How to Reboot a Writing Practice

 by Paula Gail Benson

Mary Higgins Clark

Balancing a full-time job with writing is difficult. As a widow raising five young children, Mary Higgins Clark would get up at five o’clock in the morning to write for an hour and a half before feeding her children, seeing them off to school, and commuting to her own work. William Kent Krueger rose at 5:30 am to drink coffee and write longhand at the St. Clair Broiler before heading to his job at the University of Minnesota. The St. Clair Broiler hosted book launches for him until it closed in 2017.

William Kent Krueger

Does a set time and/or set place encourage writing? Do particular instruments (pen and notebook, iPad or laptop) inspire the word flow?

How about travel or motion? Scott Turow began writing his novel Presumed Innocent in a spiral notebook as he rode a commuter train into Chicago. Twist Phelan writes her mystery novels and short stories while traveling the globe and sending out blog posts about her journeys.

James Scott Bell is a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction. I attended his presentation based on his book Write Your Novel from the Middle (given by Sisters in Crime at the Raleigh, North Carolina Bouchercon). I found his ideas, based on movie structure, to be thought provoking and compelling. Recently, he released a book called Power Up Your Fiction: 125 Tips and Techniques for Next Level Writing (Compendium Press April 23, 2023).

Scott Turow

I ordered a copy and found it interesting that Bell began with tips for plotting rather than character. His first two chapters were called “Plotting for Pantsers” and “Pantsing for Plotters.” He suggested that all novels/stories begin with a “disturbance.” It didn’t have to be a big incident. It might be as simple as a phone call. He gave the examples of Dorothy Gale hurrying back to the farm, feeling as if she was being chased, and Scarlett O’Hara talking on the porch to the Tarleton twins and learning that Ashley Wilkes was going to marry Melanie Hamilton.

As soon as you discovered “the disturbance,” Bell said to determine a “rip-roaring ending.” By knowing the end, you would have something to work toward. You might revise that last scene as you developed your plot, but with a beginning and an end in mind, you had the bookends of a plot.

Twist Phelan

The next step was to consider the “mirror moment.” This scene occurred near the middle of the story where the protagonist must make a crucial decision. Either, “is this who I am or do I want to change” or “I’m likely to perish and how will I face it”?

James Scott Bell

Once you determine those three “signposts,” Bell recommended that you brainstorm 20 to 25 “killer scenes,” noting them on index cards. You arrange the cards to learn how the scenes work best, selecting around 10 to provide you with organization for a three-act structure.

I have to admit that Bell’s tips along with his breezy, encouraging style provide some great methods for energizing a writing practice. I’ve mentioned four of his tips. His book contains one hundred twenty-one more.

What do you use when you’ve hit a bump in the writing road?

The Muddle in the Middle

Last Tuesday, Paula Gail Benson blogged about how plotting was the most difficult part of her writing journey. I have to admit that one of my least favorite parts of plotting a story is the middle. I enjoy writing the beginning and the end, but the middle (slowly shakes head) can be slow and agonizing. It’s where I get stuck, consider ditching the story, and starting a new one. (Okay, I’ve actually tossed a few stories.)

Here’s what I understood about the middle:

·         There are a series of tests and challenges your main character(s) must go through.

·         The challenges increase in difficulty.
 

·         Something dramatic and life-changing is supposed to happen to the main character(s) at the midpoint that changes the outcome.

Kind of vague, right?

Recently, I read James Scott Bell’s short (93 pages) book, Write Your Novel From the Middle. He maintains that pansters, plotters, and those in between can write from the middle. I hesitated to buy it because I’m skeptical about something that is portrayed as helpful to everyone.

However, I was surprised and do believe that different types of writers can use this approach.

Briefly, Bell considers a story to be a triangle where the bottom left is pre-story psychology or world, the bottom right is post-transformation, and the top of the triangle is what he calls the mirror moment.

This moment, located halfway into your story, is where the main character looks in the mirror and takes stock of herself and the conflict. If it is a character driven story, the character will determine how she needs to change in order to fight successfully.

 

In a plot driven story, the character will determine the odds against her, not necessarily how she needs to change. At this point it seems that the character faces certain death. Bell points out that some stories have both kinds of mirror moments.

Bell believes that the mirror moment is what the story is really about. (An epiphany!)

Also, “It’s not a scene, but a moment within a scene.” (Wow) This may not be a new concept for you, but it was new to me. I always thought the midpoint was a scene where something needed to be done instead of an internal moment.

He makes the point that while the character can decide what she needs to change during the mirror moment, the writer must show actions proving the character changed.

Another concept that intrigued me was that the main character should be in danger of dying and that there are three kinds of death:

·         physical

·         professional (if a novel revolves around a character’s calling)

·         psychological (key to romances)

There can be more than one type of death in a story. Bell says that it’s crucial to know the death stakes in order to write from the middle.

Currently, I’m in the process of plotting a short story writing from the middle. I’m finding that I need to take some time and really think about my character to understand her mirror moment and how it fits with the beginning and ending I had envisioned. I’m hopeful that this time I won’t have such a huge muddle in the middle to sort out.

There's more good information and some writing tips in James Scott Bell's book. You can read the description or order it on Amazon.
 

***
Is the middle of the story easy or difficult for you to write?
If you’ve read Write Your Novel From the Middle, did you find this approach helpful?