Losing the plot

Things are getting tricky.

There’s no denying I’ve reached the dreaded “saggy middle” of this novel. This is the section that seems to meander aimlessly, sapping the energy out of the whole story.

I’ve been here before, in previous drafts of this project. It’s always so exciting to start writing, so much fun to create characters and plots, to wind them up and set them spinning. At a certain point, though, the action slows down. Logistics get complicated, confusing. After 50 or 100 pages, the writer runs out of steam: this is the “saggy middle.”

So here I am. I had really, truly hoped that following my meticulously-plotted, scene-by-scene outline was going to prevent this problem. I thought all my cunning little subplots were going to keep the momentum going in this manuscript, that I’d skip happily along my well-marked narrative trail, from rising action all the way to the climax.

And you know, without my outline I might be giving up at this point.

But not this time; I’m too stubborn. I planned this thing and I’m going to see it through. I may be gritting my teeth and racing through some of these scenes, but I’m not skipping anything. Yes, it’s painful to write a scene while my inner critic is yammering away, insisting that these pages will be the first to be cut when I get to my next draft.

But there can’t be a next draft until this one’s done. So I persevere.