Driving through the Belly of the Book

If you’re like most writers you’ve probably found yourself getting bogged down at some point during the process. It’s really frustrating if you’re a novelist and after days, weeks or months you’re already 25,000 or 35,000 words into it.

Often enough, everything started out well: You chose an interesting setting or milieu, created solid relatable characters, and involved them in compelling situations or conflicts. You may even have a pretty good idea of how you want it to end.

But then …

Somehow everything started to pale. You get the feeling you might just be spinning your wheels – or worse, they’ve come to a complete stop! (Some people call that last “writer’s block,” but I don’t like the term because it suggests the writer is helpless to fix it.)  Maybe you’ve even started to feel a little bit bored with what you’re writing. And trust me, if that happens to you it’s a sure bet it’ll happen to the reader!

Actually, the dilemma – or challenge – is not all that unusual. Editors and publishers call those middle chapters “the belly of the book” and view them as the truest test of a writer’s chops.  Because what everyone wants is for all of those pages to keep on turning right through to the very end!

But not to despair. There is a solution (or solutions). I like to think of in terms of what screenwriters call the “second act driver” (because in an old one hour TV show it came between the first and second commercial breaks). All it means for any kind of storyteller is that something new needs to be added: a fresh element that’s so vital and compelling it will drive the story forward, powerfully and inexorably, toward its final conclusion.

It could be some urgent deadline imposed on the characters, like a kidnapper’s threat to kill the victim unless the ransom is paid within 24 hours. Or a time bomb that’s set to go off in the next twenty minutes.

More often, especially in a long work like a novel, it’s a change in the situation that introduces some new and unexpected conflict or dilemma. This might involve the discovery of previously unknown but important information, the introduction of a new character (or an unexpected revelation about an existing one), or simply some external event that’s beyond the control of the characters involved. Whatever it is, it should be something that takes the story in an interesting new direction.

The highly successful French melodramatist Rene Pixéricourt understood this principle well. His terse description of how he arrived at his plots is well worth pondering and remembering: First, he said, get your hero up a tree. Then throw rocks at him. Finally, get him down.

What could be simpler?

Of course, making your “tree” and “rocks” believable and of interest to the reader can be a bit more challenging. That requires creativity as well as certain ruthlessness toward your characters. (It’s not much of a story, after all, if there’s no pain or danger.)

But if your “rocks” are well-timed and large enough, there’s no reason your story should ever sag in the middle – and you’ll keep those pages turning right up till the final “THE END.”