My fourth tip for addressing saggy middles in your manuscript is to change what the readers see about your antagonist. Make ’em meaner and more menacing, or maybe give them a softer side that makes readers pause for a moment.
Either way, it’s a perfect way to up the stakes and get your story moving again.
Hello, Jane Cleland here, talking about my fourth idea for overcoming saggy middles. In other of these YouTube shorties, I’ve talked about how to know if you have a saggy middle—that section in the center of your story where things begin to drag—how to identify it, what to do about it with other ideas, and how to differentiate between a leisurely pace and a saggy middle.
What I want to do now is talk about my fourth idea, the fourth of eight, and this one is to make your villain or antagonist worse than the reader thinks they are, or better.
Have that person or thing—because an antagonist, of course, could be a thing like a blizzard—be worse. Ratchet up the danger, or the antagonism, or something. Maybe there’s an arch enemy, and the arch enemy really does something dastardly. This is a good place for that to happen, and then we’ll automatically raise the stakes and challenge your protagonist to address it.
If you want to know more about this, or other topics—any of the ideas or all the ideas—the webinar on the topic, “Plotting Perfection: Overcoming Saggy Middles with Ever Escalating Conflict,” is available for rent on my website. And I’d love to hear if you’ve ever done that in the center of your book.
Have you made the villain or antagonist worse or better? Something unexpected. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
And if you liked this YouTube shorty, would you like it? Would you share it? Would you subscribe to the channel? It opens up features that let us make these videos even more valuable for you. Thank you.
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