A sagging middle can happen even when your novel has plenty going on.
The middle of the book. Every writer talks about how hard it is. Maybe you’re stuck in the middle right now and you don’t know what happens next. Or maybe you’ve already written the middle, but you know it’s not working.
How do you solve this big problem of the middle of the book?
Most of the writing advice I’ve seen is wrong.
Typically, we hear some version of these suggestions: speed up the pacing, add more conflict, and raise the stakes.
And those things can help sometimes, but you could add them all and still have the exact same problem you had before.
So let me show you why those fixes often don’t fix the middle at all and what your story actually needs instead.
Why Faster Pacing May Not Fix a Sagging Middle
Let’s say we have a woman named Claire whose younger sister has disappeared. The police have basically given up on the case, but Claire hasn’t. She’s convinced her sister is still alive, and she’s trying to figure out what happened to her.
We get through the beginning of the story just fine. Claire starts investigating. She finds a few clues and begins following the trail.
And then we hit the middle.
Suddenly, we’re not quite sure what to do with her. She can’t find her sister yet because obviously that would end the story. But we’ve got a lot of pages left to fill.
So the first advice we hear is speed up the pacing.
Okay, let’s do that.
Claire gets a mysterious text and races across town to an abandoned warehouse. She gets there, hears somebody inside, breaks in, and starts looking around.
Then she hears footsteps behind her.
Somebody’s coming.
She runs through the warehouse. Somebody chases her, and she barely gets out. She jumps into her car and tears away with the wheels spinning.
Well, that certainly sped things up.
But did we fix the middle?
Not really.
Claire can get back to her apartment after all of that and still be in basically the same place she was before it happened. She still doesn’t know what happened to her sister, and she’s still following the same trail in the same way.
Nothing important has changed.
We made the scene faster, but we didn’t really make the story move.
Why More Conflict May Not Fix a Sagging Middle
Okay, so maybe speeding up the pacing wasn’t enough.
The next thing we’re often told is to add more conflict.
All right. Let’s give Claire more conflict.
She’s still trying to find her missing sister, but now her boss tells her she’s missed too much work. If she leaves early one more time, she’s fired.
Then her boyfriend gets angry because she keeps canceling plans to follow these leads. And the police detective working her sister’s case tells her to please stop interfering with the investigation.
Now Claire has conflict everywhere she turns. Her boss is mad at her. Her boyfriend is mad at her. The detective is mad at her.
Does that fix our middle?
Well, not really.
We can pile conflict onto Claire all day long. But if none of it changes what she has to do next in the central story, all we’ve done is make her life more unpleasant.
She can argue with her boss, fight with her boyfriend, get yelled at by the detective, and then go right back to investigating her sister’s disappearance in exactly the same place where she was before.
And by now, your reader is going, “Ho-hum. Wonder what’s on YouTube?”
Because the reader starts to figure out that all this conflict may make Claire’s life harder, but it isn’t taking the story anywhere new.
There’s nothing new to anticipate. There’s just more conflict.
Who cares?
The story itself hasn’t really changed.
Why Higher Stakes May Not Fix a Sagging Middle
Okay, so now we’ve sped up the pacing. We’ve added more conflict.
How about we try the third piece of advice we hear all the time, which is raise the stakes?
Let’s say Claire learns that her sister left home without an important medication she needs. She only had a few days’ supply with her, and now that time is almost up.
Suddenly, finding her sister isn’t just important. It’s urgent. If Claire doesn’t find her soon, her sister could be in serious danger.
Those are definitely higher stakes.
But have we fixed the middle?
Still not necessarily.
Claire can now follow the same clues, question the same kinds of people, and search the same kinds of places she was searching before.
We’ve given her a bigger reason to hurry, but we haven’t necessarily given the story anywhere new to go.
And the reader may care more because now they’re worried about Claire’s sister. But after a while, even that urgency starts to wear off if every new scene leaves Claire basically where she was before.
So yes, pacing can help. Conflict and higher stakes can absolutely help, too.
But none of these things by themselves will save a sagging middle.
You can have all those things going on, but it’s kind of like you’re dancing a jig in front of your reader while you watch their eyes glaze over.
Why are their eyes glazing over?
After all, you have all this going on.
Your Reader’s Brain Needs Change in a Sagging Middle
Part of the answer may be in what your reader’s brain is doing while they read.
Researchers who study story comprehension have found that readers build what’s called a situation model in their minds. As they read, they’re continually keeping track of what’s going on, including characters, causes, goals, and changes in the situation.
