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[SPEAKER_05]: Season 21, episode 13.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is Writing Excuses.
[SPEAKER_05]: Does the middle have to be soggy?
[SPEAKER_05]: Tools not rules, forewriters, bywriters.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Mary Robinette.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Darwin.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Aaron.
[SPEAKER_05]: And we are talking about the soggy middle, which is a phrase that you hear over and over again.
[SPEAKER_05]: Middles are often seen as the sagging sagging sagging.
[SPEAKER_05]: talking of any storyline, but the truth of it is that most of the story actually happens in the middle, like whether it's novel, whether it's short form.
[SPEAKER_05]: Most of it is middle.
[SPEAKER_05]: You've got a frame, which is your beginning and end, but most of it is the middle and it's like how you handle that transitioning out of the beginning, into what's happening, into the middle, what I call
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I should hope not because Sagi feels like a very unexciting slog of an experience, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, I think...
[SPEAKER_04]: When I'm reading an opening or reading coffee or like I'm talking to a writer or a project, a question if I mess up asking a lot is, what are people actually doing in this book, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, give me some idea of what the action of this book is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Are they mostly walking from point A to point B in a Lord of the Rings style, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it big council meetings?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it, you know, what does that look like for this book in terms of what are your characters actually doing to engage with the world and advance the plot, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: When the middle feel soggy is when there's a really unclear answer to that, or you've chosen to think for them to do that's very boring, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So if they just walk to point A to point, from point A to point B, but nothing happens or there's not an interesting question embedded in that, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when it starts to feel like, wait, what is the point of this?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I probably should have said, what do we mean when we say Salgey?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's that that there's nothing going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think personally that there's a couple of reasons that the middle will often feel Salgey to the writer, even if it doesn't last that way until we get to the publication.
[SPEAKER_05]: So one of those is that there's a mode switch that happens at the end of the middle where you have to transition from let's make things worse to now we start to have some successes we have to start even if even if your hit it during horror we still have to start closing story questions and wrapping things up which is harder.
[SPEAKER_05]: in a lot of ways and so it can feel like a slog because you have to change your mindset about how you're handling it and a lot of times you're also entering a phase where you just want to be done with the book.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I think that some of those are some things about why that can happen to the writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've always heard it called the mushy middle, and I don't know if that is the same thing or just a different thing that goes wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Middles are bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that like, I was thinking about what don't want to say about the action of like what's the action of the story because it makes me think about when games fail and like video games fail because most games will have like something that's an action like, are you fighting?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you talking?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you jumping?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, and so are you?
[SPEAKER_04]: What are your verbs?
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your verbs?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if the verbs don't match like what they feel like, the story should be, it can at first you're just like, oh I'm learning these verbs, it's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're like, wait a second, this seems like it should, I should be running, but all I'm doing is talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't actually, like, this is a story about forward momentum and I'm still, then it starts to feel like, okay, the time is slogging down, I don't want to be here anymore.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I think that's a great way to frame it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I see it, to that lack of forward agency because I think one of the things that will happen is that sometimes people will do that on purpose because there's some big piece that they're trying to get to.
[SPEAKER_05]: And they're like, oh, I have the big battle, but it's not time for my character to get to it yet.
[SPEAKER_05]: They have to work harder or something.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's like, I need it to happen at the three-quarter part of whatever thing they have said in their head about why they can't have it happen now.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so they'll do something that I see as stalling where they include actions that are not like, not things that the character needs to do in order to progress.
