wetranscripts | Writing Excuses 21.13: Does The Middle Have To Be Soggy?

Writing Excuses 21.13: Does The Middle Have To Be Soggy?

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-13-does-the-middle-have-to-be-soggy

Key Points: Soggy middle? But most of the story is the middle! What are people doing in this book? Soggy means nothing's going on. Writers get soggy because (1) mode switch from let's make it worse to let's have some successes, and (2) you just want to get done! Mooshy middle? When verbs don't match expectations. No forward momentum! Stalling! Busy work, or just frustrating. External obstacles, but no internal growth. Romance, with a nothing burger. Give us good reasons for obstacles! Repetitive beats. Tools? Same but different. Emotional implications. Change responses! Go ahead, have the big thing, then follow the ramifications. If there's a good reason to stall, look at the escalation. Build in side quests with MICE. Try-fail cycles! Make it interesting.

[Season 21, Episode 13]

[Howard] Locus magazine is one of the finest and most respected resources for readers, writers, editors, illustrators, and assorted aficionados of speculative fiction. Locus tells the stories of, and about, storytellers through author interviews, book reviews, curated reading lists, industry news, and more. The annual Locus Awards recognize and celebrate excellence across science fiction, fantasy, and horror, showcasing new and diverse voices in the speculative genres. Right now, Locus is holding their annual fundraising drive. I'm proud to support Locus, and I'd love for you to join me. Visit locusmag.com/ igg26 to explore the awards available to this year's supporters. If you're looking for a long enough lever to move the world of speculative fiction, look no further. Locus is that lever. It's the rising tide that lifts all ships. It's the shining city on the hill. Visit locusmag.com/igg26 to help Locus keep the lights on and the future bright. locus mag.com/igg 26.

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 13]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Does the middle have to be soggy?

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Mary Robinette] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Mary Robinette] And we are talking about the soggy middle, which is a phrase that you hear over and over again. Middles are often seen as the Sogging... Sagging... Sogging...

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Of any storyline. But the truth of it is that most of the story actually happens in the middle. Like, whether it's novels, whether it's short form, most of it is middle. You've got a frame, which is your beginning and end, but most of it is the middle, and it's like, how do you handle that? Transitioning out of the beginning into what's happening into the middle, what I call the end of The Middle, and then towards the end. So does the middle have to be soggy?

[DongWon] I mean, I should hope not. Because soggy feels like a very unexciting slog of an experience. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And, I think, when I'm reading an opening or I'm reading copy or, like, I'm talking to a writer about a project, a question I find myself asking a lot is what are people actually doing in this book? Right? Like, give me some idea of what the action of this book is. Are they mostly walking from point A to point B in a Lord of the Rings style? Right? Is it big council meetings? Is it... Look, like, for this book in terms of what are your characters actually doing to engage with the world and advance the plot? Right? And so I think when the middle feels soggy is when there's a really unclear answer to that. Or you've chosen a thing for them to do that's very boring. Right? So if they just walk from point A to point B, but nothing happens, or there's not an interesting question embedded in that...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's when it starts to feel like, wait, what is the point of this?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I probably should have said, what do we mean when we say soggy?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And it's that, that there's nothing going on. I think, personally, that there's a couple of reasons that the middle will often feel soggy to the writer, even if it doesn't last that way until we get to publication. So, one of those is that there's a mode switch that happens at the end of the middle where we have to transition from let's make things worse to now we start to have some successes. We have to start, even if your headache's doing horribly, we have to start closing story questions and wrapping things up, which is harder in a lot of ways. And so it can feel like a slog, because you have to change your mindset about how you're handling it, and a lot of times, you're also entering a phase where you just want to be done with the book. So I think that some of those are some things about why that can happen to the writer.

[Erin] Yeah, it's funny. I've always heard it called the mooshy middle. And I actually don't know if that is the same thing, or just a different thing that goes wrong. Middles are bad. No...

[laughter]

[Erin] Middles are most of the story.

[DongWon] Let's examine the difference between mooshy and soggy...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Wow. Sounds like a fun Saturday night. But I think that like... I was thinking about what DongWon said about the action of... Like, what's the action of the story? Because it makes me think about when games fail, when, like, video games fail, because most genres will have, like, something that's an action, like, are you fighting? Are you talking? Are you jumping?

[DongWon] What are your verbs?

[Erin] And so... Are your what?

[DongWon] What are your verbs? Yeah.

[Erin] What are your verbs? And so, if the verbs don't match, like, what they feel like the story should be, it can... At first, you're just like, oh, I'm learning these verbs, this is really interesting. But if you're like, wait a second. This seems like it should... I should be running, but all I'm doing is talking. I can't actually... Like, this is a story about forward momentum, and I'm still. Then it starts to feel like, okay, the time is slogging down, like, I don't want to be here anymore.

