I’m not going to pretend that I’m above this, people. I remember a lot of books where I hit the middle and those er… exciting chapters became “The middle, in which we search for plot and relevant action.”

It hasn’t happened in a while, to be fair, but that’s partly because while practice might not always make perfect, it does always make easier.

Art rests on a layer of craft, and craft is muscle memory, and it rests on…. yep. Practice, practice, practice. And btw, to those who ask how you know if you’re practicing in the right direction: this used to puzzle the hell out of me. “What if I’m practicing/learning all the wrong things?” I asked myself. It seemed like I couldn’t practice without a teacher.

This is complete and utter nonsense. You got into this, presumably because you read a lot. And you enjoy it. So, presumably you know what you like. Yes, I know detachment is hard when it comes to your own work. It still will work, given enough time and determination, and yes, practice.

Yes, you can get stuck in cull-de-sacs. When you do, it sometimes needs an experienced eye to see what you’re doing wrong and unstick you. Hence, mentors, groups and sometimes paid workshops. For instance I had clue zero how to actually show a background or situation and either gave false details Or suffering from blind cat syndrome.

To explain, it’s fine to give a brand that doesn’t exist, but then you have to associate it with something the reader can picture, like “Vallejo flying brooms were just so slick, with their silvery bristles and steel clad handle.” If you don’t it’s a false detail. You’re giving a detail, you think, but the other person can’t call up anything to match it. BTW giving brands in modern day might have the same effect when you’re addressing someone like me who is totally unable to remember brands and models. “He drove a BMW blah blah” tells me he’s rich, but beyond that, nothing. Though I suppose if I care enough I’ll go out on the net and look it up. I never have.

Blind cat syndrome is when your character enters a room, but you don’t tell us what’s in there, at a glance. Look, go into a room you’ve been in rarely or never. Seriously. Go look at a house if you have to. A furnished one. Or look at real-estate pictures on line. At a glance you see something like “It was a spacious room, with a single bed, a chair, and a very nice antique dress. There was a book on top of the dresser.” Your character will do the same. Or your reader, if you’re using omniscient.

If you just say “He entered the room” and then “he tripped on the chair, put a hand out to the single bed, and picked up the book on top of the dresser” note that each element appears like in a cartoon when you mention it. What this does is make the reader fell like a blind cat (seriously, Havey is 15 and has carats) who stumbles on each object in turn, as it comes into existence for him.

Yes, I thought I was being sophisticated and subtle. Look, people get in these mental cul-de-sacs. It happens. But the Oregon Writers Professional Writers workshop knocked that off me with a hammer. Yes, I would have preferred less sarcasm at the time, but it was effective, and since I’d been doing that for several years, maybe anything else wouldn’t have got through?

But despite those occasional hickups and blind alleys (and yes, yes, I’ll get to the critiques. Let me see: car accident (getting it fixed has been fun) stomach flu, meds interaction. Can whoever is doing this remove the pins from the doll of Sarah?) most of the time, after a week or a month, you can see exactly what you’ve done wrong, particularly in terms of “Did I really leave most of the world in my head.”

Plot is harder. (At least it is for me.) You really have to learn to play chess with yourself as a reader. You have to abstract and see the long arc. You have to see “Okay, so my characters are running for their lives, and it’s vitally important they get the weapon. Would the secondary characters really be gossiping about how the primary characters want to get in each other’s pants? Only if they’re insane.”

This is one I almost got caught in recently. It’s easy, because you know that subplot needs developing too, but unless you’re writing an actual romance (and even then, it’s best expressed by how aware they are of each other, more than by other people speculating if they’re in wuv.)

And once you step into a crazy cakes subplot that doesn’t fit, you can get lost in it.

Subplots are fine, but they have to come at a time when it makes sense and they have to FIT with the larger plot. So, it would be fine for people who are attracted to each other but don’t know each other that well AND are running from sure death to try to protect each other, but not to spend pages, or entire chapters worrying if the other person likes them. (Much less other people worrying about that.)

You can have a “relief” subplot, like I have an idiot who stress bakes, which means at one time in the middle of a life and death moment, he realizes he can make croissants under primitive conditions, and is so excited he almost gets killed. That’s a comic relief, which you kind of need in the middle of grim, but it needs to have “light weight” and take little space, otherwise it distorts the plot.

And here I’m going to say something I never say: When you get to the middle of the story and you feel you’ve lost the plot: you know how it ends, but this middle is kind of just there, and you’re doing it to fill space, and not because it matters, STOP.

Don’t stop permanently. Give yourself a week or two. Go and write a short story. Clean your toilet. Rotate the cat. Bake some croissants. Mow the lawn before the neighbors think you died.

Then come back and see how and when you took a side spur instead of the logical plot progression that leads to the end. Because the middle should logically come from your set up, and it should logically lead to your end.

If it doesn’t you have a serious problem, and you have to fix it. If needed diagram events and focus in each chapter with a goal to “does this advance the plot.” I mean, it’s okay to have subplots and interactions that don’t, but it shouldn’t take focus off your ultimate goal. If it does, it will have to be pruned.

The great advantage of our job is that you can fix it in post and no one will ever know.

For a while all my plots stuck in the middle till I backtracked and fixed them.

But at this point, reading over them, I can’t even tell you precisely where they stuck or what I fixed.

So, you see, there’s hope. But don’t get lost in the middle.