The middle act of a story is where it can really start to lose its energy. So how can we keep writing with a sense of urgency that will keep the reader turning the page?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, folks. As discussed last week, I’m still in the middle act of this novel, still in the muddy middle, and this is where a story can really start to lose its energy. So how can we keep writing with a sense of urgency that will keep the reader turning the page? I mean, part of the problem is our characters might not want to change. They might want everything just to stay the same, keep the status quo. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for them to want.
But you, the author, have to be an Old Testament God and make it so that they don’t have any choice but to take action and change. Sometimes we can love a protagonist so much we don’t want any harm to come to them. Stuff that. Make their lives hell and do it with a big grin on your face. It’s often only by testing these characters that we really come to love them. We tell stories about people and those stories are about change.
A story where a character overcomes challenges to become a different person is often the most satisfying. Even in a series where the protagonist doesn’t change fundamentally — say a detective series where they’re solving different crimes with each story — that will have some important element of their personality challenged by the kind of crime they’re solving. Change is an essential element of both story and character. So ask yourself whose story is this and how do they change? And also that thing of keeping the status quo isn’t wanting nothing.
It’s a desire to keep things as they are. A stable, safe life, which is totally understandable, but it must be challenged, otherwise why are we reading this story? So, for example, once upon a time there was someone who was perfectly happy, didn’t do anything, stayed the same. The end. Contrast that with Once upon a time there was someone who was perfectly happy, but something threatened that happiness. And so they had to take steps to preserve that happiness.
But in the course of doing so, made discoveries that created a new balance and a new happiness in their life. The end. There’s also a crucial difference between an active and reactive protagonist. One seeks a change in their life and goes looking for a solution, and the latter has change thrust upon them and has no choice but to change. And one of the most important elements for a protagonist is agency, that is they are the ones who, when things go awry, do the difficult thing and make decisions that will mean there’s no turning back.
They can have mentors who advise them. But in the end, it’s the protagonist who takes action. Of course, this all comes with a big, chunky caveat. What I’m talking about here is very much a Western, European, Hero’s Journey, Monomyth way of storytelling. For contrast, if you look at stories from, say, Asian cultures, it can be very different and makes for really compelling storytelling. There’s a couple of wonderful Twitter threads by the brilliant writers, Malinda Lo and Aliette De Bodard on this.
Malinda’s thoughts on this: https://twitter.com/malindalo/status/1182265991243403265
Aliette’s thoughts: https://twitter.com/aliettedb/status/1085310575113134081
I hope that was useful and until next time. Happy writing.
Mark Stay Writes 