Hi Reader,
You’re stuck in the messy middle. Languishing in the doldrums of your story. The inciting incident is long past, the climax is so far ahead you can’t see it over the horizon, and you’re drifting, lost at sea.
What is actually supposed to happen here?
Where did your plot momentum go?
Why do your pages feel full of stuff, and yet nothing ever happens?
The answers to all those questions lie in your progressive complications. Specifically, something’s going wrong in your progressive complications.
In today’s brand-new episode of Your Next Draft, I’m digging even deeper into the progressive complications.
I’m sharing the seven most common traps I see, the impact they have on your story and your readers, and of course, how to fix them so you can make your story unputdownable from beginning to end.
You’ll learn:
- How to diagnose the problem in your story’s middle based on how your reader feels
- How to spot “fluff” that isn’t moving your story forward
- How coincidences work in stories—and what happens when they don’t work
- What happens when a story has no progressive complications at all
- And more!
Read or listen to Where Progressive Complications Go WRONG (and How to Fix Them) »
And don’t miss the free cheat sheet that goes with this episode! Print it and keep it handy as you’re editing.
Here’s the thing: the middle of a story isn’t an inscrutable secret. This episode is your guide to spot the most common traps and free your story from them.
Read or listen now »
Happy editing,
Alice