Stuck in the middle of your story?

You’ve nailed the first act of your novel and you have a clear vision of how it will end, but the middle part is giving you trouble? Maybe your outline for the middle is vague and just says something like, “Things happen.”

You try to write the first part of the middle, hoping to get through it. But after a few scenes or chapters, you feel like you have nothing more to say. You throw in some random events that you think are thrilling or risky to fill up some space before you can get to the climax. You introduce a new character to spice things up. Does that sound familiar?

Then one of these things happens. You either finish it or you don’t.

You finish your draft and send it to your beta readers, hoping for some praise and encouragement. But instead, you get back comments that make you want to cry. They lost interest halfway through. They didn’t understand why you included that beach scene. They felt like you repeated yourself with that hospital scene. You end up with a weak middle that lacks substance, character growth and tension. 

You give up on your draft and start a new one. You get hooked by a new idea, a new character and begin writing with enthusiasm. And you end up in the same situation.

Scene Objectives

The big picture of your story depends on your characters’ objectives for the entire plot. To make every scene work, you have to think about scene objectives. A scene objective is what a character hopes to accomplish in that particular scene. Be clear about what they desire. Ensure that it connects to their character objective – it’s one move in the choreography. Then they either succeed or fail at that scene objective.

By dividing the middle of your novel into individual scenes, and seeing them as milestones leading to the final confrontation rather than ‘stuff’ that occurs to fill up space, you can maintain your enthusiasm and direction.

Break free from the pattern of unfinished drafts. Concentrate on objectives.

With the new year fast approaching, it’s the perfect time to start thinking about new writing goals for 2025. But before we do that, let’s take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come.

I’ve been reflecting on the many exciting projects I’ve been working on, including making significant progress on my second novel. What have you been chipping away at, and what are you most proud of? Let’s learn from our hurdles, and celebrate our successes. 

But first, I have some presents to finish wrapping and sneak under the tree. And that red wine won’t drink itself. So until then, I wish you Seasons Greetings however (and if) you celebrate. See you in 2025!

When you have some ideas for writing, but you’re not familiar with the fancy words that writers use. 

Have you ever felt intimidated when you hear writers talk about their craft? I know I have. When I was hosting a live event recently, I realised that I was using some jargon that might not be clear to everyone. Maybe I was confusing them, or worse, making them feel like they don’t belong! Sometimes writers use words that you don’t know, and you start to doubt yourself. That’s not a good feeling!

Learning how to write… as you write!

Sometimes you might feel unsure about your writing skills. Maybe you don’t know when to use an apostrophe, or what some words mean, or how to spell and punctuate correctly. But that’s OK. You don’t have to be perfect to write well. Or maybe you don’t know the technical word for something in writing, simply because you’ve not encountered it before – that’s fine. Even I have to check things sometimes when I forget or get confused. And then there are those days when you have a great idea in your head, but you can’t find the right words to express it. That happens to everyone. Don’t let that stop you from writing, or make you feel bad about yourself. No one is judging you.

Practice makes perfect!

Think of it like this: you get a Marvel comic book as a gift. You don’t have to know everything about the characters before you open it. You just dive into the story and have fun with it. Maybe you’ll get curious and want to learn more about them later. That’s how writing works too. You don’t need to study it first, you just have a go at doing it. You learn as you go along. Don’t they say, every day is a school day?!

There are some things you should learn all about before you start doing them. There are certain jobs or tasks where you will of course need some background knowledge, qualifications – situations where someone might get hurt, or your actions affect others. But writing isn’t like learning to drive, at least not in that way. You’re not going to do any harm by having a go at writing. Maybe you will do it badly to start with, but you can always get better with practice. You can improve the ways you did it the first time around, but by playing about with ideas and making a start, you have already given yourself a great start.