[Mary Robinette] So I think that's a great way to frame it. I see it... that lack of forward agency. Because I think one of the things that will happen is that sometimes people will do that on purpose, because there's some big piece that they're trying to get to...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And, so, like, oh, I have the big battle, but it's not time for my character to get to it yet, they have to work harder or something.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's like I need it to happen at the three quarter part of... Whatever thing they have said in their head about why they can't have it happen now. And so they will do something that I see as stalling. Where they include actions that are not... Like, not things that the character needs to do in order to progress. They deliberately put in something to slow the character down, but it's so obviously... It's so obviously a hurdle that could be easily surmounted that it seems like it's there just because they feel like, for whatever reason, it's not time for the big thing to happen yet.

[DongWon] And then it can feel like either busy work. Right? Of just we're doing a bunch of stuff because we're supposed to be doing it, not because it's inherently interesting. Or it'll just feel very frustrating, because it's, like, obviously the answer is X. We know the answer is X. The character's not allowed to realize if that's the answer.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] So now we're just wandering around for a long time. A very specific example, but I've been watching The Silo TV show, and really loving it. And the second season, about a third of it is kind of I can tell exactly where this is going and now we're going to spend a lot of time spinning our wheels to get there. And I think that's when it feels soggy. I think it feels soggy when it's like I know I can see where you're going, I know where this road goes, but we're not there yet.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And there's not an interesting reason why we're not there yet. And I think when you're trying to stretch that out, that's when it starts to feel very like, what are we doing?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Sometimes it feels like also there's a difference... Like, external versus internal. And what I mean by this is, like, the big fight is external. I feel like a lot of times people are, like, trying to delay an external thing that's going to happen.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Erin] Therefore, they throw a lot of external, like, obstacles in the character's way. But there's no internal growth. Like, so it's like your growth is paused, while you just do this thing and that thing. It's like a training montage. But there's a reason that training montages are montages, and not like actually we go to the gym with you for a year while you master karate. Because, like, it's not that interesting, like, outside.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Erin] It's not just a fun thing to watch.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And the same thing can happen with an emotional plot line, too. Like, in a romance, where they have the artificial breakup in order to prevent having the big cathartic make out scene happen too early, when it's clear that they really want to, or introducing some weird action moment in order to stop that forward character growth. And that can be, like, come on, we just... Let us have the thing we want.

[DongWon] And I think the thing that breaks a romance plot, for me personally, is when the thing interrupting the romance, when they have that fight in the middle, and then it's like, are they going to reconcile? When it's clearly a nothing burger thing. Right? When it's just a miscommunication or it's just somebody's like inventing something in their head, and you're like, this is nothing. They're going to get together, because they should be together. I think when that works, there's a real difference in perspective. There's a real mode in which somebody says or does something. I think about how my favorite Austin adaptations are ones where Darcy's genuinely unpleasant, when it's like, oh, I get why you might not like this guy initially, because he's kind of... Like the Fire Island one. Which is, like, a really lovely, very fun, frothy queer one. But the Darcy analog character in that is like a genuine dick for the first half of that movie in a way that's like really fun. And then when you see the turn, it gets exciting. Right? But if you don't actually put that friction there, if you don't have the commitment to like, oh, my hot love interest is also sometimes a jerk. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] It's another version of the, like, unattractive girl takes her glasses off and suddenly she's beautiful. Right? It's like...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] We can tell she's beautiful the whole time. That is a famous Hollywood starlet. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And so you need to give us this, like, really tangible reasons for that obstacle to exist, and believable reasons. When they feel thin and flimsy, that's when things go slow.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I'm going to mention one other failure mode, and then we're going to go to the break. And then, after the break, we'll talk about tools to address now. The other failure mode that I see, and the thing that I think causes a soggy middle, is repetitive beats. Where it's either, oh, are we fighting the zombies again? But in exact... It's like now instead of in the kitchen, we're in the pantry.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Oh, it's still food stuff that we're fighting them with. It's like you haven't actually changed anything.

[DongWon] This is me trying to play Last of Us, where at some point, I was like, I cannot clear another room of zombies. I don't care about this anymore.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] [garbled] I was going to say...

[DongWon] I know, I'm wrong.

[Erin] No, no, no.

[DongWon] This is a minority position.

[Erin] It's not about Last of Us, but I am interested when we get to tools after the break, because having written a thing where you just fight zombies all the time...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] We had to think about how do you make it more interesting the 18 million times you do it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Because it's fine for it to be...

[DongWon] It's doable.