[SPEAKER_05]: They deliberately put in
[SPEAKER_05]: to slow the character down, but it's so obviously a hurdle that could be easily surmounted.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it seems like it's there just because they feel like for whatever reason it's not time for the big thing to have.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it can feel like either busy work right of just we're doing a bunch of stuff because we're supposed to be doing it now because it's inherently interesting or it'll just feel very frustrating because it's like obviously the answer is x we know the answer is x the character's not allowed to realize the best answer.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we're just wandering around for a long time.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is very specific example, but you know, I've been watching the silo TV show and really loving it and the second season about a third of it is kind of I can tell exactly where this is going and now we're going to spend a lot of time spending our wheels to get there and I think that's when it feels soggy I think it feels soggy when it's like
[SPEAKER_04]: I can see where you're going.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know where this road goes, but we're not there yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's not an interesting reason why we're not there yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think when you're trying to stretch that out, you know, that's when it starts to feel very like, what are we doing?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes feels like also there's a difference like there's external versus internal and what I mean by this is like the big fight is external I feel like a lot of times people are like trying to delay an external thing that's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, therefore they throw a lot of external like obstacles in the characters way
[SPEAKER_01]: but there's no internal growth like so it's like your growth is paused while you just do this thing and that thing it's like a training montage but there's a reason that training montage is our montage is and not like actually we go to the gym with you for a year while you master karate because like it's not that interesting like outside you know such is a fun thing to watch
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and the same thing can happen with an emotional plot line too, like in a romance where they have the artificial breakup in order to prevent having the big cathartic make-out sexine happening too early when it's clear that they really want to or introducing some weird action moment in order to stop that forward character growth.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that can be like, come on, we just
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think the thing that breaks a romance plot for me personally is when the thing interrupting the romance when they have that fight in the middle and it's like are they going to reconcile when it's clearly a nothing burger thing right when it's just a miscommunication or it's just somebody's like inventing something in their head and you're like this is nothing they're going to get together because they should be together.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think when that works, there's a real difference in perspective.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a real mode in which somebody says or does something.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think about how my favorite Austin adaptations are ones where Darcy's genuinely unpleasant.
[SPEAKER_04]: when it's like, oh, I get why you might not like this guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because he's kind of like the fire island one, which is like a really lovely, very fun frothy queer one.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the the Darcy analog character that is like a genuine deck for the first half of that movie in a way that's like really fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when you see the turn, it gets exciting, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you don't actually put that friction there, if you don't have the commitment to be like,
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, my hot love interest is also sometimes a jerk, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's it's it's another version of the like, um, you know, unattractive girl takes her glasses off and suddenly she's beautiful, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, yeah, we can tell she's beautiful for the whole time.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is famous Hollywood starlet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I mean, and so you need to give us like really tangible reasons for that obstacle to exist and believable reasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: When they feel thin in flimsy,
[SPEAKER_04]: that's what things feel slow.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to mention one other failure mode, and then we're going to go to the break, and then after the break, we'll talk about tools for addressing them.
[SPEAKER_05]: The other failure mode that I see in the thing that I think causes a soggy metal is repetitive beats, where it's either, oh, are we fighting the zombies again?
[SPEAKER_05]: But in exact, it's like, oh,
[SPEAKER_05]: It's still food stuff that we're fighting them with.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like you haven't actually changed anything This is me trying to play last of us where at some point.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like I cannot clear another room of zombies I don't care about this anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know I'm wrong But I'm interested when we get to tools after the break because having written a thing where you just fight zombies all the time Yeah, we had to think about how do you make it more interesting the 18 million time you do it
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, because it's fine for it to be, it's fine for it to be the same problem.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just they, oh, and we're doing that again.
[SPEAKER_05]: So repetitive beats, either in physical action or the emotional action, where a character is like, oh, what was me?
[SPEAKER_05]: I am, I will never be popular.
[SPEAKER_05]: I should make some changes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, but I will never be popular.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, okay, but who cares?
[SPEAKER_05]: You should just.
[SPEAKER_05]: Not that it's that easy to change your mind in real life, but also I want better from my fictional characters so we're going to take a little break and when we come back we're going to talk about some tools to use to to address these things.
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[SPEAKER_05]: Welcome back.
[SPEAKER_05]: We are still in the middle of the podcast.
[SPEAKER_05]: And hopefully it's not too soggy or mushy.
[SPEAKER_05]: What we are going to talk about is some tools that you can use to address things like repetition, stalling, that mode change.
