For the uninitiated, a sagging middle is when you suddenly feel like you're slogging through mud. Nothing interesting is happening and you feel like tossing the book aside and finding something else to read. Some authors never figure this out based on reviews that suggest the book dragged and readers lost interest. But even good authors, best-selling and award-winning authors don’t always find it an easy thing to get past the anchor someone just threw out. Hammocks have sagging middles for a reason – to make you comfy enough to fall asleep. Not what an author is aiming for. 
We all start off our books fired up with this new, fantastic book idea. We might have been inspired by something that happened to us or someone we knew, or even events of the day that capture the interest of the whole country or the world. And it seems like a sure-fire novel idea. We might have created characters we absolutely love and thrown them into a cauldron of hot water to start off with a bang. But suddenly, halfway through the water is only tepid. Our characters are still loveable, but maybe not as heroic as we thought. Maybe they are kicked back in their loungers, thumbing their noses as us saying, “I fixed my problem so I’m just going to retire now. Your turn.” Or maybe the premise itself began to have a lackluster feel to it. So, now what?
When you’re writing a mystery, or suspense, the old saw when you hit a sagging middle is to kill someone. Another dead body is always good for jump-starting a stalled-out mystery, and it worked well for me, the pantser dealing with an unplotted mystery. I killed off my only witness and it added a ton of stress for my heroine and conflict for the story. Of course, you might be writing a romance where, presumably, there are no dead bodies. Just a dead romance. Or maybe it’s a suspense with the suspense suspended? How do we fix a sagging middle.
Let’s start with the last thing I listed – cutting. We do love our babies and sometimes we fall so in love with our words we don’t want to cut anything. But there are times when the neatly crafted stuff we have is going nowhere, does not drive the plot forward and detracts from the plot and the character’s quest. If you can say yes to any of those, it’s time to cut. I often save cut scenes and sections to a separate file folder because it might be perfect somewhere else, perhaps later in the book or even in a totally different book.
A set-back is another good way to generate tension. I have a brainstorming partner I call my personal mayhem because she comes up with the most awful things that could happen to my babies. I love my characters and tend to want to protect them from getting hurt so I really appreciate Mayhem’s ideas to get me focused on keeping the tension going in my story. If everything is going too smoothly for my protagonist, it’s time to throw a monkey wrench into her life and shake things up. Your heroine might have the best float ever and this year she just knows she will win best in the parade – so perhaps what’s moving that float breaks down. Or the homecoming Queen who was supposed to ride on it looking beautiful and waving to the folk along the parade route gets sick. When everything is going right for your hero or heroine, something needs to hit a snag. 
If any of you has watched many of the Hallmark movies you get the idea that each new setting is bucolic and peaceful, small towns where there’s little dissent and all is right with the world. And maybe that’s what folks who tune into these movies want, but some of us want more. That’s when the twist comes in. Not everything is as it seams. Perhaps there’s an undercurrent in this wonderful small town that didn’t appear at first. Like that Grinch perched above Whoville with his plans to steal Christmas. Cindy-Lou Who and all the rest of the Whos in Whoville are happily anticipating a wonderful Christmas, but the watcher sees that evil Grinch and knows what’s coming and that knowing adds the tension.
Hallmark movies are also tediously predictable: Someone left town years ago planning never to return, but here they are for one reason or another and faced not only with whatever brought them home in the first place, but also with the love they had in high school who they left behind. And somehow that love is never happily married which means they can pick up where they left off. And it’s a romance so we know they’ll figure out what went wrong and find a way to fix it. And we all know there will be a happy ever after. But in our own writing, we want more. We don’t want our readers to know the plot is going to work itself out. So, it’s time for a twist. A betrayal from someone your protagonist trusted or was counting on to be in their corner. Or it might only appear to be a betrayal -- just don’t let the deception be too easily fixed. 
Action is always good for a jump-start. If it’s a suspense or adventure, action is a given anyway, but even something as simple as an argument between your protagonist and another important character can interrupt what was going smoothly. Maybe an uninvited guest shows up at the most inopportune moment. Or a faucet broke and suddenly the whole house is in mayhem trying to find a plumber on a weekend because your protagonist is a real estate salesman who was prepping for an open house. 
And last, but certainly not least – up the stakes. Add another problem. Add a time crunch. Maybe your detective is about to break the case, certain who the killer is, but is tying things together to get enough to nail them and make an arrest -- and someone else goes missing. Maybe there’s an abduction and there’s a ransom demand. Or your protagonist’s plans were going along very nicely, and someone changed the deadline for their project. If your hero or heroine thinks they have a week before something important is going to happen and suddenly, they find they have only two days, that seriously ups the ante and puts them in tension. 
However you choose to fix your sagging middle, just keep the mantra in mind that you can’t solve the character’s problems too early in the story, otherwise there’s no reason for the reader to keep reading. Like those Hallmark movies – I turn them on when I’m wrapping Christmas gifts or sewing them – because it’s fun to have something I don’t have to concentrate too hard to follow and if I need to leave in the middle, I already know how it’s going to end so I don’t miss much. Your stories need to avoid that – you need your reader glued to every page until that very last moment when all is solved, and all is now right in your character’s world – and, of course, the reader needs to leave satisfied and glad they spent the money and the time on your book. 
Now, let's go see how some of my fellow Round Robin Bloggers fix their sagging middles:
