Some writers really struggle to write the middle of their stories, but a boring or “mushy” middle is not something that just happens to stories, it shows a lack of planning and lack of plotting. But how do you avoid a mushy middle, or fix it if you’re already deep in the marshes of it? Let’s talk about that.
Related posts: Why your story can’t have boring parts – How to plot a novel – How to get out of a plot hole – Structuring your story the easy way
What is a “mushy middle”?
Welcome to the mushy middle! Your novel started with a bang and you’ve got a whole-ass gut-wrenching jaw-dropping finish planned out, but first… you have to get there. You have to wade through your middle first, and you hate it.
Mushy middles happen when there’s not really anything going on between the beginning and the end of your story and you’re only writing the middle because you know there needs to be a middle. The problem is, the middle isn’t there just to keep the beginning and the end apart.
Believe it or not, it’s not a given that the middle of your story is flabby and it’s actually completely avoidable. I’m not saying this to shame you but to encourage you, because obviously I want you to fix this issue. You might think the ending to your story would be super cool if only you got there, but it’s actually not going to work if you’re not doing anything for it in the middle.
Your story can’t have pointless parts
You can read more about this on my post about the boring parts of your story, but I’ll explain it briefly here as well.
Everything in your story needs to have a purpose, so you can’t write stuff just to increase the word count or because you feel like you have to write something. I mean, sure, it’s your story so you can do whatever you want, but in this blog we talk about writing stories that other people will love too and that we can be proud to publish if we so choose.
If the middle of your story feels mushy, marshy, flabby and flaccid, don’t write it. You need to fix your story first. A middle that doesn’t work is proof that your plot has fundamental problems that will ruin the other parts of your story as well, so only ignore this issue at your own peril.
The middle of your story isn’t the problem
Here’s the thing: If you have a problem in the middle of your story, you can’t fix it by trying to fix the middle. Staring at it long and hard won’t change anything.
A plot is a series of events, maybe even an avalanche, and if it comes to a standstill in the middle, it’s because you didn’t give it enough push in the beginning. And you might think the end of your story is fantastic, but it isn’t as good as you think if you’re not taking the time to build up to it.
Yes, we’re going to talk about what kind of things can happen in the middle of your story, but we need to talk about your plot as a whole first.
Where is the beginning of your story going?
If your story isn’t really doing anything in the middle, you need to ask yourself if you set it up right in the beginning. You can’t blame a ball for not rolling if you didn’t actually push it.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Did I give my characters an unavoidable problem that they can’t run away from and a reason to be personally involved?
- Do my characters have a compelling enough reason to keep moving, even if it means actively running away from something instead of choosing to act on it?
- Did I give my characters an agenda in their own story instead of making them passively wait for the ending?
- Do my characters make decisions that have consequences in the future?
- Do the characters have flaws and pre-existing problems that affect their decisions?
There’s no point to the beginning of your story if it doesn’t put things in motion, and any problem that doesn’t have consequences and doesn’t acutely require anything from your characters is a non-problem, better to be left to some non-story.
Until the midpoint of your story, your characters should still be reacting to the main conflict of the story and trying to get back on their feet, while also (usually unbeknownst to them) learning things that will ultimately be crucial in solving their problems. Anything that happens in the end, you should also begin setting up here, and if you’ve got a plot twist coming up, you need to plant the seeds here as well.
So really, there’s no reason for the middle of your story to lag. There’s a lot that the first half of your story needs to do and you can’t afford to leave any of it out. All that stuff is going to keep your story moving instead of sagging.
What made the end of your story happen?
Yup, I’m talking about the end of the story before I’m talking about the middle. What are you going to do about it, call my mother?
In case I didn’t make it clear yet, your story needs to keep moving the whole time. It doesn’t have to be obvious to your readers where the events are going and which things end up being crucial to the plot, but you as the writer need to know and you need to have your hands on the wheel the whole time. You need to be driving your story towards the end the straight from the beginning, not taking a break in the middle.
As you’ll soon find out, the middle of your story needs to be some kind of a turning point in your protagonist’s journey. If you have an idea of where you want the end to go, you need the circumstances to start going that way sooner or later (even if your characters are in denial or ignorant of it). The end should also contrast the beginning, and you need to use the middle of your story to make the change happen.
