How (not) to write the boring parts

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I’ve heard this complaint many times: a beginning writer would like to write a novel, but they can’t wait to get to the “exciting part” of their story and they hate writing the “boring parts”. If this is you, how do you fix that? Let’s talk about is!

I generally always talk about writing novels in my content, but this stuff applies even if you’re writing something like a novella or just a long fan fiction story, as long as there isn’t just a handful of scenes.

The reason why your story has “boring parts”

So your story has “boring parts” and “exciting parts”. Why do you think that is? I’d say there are two possible scenarios that are at play here.

Maybe you DO have a fairly good plot, or at least material for a good plot, but you don’t know how to structure it into a single, readable story, so you think you need to include all this other fairly unrelated stuff or start your story way earlier than you actually should.

The other option is that you actually only have enough material for a short story, or just a couple of cool scenes, and you think the way to turn that into a full novel plot is just to add whatever stuff you can think of. This is a huge problem, and I’ll explain why soon.

Whatever the reason is for these boring parts that you think you should write, please don’t think I’m judging you in any way or that it means anything about you as a writer. How would you know how to plot a story if no one had taught you, and how could you look for information if you didn’t understand what the real problem was? This is what I’m here for, bestie. Now let’s fix those boring parts.

Do you actually LIKE your story?

I suppose this could be a third reason why you think your story has boring parts, but I just wanted to pause and give some consideration to your story idea and your genre. Do you actually like the story you’re trying to write?

Sometimes we overthink this stuff and we start writing something we’re “supposed to” write instead of something that lights us up. Maybe our vision for ourselves as a writer doesn’t align with what we actually enjoy reading and writing, or maybe we’re scared of what people will think of us.

You’re ALWAYS more likely to finish writing a story when it’s something that your heart is in and that excites you. If you don’t have a story idea you’re completely obsessed with, you can find one here.

Why you shouldn’t write a story that has boring parts

Here’s the truth: boring parts don’t belong in your story and nobody wants to read them. Hearing that might hurt, but the sooner you learn it, the sooner you can fix it.

I mean, sure, when a story is a bad fit with a reader, they might just find a lot of it boring. I personally find heist movies and stories extremely uninteresting, but that’s a Me Problem. However, YOU as the writer shouldn’t find any part of your story boring! If you don’t want to write it, nobody wants to read it.

The fact that you think some parts of your story are exciting and everything else that comes before that is boring unfortunately means that those exciting parts won’t be that exciting for your readers either. Why? Because you didn’t set them up right. You didn’t make them matter. And that’s where plotting comes in.

You didn’t plot your story the right way

For things to escalate in your story, they need to start from somewhere. Most importantly, you need to have that “somewhere” on the page so that we can see it, too.

For an exciting scene to matter to us, you also need to show us what’s at stake and you need to make us care about the outcome and about your characters. You need to start that work on the first pages.

Your main character and the big problem that they’re dealing with (you know, the thing that your story is about) need to be a perfect fit, you can’t just have a random character with a random problem. The problem is a real problem precisely because that specific person can’t solve it straight away for one reason or another. This character needs to be struggling with something, be running away from something and be at some kind of a crossroads at the very beginning of your story.

I’m not yelling at you, I just don’t want anyone to scroll past this without noticing: YOU NEED TO START BUILDING UP TO YOUR EXCITING PLOT EVENTS FROM THE FIRST PAGES OF YOUR STORY.

Tension, tension, tension

When I say that your story needs tension, you might think it only applies to thrillers and disaster films, but every story needs tension. The events that bring the tension depend on your genre, yes, but there’s no genre or story that requires none.

Here’s what tension can be:

something is left unresolved (for now)
something is about to go wrong and it can’t be stopped
a character says one thing but obviously means another
it’s unsure how something will turn out
the characters are oblivious to something that the reader can see or knows

As you can see, tension isn’t just a building about to collapse or a couple having a fight. It belongs in every story, and in fact, on every page. (Just ask Donald Maass.)

Let me reiterate: You’re not using the beginning of your story the right way if you think it’s boring

I’m taking the risk that I’m repeating myself here, but this is so important that it’s worth hammering in a little bit. I take great pride in explaining things in an easy-to-understand way in this blog, with no literary jargon, so I don’t mind taking the time to make sure I’m being clear.

If you think you need to go through all these boring parts in your story before you can get to the part that you really want to write, you’re not utilising the beginning (or sometimes, the middle) of your story the right way.

Here’s what the beginning of your story needs to do:

show what your main character is like, including their existing problems and their personal flaws
show what your main character’s “normal world” is like before something comes in and changes everything
show why that life-changing thing will rattle your main character to their core and why precisely it’s a problem
make the rest of your story believable

If you’re rushing through all that as boring and unimportant, you’re putting zero effort into making the “exciting” parts of your story impactful. You deserve better. Understanding story structure makes all this simple.

When should you start your story?

If your character’s life is changed on Friday, you don’t have to start your story on Monday just because that’s when the week starts. If your character wakes up at seven in the morning, you don’t need to start your story from them turning off the alarm clock.

So when should you start your story? As late as possible. That said, you don’t need to know that when you’re just writing your first draft – you can always make adjustments later. Just start your story from somewhere and edit later.

Your story is a rollercoaster, okay? You’re right, a rollercoaster doesn’t start with a massive climb or a shocking drop, but it also doesn’t start with five minutes of coasting on flat ground. You need to get things moving straight away and give people a taste of what’s still to come.

Give your readers enough context to understand why what happens next matters and lure them into your story’s world straight away without boring them (and yourself) with details and events that have zero significance. Start as late as you can without confusing your reader, that is, and although a good beginning should raise questions, the question shouldn’t be “What the hell is going on?”