Basically, the reader is asking: What does the main character want? What caused this to happen? What’s changed? And what does all this mean for what might happen next?
When something important changes in the story, the reader has to update that mental model.
There’s even brain research showing increased activity around what researchers call event boundaries, those moments when the situation changes enough that the brain has to say, “Okay. Something’s different now.” Changes in a character’s goals are among the things associated with those boundaries.
And that’s the key here.
It’s different now.
Things are different when a character’s goal changes, when something causes a new situation, or when what the reader expected is no longer what’s happening.
This helps explain why all that pacing, conflict, and higher stakes may still leave your reader bored.
Because your reader isn’t just waiting for something else to happen.
They’re waiting for, drum roll…
change.
Meaningful Change Keeps a Sagging Middle Moving
And I don’t just mean something different happens.
I mean the reader needs the situation to change enough that they have to rethink what they thought was happening or what they thought was going to happen next.
They have to adjust their mental model.
That’s how we make the story unpredictable.
Our perceptual systems are continually using what just happened to make predictions about what may happen next, and event boundaries are associated with moments when those predictions need updating.
As we follow a story, we’re trying to anticipate what this character is going to do, whether the plan will work, what this new information means, and where all this may be headed.
When the story changes in a meaningful way, those predictions have to change, too.
Suddenly, the reader has a new question to chase.
And that’s interesting.
That’s what keeps them reading.
So if Claire races across town, argues with her boyfriend, gets threatened by her boss, and learns that her sister is running out of medication, but she still ends up following the same kind of clues in basically the same situation she was in before, the reader catches on pretty quickly.
All this stuff is happening, but the story isn’t taking me anywhere new.
Same old, same old.
My mental picture of Claire’s problem is still basically the same one I had 20, 50, or 70 pages ago.
And once the reader stops expecting the next scene to change anything important, it gets a lot harder to make them desperate to find out what happens next.
So if pacing, conflict, and stakes aren’t enough, what does your middle actually need?
It needs change—the kind that alters the situation and gives the reader something new to anticipate.
How do you create that change?
You use four distinct tools.
1. Antagonistic Pressure Can Transform a Sagging Middle
The first thing your middle needs is pressure from an antagonist or opposing force.
And this is different from just adding conflict.
Remember what we did with Claire before? Her boss was angry. Her boyfriend was angry. The detective was angry.
She had conflict everywhere.
But none of those people were pushing back against what Claire was actually trying to accomplish: finding her sister.
That is what the antagonist does.
Something in the story wants something that interferes with what your protagonist wants. And as your protagonist moves forward, the antagonist pushes back.
So in Claire’s story, let’s say the antagonist is the person who took her sister.
Claire wants to find her sister.
The antagonist wants to make sure she doesn’t.
Now we have two forces working directly against each other, and that creates the spark you need in the middle of your story.
That antagonistic pressure can show up however you want it to. The antagonist doesn’t have to walk onto the page every few chapters and threaten Claire. Claire may not even know who this person is yet.
But the pressure does have to show up.
Let the Antagonist Change the Sagging Middle
Let’s say Claire finds a witness who saw her sister get into a car the night she disappeared.
Claire arranges to meet him the next morning, but when she gets there, the witness is gone.
What happened?
That really throws Claire for a loop.
Look at what we just did. Claire made progress. She found someone who might give her an important clue in the case.
But then, just when it looked like she might get a breakthrough, it seems like the antagonist responded and took the witness away.
Because of that, the story has changed.
Claire isn’t just looking for a missing sister anymore. Now she knows someone is actively trying to stop her from finding out what happened.
That changes everything.
It changes the danger she may be in. It changes the question she’s asking, and it changes what she has to do next.
Compare that with what happens if we leave the antagonist out.
Let’s say Claire finds the witness, but before she can meet with him, her boss calls and threatens to fire her.
That’s conflict.
Or maybe Claire learns her sister’s medication is about to run out.
Those are higher stakes.
But neither one necessarily creates the change we want.
The witness is still sitting there waiting to talk to Claire, and Claire can deal with her boss, worry even more about her sister, and then go meet the witness exactly as she planned.
The pressure around the story has increased, but the story itself hasn’t experienced any change.
Now put the antagonist back in.
Antagonists are magical.
Claire tries to meet the witness, and the antagonist gets in the way. Suddenly, she can’t keep doing what she was doing before.
The situation has changed. It’s much scarier now.
So Claire has to change with it.
That’s why the antagonist is so critical in your story. One of their main jobs is to create pressure in the middle of your story that actually creates change.