Your characters should also experience some kind of change over the course of your story, but because change is annoying and painful, they try to resist it until it’s impossible. Before they can truly change (whatever change here means, it could also be a change in perspective) you need to put them through the wringer and force them to do what they need to do at the end of your story. That also takes time.
The ending of your story shouldn’t be random. If it is, it isn’t making an impact. Even if we can only see it in hindsight, as should usually be the case, the root cause to whatever happens should be found earlier on in the story. It’s all about cause and effect, so don’t have effects without causes. The middle of your story paves the way to the end.
Okay, let’s talk about the middle of your story now
Because you didn’t just skip to this part, you know that all the parts of your story support each other and that’s why you can’t afford to have a saggy middle, and now we’re ready to talk about the actual middle.
Although your characters should often learn information that makes them change their approach, the middle of your story should have a real turning point for your protagonist. That means something significant needs to happen.
Until now, your protagonist has been mostly reacting to the Big Problem of the story and trying to get back on their feet, but something in the middle of the story forces them to change tactics in a big way and they see how they finally need to become proactive. Becoming proactive can also happen after the middle, but not too long after, and it’s often related to what happens in the middle anyway.
What should happen in the middle of your story
Here are some examples of significant midpoint events:
- A new disaster that is an additional complication related to the original Big Problem of the story and that forces your characters to change tactics dramatically
- New information that puts everything in a new light and that forces or allows your characters to do things differently
- A fake defeat where it looks like all has been lost (because your characters don’t know they’re in a story) although things actually aren’t what they seem and this defeat could actually end up being a good thing – and it’s not even the rock bottom yet
- A false victory where the characters think they’ve finally solved their problem, but they’ve actually been chasing a false goal or been doing things in a wrong way (and they’re just too stubborn to change yet)
For example, if you were writing a romance novel, your two characters might kiss or even get intimate in the middle of your story, but they haven’t truly got each other because they haven’t yet dealt with their inner problems that are the real things keeping them apart. They might even get spooked by how close they got to each other in the middle, and to them the turning point is realising how serious things really are.
Spinning Silver is one of my absolute favourite books, and though there are multiple points of view in the story, Miryem and Irina are the main characters. They’ve both been forced to marry a man with unpleasant supernatural qualities, and when their paths cross in the middle of the story, they realise they could help each other solve their unfortunate husband problems and they finally device a plan instead of being like “Yikes, I need to get rid of this man but I don’t know how”.
I can’t give you an exact prescription for the middle of your story, but as you can see, there are many ways to have something important happen there. You need to start building up to that thing from the beginning and it’s going to help you write an actually impactful end.
Okay, so my middle sucks, now what?
Plastering on a significant event isn’t really helpful because it isn’t going to really make sense if the rest of your plot wasn’t made to work with it. That’s why, I’m afraid, you need to get back to the drawing board.
No, you don’t need to abandon that story idea completely – I’m sure it’s a great story – but you do need to rework the plot before you start rewriting it. You don’t necessarily need to scrap every scene you’ve already written, because it’s totally fine and normal to tweak the plot during editing anyway, and you might already have some good material. There’s a lot of foreshadowing and context that is easier to add afterwards no matter how well you’ve planned your story.
But really, as you’ve already learned in this post, fixing the middle isn’t just about fixing the middle. There’s a lot more to it.
I’ve got so much plotting help for you in my How to Plot a Novel masterpost, but you could also get this simple plotter that helps you plot your story in just three pages.
Alternatively, you could learn even more about writing the middle of your story AND about every little detail that goes into plotting inside my course Your Plot From A To Z. It’ll teach you an organic way of truly understanding your plot without you having to learn new terminology or figure out how to add a pinch point to the 23% mark in your plot.
Does the middle have to be exactly in the middle?
I know YOU have enough common sense to know that when I’m talking about the middle of your story, I don’t just mean page 150 in your 300-page novel. That would be silly.
But to the people who need it spelled out: No, you don’t need to count pages to know what we’re talking about. Middle-ish is fine, you don’t need to get stressed over it.
You do want to go for balance, however, and that’s easier to do in the outlining stages than when you’re editing a 100K-word manuscript. You want to take the time to properly build up your story without taking ages before something interesting and important happens, and you want to keep the end moving at an increasing pace without rushing to The End.
Have enough substance without filler in both halves of your story and keep things moving. Whatever issues you have, that’s what the editing process is for, you can fix what you need to fix. You’ve got this.
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
