It’s difficult to start a story, and it’s difficult to end a story… but somehow worse than both of those parts there is a hump I have found that occurs somewhere in the middle.
I have been writing a new novel and I am at the point where I need to move from the start, the inciting action where all the characters are introduced and dive into the middle, the guts of the story where all the action and the bulk of the story is going to happen.
I did all this work on planning out a plot.
I did all this work creating characters.
I did all this work lighting the fire to make it all start.
And whilst I did think a lot about how the flames were meant to keep smouldering for the next couple hundred pages of real story, getting over that hump between the start and the middle, and putting it down into actual words on an actual page is turning out to be a bigger chore than I anticipated.
If you have been reading my meandering thoughts you know that I generally keep smouldering. I just push through and write my five hundred words each day, and (practically speaking) that’s how it goes down.
But the effort, the mental churn, the fight to keep going is different now that I’ve moved into middle where the real plot and real works takes more than just a big idea.
