NOBODY WANTS A SAGGING MIDDLE : How to Avoid Writing a Muddled Story By : Alice Orr
NOBODY WANTS A SAGGING MIDDLE : How to Avoid Writing a Muddled Story By : Alice Orr
The struggle in your story is the drama of your story . That struggle must begin at your Dramatic Opening and continue forward without letup . The course of the struggle is the course of your plot . The more intense the struggle , the more intense the plot . That is the secret to writing a page-turner story . Escalate the power , the intensity and the drama of your main character ‟ s struggle , and you are in the winner ‟ s circle . What could screw that up for you ? The middle , where you are likely , with unfortunate regularity , to find a muddle . Why ? Because the middle is where the story line is likely to sag .
When your story loses momentum in the middle you must make these crucial assumptions . You need to know more about your characters . And , therefore , you need to ask yourself three crucial questions .
1 . What hidden relationships could there be between my characters ?
2 . What further conflict lies beneath the surface of their relationships ?
3 . What further secrets do they have , and why have they kept them from me ?
In my contribution to this magazine ‟ s February issue , “ Well Begun is Well Done ,” an article on the Dramatic Opening , I used the classic film Casablanca as a story example . Let ‟ s continue with that example here of how to create the story middle that avoids a muddle .
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At the Dramatic Opening of Casablanca we found Rick , played by Humphrey Bogart , bitter and disillusioned , but we are well into the story before we learn the source of his bitterness . At the opening , there are hints at the problems in Rick ‟ s history , but we still don ‟ t understand what ‟ s up with him . Then beautiful Ilsa arrives , played by Ingrid Bergman , and Rick reacts . We might say he overreacts because we still don ‟ t know what ‟ s really going on between them . Ilsa is with her husband Victor when we first encounter her , so we don ‟ t get an explanation until she returns later to the closed café where Rick is alone . Now we find out about Paris and the past love affair between Rick and Ilsa that sent him soaring and then smashed him back to earth .
At this point , we are truly hooked because what began as a suspense plot , has turned into a love story as well . We are hooked in the heart by the love story even more deeply than our adrenaline was pumped by the danger of the suspense story . We are also at the middle of the story , and there ‟ s not a sign of a sag anywhere . Why ? Because we have learned more about the characters . Because the story situation has begun to satisfy those three crucial questions I mentioned , with a hidden relationship , a deep conflict , and a significant secret that had been kept from us concerning the main character . Your story situation can do the same .
To add even more anti-muddle momentum to your story middle , all you have to do is make two more crucial assumptions . First , the hot water you have dumped your characters into needs to get hotter , much hotter . And , second , for that to happen , you must ask yourself three more crucial questions .
What additional misfortunes can happen to my characters ?
What powerful dangers surround my characters ?
What can happen that will jolt my main character ?
In Casablanca , we find the motherlode of misfortune and danger , World War II and Nazis . We also have a powerful villain in the German Major Strasser . Nothing accelerates story tension better than a truly evil bad guy . There are high stakes too . Ilsa ‟ s husband Victor must be smuggled to neutral territory or he will be captured and tortured , and his patriotic anti- Nazi work will end . Meanwhile , the jolt to main character Rick comes in the form of Letters of Transit . They are what Alfred Hitchcock called the Macguffin . The Macguffin is the thing everybody in the story wants , either for good or evil reasons , depending on who they are . Rick has these letters . They will decide Victor ‟ s fate . They will also decide the fate of Rick and Ilsa ‟ s rekindled passion . Da Da Da Dum !
Drama . High stakes . An uncertain outcome . The middle of Casablanca provides all of this and more , and you can re -imagine your story middle to do the same . Simply re-imagine your characters . Dig beneath the surface of the way you see them now by answering the first three crucial questions . Dig beneath the surface of the way you now see your story by answering the second three questions . Do all of that , and you will excavate your own motherlode of pageturner storytelling . It is there already , beneath the surface you have already written . When you unearth that treasure , you will have banished your sagging middle forever .
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