[SPEAKER_05]: So one of the things that you can do with the repetitive beats is a tool that we've already talked about, which is the same but different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, like with, uh, with the zombies run, you had to use the same but different kind of all the time all the time and we have like a list because it was like First of all, you don't have to do a lot as I said when I was using this example last time to change it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one thing we said is like closer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like same zombies same place, but they're closer than you thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: there are more of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do something you didn't expect, they are different in some way, usually worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or they have an emotional implication to what they did that is really, really bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still think of one of my, I guess, to spoils zombies run, I guess, closure years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a character who turns out to be immune from zombies, whose mother became a zombie and mother was killed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lee could have kept his mother around because he didn't realize he was immune at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so anytime there has to be something where it's like he's immune and therefore he can just run through it but it becomes this big emotional way of like what does this say about the way I handled things with my, you know, had to put an ax on my mother's head type of thing like and therefore it's different and it's worse each time that I think about it and so it changes the character of it even though the one person who's immune running through a crowd of zombies is
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that this is a really smart thing and it's it's a tool that you can use even if you aren't dealing with zombies is that one of the things that you can change is your character's response to the thing happening again.
[SPEAKER_05]: So this is what you see often in time loop stories where it is literally the same beats happening again.
[SPEAKER_05]: but the character is often having different emotional responses.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so that's an example of same but different.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you need to feel that growth of the character over time, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're encountering something that's same but different.
[SPEAKER_04]: They need to have changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the things that has to be different is the person experiencing it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then there's the other thing, the stalling, which where you are putting off the big thing because you need to save it for later.
[SPEAKER_05]: One of the secrets that I have found as a writer is that actually you can just go ahead and have the big thing happen.
[SPEAKER_05]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_05]: If the story is going to be over too soon because you let the big thing happen, you can then look at the ramifications of the big thing happening, you can have an escalation from that thing, but you don't need to stall for getting to it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't force it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that ever like messes with people like if there's a certain like if you're in a structure in which people are used to certain things in their genre like they're like this is going to end with the glorious space battle or the make out session of the the marriage of the romance and you do end up moving it forward like do you risk losing people in that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think yes or no, I think what people fell in love with with Game of Thrones was it did this exact thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It moved the death of the hero way early in that series.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it was so thrilling because it was like damn, we were a new territory.
[SPEAKER_04]: The person who I thought was the hero of this story got his head chopped off like a quarter of the way through that book.
[SPEAKER_04]: Spoilers, I guess, I don't know for the entire concept of the series.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you know, but when that happens, it is the thing that really catapults us into this new territory of like, we're in a new kind of storytelling, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's what's really exciting.
[SPEAKER_04]: On the flip side, I think Game of Thrones is one of the best examples of what we might call a soggy metal because, you know, people have been very frustrated with the last couple of books.
[SPEAKER_04]: I personally adore them, but I think the reason people are frustrated is a shift in reader expectations.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the readers, in spite of having been told, weren't a new type of thing, keep expecting it to return to the expectations of the genre, and I think the last book in particular indicates a real lack of interest in the epic fantasy tropes of the heroic ending that we're all expecting, and what instead those books are interested in are
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of songy middle stuff of just a bunch of characters wandering around the world interacting with things, which once I realized that I had a great time with it because I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna spend time with these people in this world and that's really fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: So long as I don't care about what happens at the end of this story.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and that a lot of it is really the, let me, let me signal to you what I'm reading.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I just finished reading this Japanese novel called Tatami Galaxy, and it's a time loop kind of story.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sort of, it's, anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's a bunch of things that you see happen more than once, and it really is this character just bumbling around.
[SPEAKER_05]: But once you realize, oh, that's what this story is about, you know, someone who can't get their act together,
[SPEAKER_05]: Then you're like, I understand the right now and this is, you know, and carry on, please, and I'm used to it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think one of the other things that you can think about when you're doing the stalling is it's like, no, I do actually have a really good reason for wanting to delay this until this point.
[SPEAKER_05]: Then you can look at the kind of escalation that you've got leading up to that because a lot of times what will happen is a tension drop Because we all know as we said previous don't want said previously We all know what it is that they're supposed to do
[SPEAKER_05]: So and and that's where you are you're stalling by doing repetitive beats.