2. Protagonist Choices Keep a Sagging Middle From Going Passive
Now Claire has to decide what she’s going to do about this, which brings us to the second tool.
The antagonist has created pressure that led to change. Claire went to meet the witness, but the witness was gone. Someone seems to be actively trying to stop her from finding her sister.
Now what?
This is where your protagonist has to make a choice.
And this is really important in the middle of your story because the protagonist shouldn’t just keep reacting to whatever happens to them.
They have to decide what they’re going to do about the change.
Claire could decide, “Oh my gosh, this is getting dangerous. I need to back off and let the police handle it.”
That would be a choice.
Or she could decide, “Someone’s trying to stop me, which means I must be getting close. I’m going to find out who took that witness even though it is dangerous.”
That’s a very different choice.
Either way, the story has increased the danger to Claire. It’s increased the risk she is taking, which is always a good way to make your middle increase the pressure and tension so your reader wants to stay with you.
Put your main character in more danger.
Works every time.
So instead of going back to the same list of clues Claire was already following, this time she changes direction. She starts trying to figure out who knew about the witness and who could have gotten to him before she did.
You see how the story is changing?
The antagonist changed Claire’s situation by taking away the witness and making her more afraid.
Now Claire’s choice changes what she’s going to do next.
Choices Give a Sagging Middle Forward Movement
This is where the middle starts to come alive because the protagonist is no longer simply moving through things that happen.
They’re making decisions in response to the pressure, and those decisions keep sending the story somewhere new.
Compare that with a protagonist who doesn’t really make a choice.
Let’s say Claire arrives and the witness is gone. She’s upset, and she wonders what happened.
But then she goes back to searching for her sister exactly the way she was before.
We had an interesting event, but Claire didn’t make a choice in response to it.
After a while, we’re right back where we started.
The protagonist’s choices are what help turn the antagonist’s pressure into forward movement in your story.
The antagonist says, in effect, “You can’t keep going this way.”
And the protagonist has to answer, “Fine. Then here’s what I’m going to do instead.”
That answer changes the path of the story.
But of course, Claire doesn’t get to make a choice and then simply have everything work out, right?
Her choice is going to cause something else to happen.
And that brings us to tool number three.
3. Consequences Keep a Sagging Middle From Resetting
Claire has made a choice.
Instead of backing off, she’s decided she’s going to find out who knew she was planning to meet the witness.
Now we need a third tool.
Her choice needs to create a consequence that changes the story again.
And I think this is where a lot of middles can go wrong.
Something happens, the protagonist responds, and then everything basically resets.
We don’t want that.
Claire’s choice needs to lead somewhere different.
So let’s say she starts looking into who might have known about the meeting with the witness. She checks the witness’s phone records and discovers something she never expected.
The witness had been talking regularly with the detective assigned to her sister’s case.
Now Claire has a whole new problem.
Up until this point, she thought the detective was just annoyed with her for interfering.
But now she has to wonder, why was he talking to the witness?
Did he know the witness?
And she starts to wonder if she can trust him at all.
Once again, the story has changed.
Ask What Changed in Your Sagging Middle
Notice where that change came from.
The antagonist created pressure by getting rid of the witness. Claire responded by choosing to investigate who knew about the meeting.
And that choice led to the consequence, the information that changed what she thought she knew about her sister’s disappearance.
The detective.
Could he be involved?
And that increases the risk to her even more, too.
That is a story-changing consequence.
It doesn’t have to be bad. Your protagonist can succeed and still create a consequence. They might discover something, gain an ally, expose a secret, win a battle, or finally get what they’ve been trying to get.
But whatever happens should leave them in a different situation afterward.
Maybe they’ve lost an option, or they know something they can’t unknow, like the information about the detective. Maybe a relationship changes, or they’ve made themselves more dangerous or more visible to the antagonist, like Claire has.
The point is that they can’t simply finish the scene and go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.
That’s what you’re trying to avoid here.
Compare that to Claire finding the witness’s phone records and learning nothing particularly important. She searches them, comes up empty, and goes back to looking for her sister like she did before.
We’ve spent another scene with her, but her situation didn’t really change.
And that’s exactly the problem we’ve been talking about.
The reader wants to feel that what just happened matters to what happens next.
So throughout your middle, you want to keep asking yourself:
What changed because my protagonist made this choice?
If the answer is “not much,” that may be one reason your middle is starting to sag.
4. Give Your Sagging Middle Emotional Weight
But there’s still one more piece because these consequences become much more powerful when they start hitting something the reader deeply cares about.
