In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Kristin Melville offers advice for creating a strong middle section for your novel. “Middles are especially hard because, even when you study structure, the beginning and endings are more regimented and obvious,” Melville writes. “Unfortunately, that can mean the larger—and just as important—middle is left sagging.”
One way to buttress your middle section is to shift the stakes. “It helps to create a plot point roughly halfway through your manuscript that you can aim toward,” Melville says. “Often referred to as the midpoint, I call this point the Stake Shift, because while the fundamental story question doesn’t change, the intensity and our understanding of the story (not necessarily the characters’ understanding) changes.” As an example, Melville cites the dramatic shift at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke Skywalker’s father. While this happens at the end of one film, it also occurs just past the halfway point in the trilogy and creates personal stakes for Luke, even as the larger goal of defeating the Empire remains unchanged.
Melville advises planning this shift early in the story, so that you can work toward and from it. What can these shifts look like?
- Remove key players.
- Set up a seemingly insurmountable roadblock.
- Reveal the terrible consequences of the main character’s previous choices.
Melville offers two tips to help you find the best turning point:
- Provide new vital information. “Introducing new information is a great way to keep your story on track while changing up the trajectory,” she says. “Shatter your character’s expectations of how their future will go. Don’t knock them out of the sky yet, but kick up the turbulence.” The information can be external or something about the protagonist that the protagonist didn’t know about herself.
- Make the protagonist self-reflect. “Creating an inescapable moment of reflection will ramp up your story’s momentum. Does your protagonist like what they see?” Melville writes. “Are they increasingly hopeless or hopeful about their future? And most importantly, what will they do about it?” If your character hasn’t begun to change before now, this is the time to shake them up.
Melville also offers this caveat. “Don’t change the scope of your story so much that it’s unrecognizable,” she says. “It’s possible that a carefully planned twist can backfire on you, so foreshadow it enough that your readers can follow along, or not feel too disbelieving.”
