Tara Maya's Tales

Over at Six Words for a Hat, Scott, who writes both fast and well (damn him) is in the middle of a manuscript : Thirty-thousand words puts me somewhere in the middle of the novel, or somewhere toward the sixty percent mark if I stick with the plan of making it a 50,000-word novella. In either case, I’m now in the middle of the middle. I discovered this project middleness not by figuring the word count of the draft, but rather by noticing that I have been feeling a powerful sense of disquiet about writing. The feeling that this novel is an empty, pointless thing and that indeed every novel I’ve written is an empty, pointless and likely embarrassing book is a sure sign that I’ve arrived at that stage in the drafting process where I’ve got to just brass my way forward through the writing and work toward the final act, which I recall once thinking was a good idea to write. This feeling is so familiar and so predictable that I am almost bored by it. Yes of course, I say. Right on schedule...

Why do the middles of books, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tend to get so mushy, squished and icky? I am trying to brush up my book and I think the beginning and ending are adequate, but Chapters 12 and 13 are simply undigestible. I honestly don't know what to do with them. Some of the problems are: * too many truncated scenes giving a staccato feel to the chapters * low tension sub-plots * time bridges * scenes which serve to set up later tension but are otherwise boring * merely cutting or combining scenes results in illogical sequencing