This brings us to tool number four, which I think is the most effective of all of them.
This is what gives all that change emotional weight.
Because without emotional weight, it’s really easy for the reader not to give a hoot.
We have to grab them by the heart.
As the middle goes on, the consequences should increasingly hit the heart hook.
Remember, the heart hook is the emotional reason we care about this character and what happens to them. It’s the emotional wound the main character is carrying around in this story.
It’s why they do what they do.
So in Claire’s story, let’s say Claire has always felt responsible for her younger sister.
Maybe their parents weren’t very reliable when they were growing up, so Claire became the one who looked out for her sister.
Protecting her sister became part of who Claire is.
And then her sister disappeared.
Worse, maybe her sister called Claire shortly before she disappeared and Claire didn’t answer because the two of them had just had an argument.
Maybe she was irritated with her or tired of having to take care of her.
So underneath Claire’s goal of finding her sister is something much more painful.
I was supposed to protect her, and I failed.
That’s the heart hook.
Push the Sagging Middle Closer to the Heart Hook
Claire desperately wants to find her sister alive because of course she loves her.
But she also wants another chance to do what she believes she failed to do: protect her.
So let’s go back to what Claire just discovered.
She learns that the witness had been talking privately with the detective assigned to her sister’s case. Then the witness disappeared.
That changes the story.
But now suppose Claire digs deeper and discovers something even worse.
The detective knew days ago that Claire’s sister may still be alive, and he never told Claire.
Now the consequence isn’t just giving Claire another clue.
It hits the heart hook.
Her sister may still be out there somewhere, still in danger, while Claire has been chasing the wrong leads.
Immediately, that old wound gets hit again.
I failed her once. Am I failing her again?
At the same time, Claire suddenly has something else she hasn’t had before.
Hope.
If her sister is alive, Claire may still have a chance to find her. She may still have a chance to protect her.
She may still have a chance to make all this right.
Now we’ve grabbed the reader by the heart.
The story has changed again, but now that change is pressing directly on the emotional reason we care about Claire in the first place.
We can connect to her feelings as an older sibling and to her role as the older protector. We can relate to feeling like we failed in our responsibilities or our roles.
Because we can relate to that, we feel even more for Claire and what she’s going through.
And that’s what you want happening more and more as you move through the middle of your story.
The consequences shouldn’t just make the plot more complicated or faster.
They should start getting closer to the emotional center of the story.
The Chain That Can Fix a Sagging Middle
So let’s look at the full chain we’ve now created with Claire.
The antagonist applied pressure.
Claire made a choice.
That choice created a consequence that changed the story.
And that consequence started hitting closer to her heart hook.
Then the new situation creates more pressure. Claire has to make another choice.
And the whole thing starts again.
Pressure. Choice. Consequence. Heart hook.
That’s how you keep creating meaningful change through the middle of your story.
And that’s what pacing, conflict, and higher stakes by themselves just can’t give you.
Start watching for this the next time you’re reading a novel or watching a movie you love.
Pay attention to what happens in the middle.
- Where is the pressure coming from?
- What choice does the protagonist make because of it?
- What changes because of that choice?
- And how does that change hit closer to the heart hook?
Once you start seeing this pattern, you’re going to notice it everywhere.
More importantly, you’ll start noticing when it’s missing from your own story.
Run This Sagging Middle Check on Your Story
Go to the middle of your story and find one place where the story feels stuck, slow, repetitive, or like you’re not quite sure what should happen next.
To make this easier, I’ve created a free Middle Change Check worksheet you can download and use to walk through these four steps with your own story.
Run that section you chose through these four questions:
- Where is the antagonistic pressure? What’s actively pushing against your protagonist?
- What choice does that pressure force your protagonist to make?
- What changes because of that choice? And this is the big one: after your protagonist decides, is the story different?
- How does that consequence hit the heart hook?
And if you want more help figuring out where your story is going, I’ve also got something new for you that I’m really excited about.
I’ve called it Map to Storyland. It’s a set of story maps designed to help you see what your story needs at different stages, from launching the story through building the pressure and getting all the way to the end, without forcing your book into some rigid beat sheet.
If you like the way we’ve been looking at story structure here, I think you’re going to really enjoy it.
And if you’d like more help from me with your writing, you can also join us inside the Writer’s Brain Studio. That’s my writing community where we go deeper into story structure, the writer’s mindset, and the problems that come up while you’re actually trying to finish this book.
Featured image by stockking on Magnific.