Write what you want to write

So, just ‘doing the thing’ – in this case, writing fiction. If you want to, you can try to do everything by yourself – just start writing and learn as you go, improve your skills, solve problems along the way. Or you might want to join others who are also writing and get their feedback and help – my Book Forge community is a good option, which is all about sitting in the chair, spending time writing, and achieving your writing goals. It’s nice to have people who share your dreams and can give you advice and support. 

Whilst it can be helpful to learn some of the common terms, especially if you want to communicate with other writers, editors, or readers – it’s not a requirement. The important thing is that you are actually doing it. Don’t worry too much about writing jargon. It can be useful, but it’s not a must-have. Write what you want to write, how you want to write it. That’s what matters most.

A bad week of writing…

I wasn’t having a productive week of writing. But yesterday I sat down and just wrote without really knowing what I was going to write. I not only smashed my word count target, I got another plot twist out of it that I didn’t know was going to happen.

Hooray for me! 🙂

The magic of writing without a plan

So, you might be asking – how does a breakthrough happen in the story you’re writing? How can you get that lightbulb excitement of realisation… ‘That’s what she’s going to say/do/have happen to her!’ 

A certain amount of planning, certainly. It has to come out of your head, after all. But it’s not about cudgelling your brains until you force it out of the logical bits of the grey matter. A great deal of the work is done using the bits of your brain that handle subconscious thought. In other words, relax a bit.

The most important (and the most successful) thing you can do to write a story or a novel is to write. Put yourself into the situation where your brain is able to give you the ideas. That means relaxing and just writing.

How do writers know what to write about? Where do they get their ideas?

Not by some winged inspiration fairy whispering in their ears, that’s for sure. Wish it was. In my head she looks a bit like me… only her pixie-cut hair ALWAYS behaves itself and she’s got a perfect cheeky grin.

Writers know what to write about by writing it. There’s often a bit of daydreaming, sure – the three-day Take Five Writing Anti-Challenge that’s available with my writing partner-in-crime is where you can give that a go. But the real story? The details? The order of things and the why and the how? That comes about by starting to write. It grows as you write it. Then you get other ideas – they multiply like alien spawn. (Unpleasant simile, maybe… but you get my point.)

I am doing that myself. I’ve been sitting on the ideas for my second novel for a while. (First one an historical thriller set in the Tudor era called The Heretic’s Servant… go look it up!) Now I’ve properly got going with it, writing a bit every day, and taking that action is making the story come to life. Before, I was trying to get my little inspiration fairy to tell me what the story was going to be like and making a promise that when I knew what was supposed to happen, I’d write it down.

Big mistake. And I knew it was wrong. But I was letting my fear of writing the ‘wrong’ thing stop me from writing at all. No more.

Fear of writing? No more!

I’ve got my motivation, my simple rules (write 200 words a day, five days a week), my tools (Free progress tracker from Book Forge, my plan and reminders of what works for me) and my support network. If you don’t know what to write about, do one simple thing… write. Even if it’s about what happened when you went to the supermarket. It doesn’t matter. Just. Write. You can absolutely do this on your own – writing is one of the lowest cost activities there is. And if you want support, motivation, encouragement, community, it is here, waiting for you.

Perhaps you have ideas for novels that you’ve started but put away saying you’ll come back to them when you’ve got more time. Or you’re making painstaking, stop-start progress on your book. People keep asking how it’s going and you feel a bit embarrassed or guilty that you don’t have much to report. Maybe it’s not you that’s the writer but your nearest and dearest and you’d like to know how to help them.

Meeting your writing goals in 2024

Here is the solution. More than the awareness of the problem of your time shortage. You know that. You also know that the book will only get written if you write it. Hazel Hitchins Author and I have a brand new offer for you that supports you to actually write it. You can carve out the time, get your head in the right space, and develop the habits that will see your writing progress take hold. You can be one of our founding members. There are loads of writing groups on Facebook. You’ve probably joined some (or your writing friend has). They’ve got their good points but they don’t help you sit in the chair and write. They don’t help you carve out the time to put words on the page.