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"Help! I'm Stuck In The Middle of My Story! Now What?!”

By The MANA Staff


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There’s nothing as frustrating as getting stuck in the middle of your fiction novel and not know in what direction to turn.

Ideally, developing a story outline helps. However, not all writers will do this because they want to work out the plot as they go along. 

On the other hand, sometimes authors can develop an outline but then take the story into another direction. 

If you have written yourself into this predicament, don’t panic. 

Just breathe. 

Step back for a moment and see whether the following advice will help you get out of your hard place.  

Bring your story to a boil 

In the beginning, you introduced the characters and set up the conflict.  So, bring the tension and suspense that you’ve been building from the beginning to a boiling point in the middle of your story.

Expose Secrets

This is the perfect time to surprise your readers by revealing secrets about your main characters or have your characters experience tragic moments. For instance, you can reveal that your character:

• Is having an affair
• found out at 53 years old that she was adopted
• Is falsely accused of stealing classified documents from his company and now “shadowy figures” are after him. 

Readers love finding out something about the characters that they didn’t already know. The revelations you create may even confirm what readers suspected about the characters all along. If readers did not suspect anything, the exposed secrets will prompt them to either flip a few pages back to see why they “didn’t see it coming” or continue reading to find out what happens next.

Revelations in the middle of your story also give you more material to work with as you move to the end of your story.  
“It’s complicated”

Now that the secrets are out, your storyline can heat up even more by complicating matters for your characters. At this point you can:

1. Show the full range of your characters’ emotions as a result of the revelations. Depending on the secret, the character may feel hurt, disillusioned, disappointed or angry. 

2. Show what your characters are thinking. Have your characters voice their thoughts about the matter to themselves or to someone else. What are their fears? What do they think about themselves or others because of the “revelations”? 

3. Answer the question, “What does the character have to gain or lose because of this new turn of events?” 

4. Complete the background information (if you haven’t already) of the characters who are harmed by or benefit from the revelation. For instance, if one of your main characters found out her multimillionaire CEO husband is cheating on her, she may benefit from this by divorcing him and getting millions of dollars as a settlement or make him give her anything she wants as a way to apologize for his actions.

5. Create a fallout. Who breaks up? Who stays together? Who stops talking to whom? Who resigns? Who loses money? In other words, what are the consequences of the exposed secrets?

Resolve the conflict

Now that you’ve complicated matters for your characters, it’s time to find solutions to their problems. The solutions that you work out for your characters from here can lead you to the end of the story.  

You may not want to work out all of the problems for all of your characters; especially your main characters. You may want to think about resolving some problems but leaving some open and use those in the sequel to your next book. 

Without a doubt, the middle can be the most challenging part of your story, which is why it’s easy to get stuck. However, the more complications you can create for your characters and the more secrets you can expose, you’ll find yourself with more room to wiggle out of your literary hard place. 




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