[Mary Robinette] It's fine for it to be the same problem, it's just the, oh, and we're doing that again. So, repetitive beats, either physical action or the emotional action, where the character is like, oh, woe is me. I am... I will never be popular. I should make some changes. Oh, but I will never be popular. It's like, okay, but...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Who cares?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] You should just... Not that it's that easy to change your mind in real life, but also... I want better for my fictional characters. So we're going to take a little break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about some tools to use to address these things.

[Howard] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Mary Robinette] Welcome back. We are still in the middle of the podcast...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And hopefully, it's not too soggy or mooshy. What we are going to talk about is some tools that you can use to address things like repetitions, stalling, mode change. So, one of the things that you can do with the repetitive beats is a tool that we've already talked about, which is the same but different. Like, with the Zombies Run, you had to use the same but different...

[Erin] Kind of.

[Mary Robinette] All the time.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] All the time. And we had, like, a list because it was, like, first of all, you don't have to do a lot, as I said, when I was using this example last time, to change it. So one thing we said is, like, closer. So, like, same zombies, same place, but they're closer than you thought. There are more of them. They do something you didn't expect. They are different in some way, usually worse. Or they have an emot... There's an emotional, like, implication to what they did that is really, really bad. I still think of one of my... I guess, to spoil Zombies Run, I guess... Close your ears. There's a character who turns out to be immune from zombies, whose mother became a zombie, and mother was killed. And...

[Mary Robinette] Whoosh.

[Erin] There's this huge question of, wait, could he have kept his mother around, because he didn't realize he was immune at that time. And so anytime there has to be something where it's like he's immune, and therefore he can just run through it, but it becomes this big emotional weight...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Of what does this say about the way I handled things with my... Had to put an ax in my mother's head type of thing. Like... And therefore it's different and it's worse each time that I think about it. And so it changes the character of it, even though the one person who's immune running through a crowd of zombies is theoretically the same.

[Mary Robinette] I think that this is a really smart thing, and it's a tool that you can use even if you aren't dealing with zombies, is that one of the things you can change is your character's response to the thing happening again. So, this is what you see often in time loop stories, where there's literally the same beats happening again, but the character's often having different emotional responses.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so that's an example of same but different.

[DongWon] Because you need to feel that growth of the character over time, too. So, they're encountering something that's the same but different, they need to have changed. One of the things that has to be different is the person experiencing it.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And then there's the other thing, the stalling, which is where you are putting off the big thing because you need to save it for later. One of the secrets that I have found as a writer is that actually you can just go ahead and have the big thing happen.

[DongWon] 100%.

[Mary Robinette] And if you... If the story is going to be over too soon because you let the big thing happen, you can then look at the ramifications of the big thing happening. You can have an escalation from that thing. But you don't need to stall for getting to it.

[DongWon] Don't force it.

[Mary Robinette] Don't... Yeah.

[Erin] Do you think that ever like messes with people? Like, if there's a certain... Like, if you're in a structure in which people are used to certain things in their genre, like, they're like, this is going to end with the glorious space battle, or the make out session, or the marriage, or the romance, and you do end up moving it forward, like, do you risk losing people that way?

[DongWon] I mean, I think, yes and no. I think what people fall in love with with Game of Thrones, was it did this exact thing. It moved the death of the hero way early in that series. And then it was so thrilling, because it was like, damn, we are in new territory. The person who I thought was the hero of this story got his head chopped off, like a quarter of the way through that book. Spoilers, I guess. I don't know the entire concept of the series. But when that happens, it is the thing that really catapults us into this new territory of, like, we're in a new kind of storytelling. Right? So that's what's really exciting. On the flip side, I think Game of Thrones is one of the best examples of what we might call a soggy middle, because people have been very frustrated with the last couple of books. I personally adore them, but I think the reason people are frustrated is a shift in readers' expectation. I think the readers, in spite of having been told we're in a new type of thing, keep expecting it to return to the expectations of the genre. And I think the last book in particular indicates a real lack of interest in the Epic Fantasy tropes of... The heroic ending that we're all expecting. And what instead these books are interested in are kind of soggy middle stuff, of just a bunch of characters wandering around the world interacting with things. Which, once I realized that, I had a great time with it. Because I'm like, oh, I'm just going to spend time with these people in this world, and that's really fun. So long as I don't care about what happens at the end of this story.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. And that's... A lot of it is really the let me signal to you what I'm reading. Like, I just finished reading this Japanese novel called Tatami Galaxy, and it's a Time Loop kind of story... Sort of. Anyway. So there's a bunch of things that you see happening more than once, and it really is this character just bumbling around. But once you realize, oh, that's what this story is about, about someone who can't get their act together, then you're like, I understand the ride now, and this is... And carry on please, and amusing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I think one of the other things that you can think about when you're doing the stalling, is it's like, no, I do actually have a really good reason for wanting to delay this until this point. Then you can look at the kind of escalation that you've got leading up to that, because a lot of times what will happen is attention drop because we all know, as we've said prev... As DongWon said previously, we all know what it is that they're supposed to do. So... And that's where you're stalling by doing repetitive beats, so one of the things that I will look at often is... I will look at what the MICE quotient elements are that I have active. So it's... Just a refresher, milieu, inquiry, character, and event. And each of those can be a major story driver. So if I have something that is predominantly a milieu story, like Silo, there's a lot of, like, we are in this place, and we have to explore and move around this place, then I can, just for a chapter, introduce a totally different type of conflict that's going to be resolved. This is often what you will see, I think, in some shows, where it's like, and suddenly, we have the musical episode.