Your characters don’t know they’re in a story

A part of writing characters that are realistic is giving them a life. As in, they need to have something going on for them, they can’t just wait around for you to start giving them plot events.

Your character’s life doesn’t have to be “interesting”, whatever that means. I’m not saying they need to be jumping off planes or hanging out with celebrities, and in fact, they don’t even need to be happy. They could even be bored. But they need to be doing something. Show that something in the beginning.

For example, Rose Tyler had a pretty uninspiring and unfulfilling life before the Doctor swooped in, but even if he had never appeared and changed everything for her, we’d know exactly what she’d be doing. She’d just be hanging out with Mickey, eating chips and listening to her mother nag at her about something. It might not have been much to write home about, but it showed us what she was like and gave us context.

What to do with a boring middle

I’ve been talking about the beginning of your story a lot because it needs to carry a lot of weight, but what if it’s the middle that’s boring? Let’s talk about that.

Boring or sagging middles come from poor understanding of plotting and, again, not making use of your story properly. The middle of your story doesn’t exist just to stop your readers going from the beginning straight to the end, it has a lot of work to do.

When your main character is hit with the main conflict of the story (or the Big Problem, as I like to call it), they come up with a plan to solve it, heavily affected by their personality traits, beliefs, current skills, etc. Mostly, though, they’ll just be reacting to the problem and trying to get back on their feet, for now.

Because your character has been thrust into a new reality, they need to be learning the ropes of it and they’ll also be learning new skills, learning new information and meeting new people. The second quarter of your story has to deliver what you promised in your premise, which is why Save the Cat calls it “Fun and Games”. Whatever shenanigans you promised your readers, here’s where it needs to happen.

There should be an upwards or a downwards trajectory until the midpoint of your story, which is when something else big happens (or is revealed) that serves as a turning point for your story and that finally makes your character proactive, although still misguided. From there, things start to escalate even further and mistakes start catching up until your character hits a rock bottom.

Your plot needs constant movement

When you know what needs to happen in the middle of your story, you should realise there isn’t space for boring parts! But what you also need to remember that besides tension, which we talked about earlier, you need movement.

When your character gets new information, they need to act on it. When something doesn’t work, they try something else next. When there’s action, there’s naturally a reaction that follows. Cause and effect keep your plot moving all the way through. What does this mean for the middle of your story? Nothing can happen if you don’t put it into motion earlier, and the end of your story will fall flat if the middle doesn’t keep things moving.

Let’s talk about those exciting parts of your story

So tell me, what are those fun parts that you actually want to write instead of the “other stuff”? Is it an exciting fight scene? A steamy bedroom scene? Let’s talk about it.

Do romance novels usually start with the couple already in the bedroom, totally into each other? Of course not, unless the story is about something else besides them getting together. If it’s in the beginning of the story, it’s their normal life and it’s setting up your story and revealing what your characters are like. Useful, yes, but not exciting. We don’t even know these people.

Romance novels are satisfying to read because your characters need to work for their happily ever after. You need to push them together and pull them apart, push them together again and pull them apart before they can get each other properly. Them kissing or getting between the sheets means nothing to your readers unless you’ve showed them why it needs to happen and then put all kinds of obstacles in the way.

What about action? You want to write about your hero storming the castle with his ragtag group of wayward mages and it’s your favourite part of the story, and really, the only one you want to write. But why would your readers care about your characters and what happens to them unless you had shown what they’re like and what they’re trying to achieve? Why would anyone care about the outcome?

Just look at books or movies you love that have scenes that you always look forward to. Why do you like them? What makes them exciting? Think of how much of that depends on the work that the writer did beforehand. Then ask someone else’s recommendation for a book or a movie with a really exciting scene and read/watch it blindly – what did you think of that scene yourself? What made you connect or not connect with it? Then use all that knowledge in your own stories.

Is this really what all readers want?

I’m not pretending to know what every single person wants to get from stories. Somebody WILL watch any Jurassic Park movie just to see cool dinosaurs and they’ll think criticizing the storyline or the characters is just needless nit-picking. (I didn’t make that up, that’s a real review I read.)

However, you read all the way to here, so I know you care about writing good stories. (I know it isn’t because you’ve got a crush on me since this isn’t one of my Youtube videos.) You don’t want to write novels for people who don’t really care about good stories and who are only in it for the special effects.

I don’t know, maybe you do want to write forgettable and disposable stories, but unfortunately I can’t help you with that, and I will not participate in whatever is the literary version of fast fashion, not as a writer nor as a consumer.

Please just assume your readers want stories that make sense and that keep them turning the pages because they want to keep reading, not just to finish them out of frustration or out of spite.

So… Do you have to rewrite your entire story now?

I mean, probably. Sorry! I assume you came here wanting to learn how to suffer through your boring parts, and all I’ve done is tell you that your entire plot sucks. There’s no need to develop drama around this, I have full faith in you that you can make it work. All the exciting stuff that you’re looking forward to writing so much will be even better when you set it up right.

And hey, maybe you just want to write a short story. Maybe your fanfic only has a few scenes. And that’s okay too! We don’t all have to write novels. There are multiple subreddits where people write sex scenes or horror scenarios, and that’s totally valid, you can still write for other people even if you don’t want to write a full novel.

How to write a story with no boring parts

If you read the entire post and didn’t just skip all the way to the end, you might have already guessed that when you take the time to plot your story properly, all parts of it have a purpose and aren’t “boring”.

I’ve already written so much about plotting that I’m not going to write ten more paragraphs about it here, so instead I’ll just give you a list of my best resources and you can choose where to start from:

I truly hope this post has helped you with this specific problem, and if you’ve got any other writing problems you’d like me to solve, let me know in the comments (or email me at hello(at)protagonistcrafts.com) and I’ll get right on it.

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.

How (not) to write the boring parts