In a post on DIY MFA, F.E. Choe offers suggestions for making it through the muddy middle of your novel. “Have you recently hit a wall in the middle of a project?” she asks. “Do you feel unable to move the story forward and escalate events in a meaningful way? Have you lost the thread, and with it, the heart and feeling, the excitement and urgency that drove you to start the cursed thing in the first place?”
If so, try the following:
- Briefly re-read your current draft. Set a timer and read what you have so far. “Look for clues about the stakes, your characters’ known as well as unacknowledged goals and motives, the primary conflict, and the heart of your story,” Choe suggests. “The key here is to read without preconceptions of what your story ‘should[ be, but rather with an eye for the key elements, symbols, and potential themes currently seeded in your work and calling out to be developed further.”
- Write a 2-5 sentence synopsis. “The point of this exercise, like the first one, is to help clarify what the piece is saying on a deeper level,” Choe explains. “Use this information to flesh out the middle of your story. What can you do in your scenes and how can you arrange them to better illustrate and illuminate this larger truth?”
- Check technical aspects of your story like POV, verb tense, and your choice of MC. The wrong POV, tense, or protagonist can inhibit your story. Consider whether your POV is adding to the story and if changing tense might help you unlock new aspects. More drastically, consider whether your current protagonist is the right character to carry your plot. Would another supporting character serve you better?
- Go off-stage and off-script for a bit. If you’re really stuck or find your story feels flat, open a separate document and go crazy. “Use the blank page for pure exploration, the wilder the better,” Choe says. “Sometimes it is precisely those offstage moments of exploration that give us the kind of insight into our characters that allows us to render them with the very complexity demanded by a publishable, final draft.”
- Skip ahead. Write your major confrontation, denouement, or epilogue, then work backwards towards the middle to discover what needs to happen to get to the end.