[DongWon] Or the bottle episode.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. So you can do something like that in the story as long as it feels like there's still a connected causal chain.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That's introducing this other, like, this other aspect of whatever it is that's gone wrong. So, if you have had a character who has been dealing with this major status quo shift the entire time, they're trying to defeat the evil Overlord. And then you do this one chapter where they have to deal with an orphan, as a symbol of this larger status quo, now they're dealing with this character issue. And it's just a ramification of that. You have to resolve that cleanly.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Before you can move on. Otherwise readers are going to be like, but what about the orphan?

[DongWon] Well, and I think one of the ways in which that really works and can reinforce the overall arc of your story, is by using them sort of like microcosm, macrocosm. Right? A smaller iteration of the bigger question. It needs to feel connected. But so long as we as the audience can sort of see connective tissue to the central questions of your book, and we can see that this is exploring some offshoot or experiment or aspect or consequence of it, I think that can keep us engaged through the action of it, even if the try-fail cycle of this subplot is not connected to the overall success. Right? I think a show that does this incredibly well is Scavenger's Reign which is one of my favorite shows of recent years. Each episode is very episodic, of, like, here's a new situation, here's a new monster, here's a new thing they're dealing with. But how they deal with it is central to the thematic questions of the show, of what is it to be in community with other people, what is it to exist within a larger system? Right? And because each of the try-fail cycles that they encounter are addressing that bigger question, it always feels engaging and exciting. And also, there's a part of it like they're just good little stories, too. You have to make sure that if... When it feels like you're wasting my time is when you're actually wasting my time. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] And executing on these sort of mini arcs, you have to put as much thought and character into them as you would for any other arc, even if it is kind of a side story or a side quest.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And I think that's the key, is one of the other things that will happen with these is during that stalling is you can do a side quest that isn't connected and isn't... Like, I read something where they were... The side quest was we're going through these very tall poisonous plants. No one venture off the path and touch one of the poisonous plants. And, shocking everyone here, is someone ventures off the path and touches one of the poisonous plants...

[Erin] What?

[Mary Robinette] And someone is like, fortunately, I have this antidote, and they give it to them and they continue on their way. And I'm like, what was even the point of that?

[DongWon] Yeah. That's nothing. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. But the thing with the side quest, like whether it's the orphan or whatever it is, is that... That keeps it from being just a side quest, that keeps it connected, is if it has impact on the character that affects the way they are dealing with everything that follows...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That. That's... It's like I sometimes say it's like if you're on a road trip and you have to pull off the Interstate to get gas, you may as well make it interesting.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And if you're on a road trip and there's a roadblock, you may as well make it interesting. But there's no point in going to go look at the world's largest ball of twine if it's going to take you 500 miles off your...

[DongWon] Yeah. The character needs to change or our understanding of the character needs to change.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. [garbled]

[DongWon] If neither...

[Mary Robinette] Yes. Or of the world.

[DongWon] Or of the world. And if none of those things are happening, then, truly, cut it. This doesn't belong here.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You need to find another way to pad out the word count of your book.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. So I'm glad as we were coming towards the end of this, that you mentioned try-fail cycles, because next week, we are going to be talking about try-fail cycles. Which is another way you can adjust pacing and things in the middle, and we're going to get really granular at that. So, I'm going to give you some homework.

[Mary Robinette] I want you to grab a book or a short story, and I want you to read the first page, and the page that's in the exact middle, and then the page at the end. And what story threads from the middle... From the beginning are still alive in the middle? Like, when you look at the beginning, it's like there's this character and they seem really unhappy. Is that character still around in the middle? Sometimes that's going to be a product of, like, it being a multi POV, but, like, what's going on, and how do you think that is working?

[DongWon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.