[SPEAKER_05]: So one of the things that I will look at often is I will look at what the mys quotient elements are that I have active so it's just a refresher miliu inquiry character and event and each of those can be a major story driver.
[SPEAKER_05]: So if I have something that is predominantly a milieu story like like silo there's a lot of like we're in this place and we have to explore and move around this place then I can just for a chapter introduce a totally different type of conflict that's going to be resolved.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is often what you will see I think in some some shows where it's like and suddenly we have the musical episode
[SPEAKER_04]: or a bottle episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah, so you can do something like that in the story as long as it feels, as long as it feels like there's still a connected causal chain that introducing this other like this other aspect of whatever it is that's gone wrong.
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, so if you have had a character who has been dealing with this major status close shift the entire time, they're trying to defeat the evil overlord, and then you do this one chapter where they have to deal with an orphan as a symbol of this larger status
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's just a ramification of that.
[SPEAKER_05]: You have to resolve that cleanly before you can move on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Otherwise, readers are going to be like, but what about the awful?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think one of the ways in which this really works and can reinforce the overall arc of your story is by using a microcosm macrocosm, a smaller iteration of the bigger question.
[SPEAKER_04]: It needs to feel connected, but so long as we as the audience can sort of see connective tissue to the central questions of your book.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we can see that this is exploring some offshoot or thought experiment or aspect or consequence of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that can keep us engaged through the action of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Even if the tri-fale cycle of this subplot is not connected to the overall success, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a show that does this incredibly well as scavengers rain, which is one of my favorite shows every cent years.
[SPEAKER_04]: Each episode is very episodic of like, here's a new situation, here's a new monster, here's a new thing they're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_04]: but how they deal with it is central to the thematic questions of the show of what is it to be in community with other people, what is it to exist within a larger system, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And because each of the tri-fale cycles that they encounter are addressing that bigger question, it always feels engaging and exciting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also, there's a part of it of like, they're just good little stories too.
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to make sure then, when it feels like you're wasting my time is when you're actually wasting my time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And executing on these sort of mini arcs, you have to put as much thought and care into them as you would for any other arc, even if it is kind of a side story or side quest.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think that's the key is one of the other things that will happen with those is during that saw and you can do a side quest that isn't connected and isn't going to like I read something where they were the side quest was we're going through these very tall poisonous plants no one venture off the path and touch one of the poisonous plants.
[SPEAKER_05]: and shocking everyone here, someone ventures off the path and touches one of the poisonous plants.
[SPEAKER_05]: What?
[SPEAKER_05]: And someone is like, fortunately, I have this antidote and I give it to them and they continue on their way.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm like, what was he doing the point of that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's nothing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the thing with the the side quests, like whether it's the orphan or whatever it is,
[SPEAKER_05]: is that the keeps it from being just a side quest that keeps it connected is if it has impact on the character that affects the way they are dealing with everything that follows that, that's it's like I sometimes say it's like if you're on a road trip and you have to pull off the inner state to get gas, you may as well make it interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, if you're on a road trip and there's a road block, you may as well make it interesting.
[SPEAKER_05]: But there's no point in going to go look at the world's largest ball of twine if it's going to take you 500 miles off your.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: The character needs to change or our understanding of the character needs to change.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, or the world.
[SPEAKER_05]: Or of the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or of the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if none of those things are happening, then truly cut it.
[SPEAKER_04]: This doesn't belong here and you need to find another way to pat out the the word count of your book.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, um, I'm glad as we were coming towards the end of this that you mentioned, try fail cycles because next week we are going to be talking about try fail cycles, which is another way you can just pacing and things in in the middle and we're going to get really granular at that.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, I'm going to give you some homework.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want you to grab a book or a short story, and I want you to read the first page, then the page that's in the exact middle, and then the page at the end.
[SPEAKER_05]: And what story threads from the middle from the beginning are still alive in the middle?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, when you look at the beginning, it's like, this is character, and they seem really unhappy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Is that character still around in the middle?
[SPEAKER_05]: Sometimes that's going to be a product of
[SPEAKER_05]: like it being a multi-POV but like what's what's going on and how do you think that that is working?
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