How to navigate the wastelands of Act 2.
Or 'Help, the Soggy Middle is sinking me!'
What is the soggy middle, you cry? This is the approx. 50% of a novel commonly called Act 2.
Act 1 is a breeze to write – it’s all killer and no filler, laying the grounds for your story, with vital character and world building. It’s beat after beat with the inciting incident (or catalyst) being most important. When most people go wrong with Act 1 it’s because they started the story too early, or are trying to pack in too much information too soon.
Act 3, if you have done your planning right, can almost write itself (OK, it’s not THAT easy, but you get my point). It’s the culmination of all your story and character arcs, and by now you should know exactly how the story is going to end, so all you need to do is tie everything together and give your reader a satisfying conclusion.
So, why is Act 2 so damn hard? Firstly, the length. It’s half your bloody story! That’s a LOT of real estate. Even the best writers can find their meticulously plotted opus going off track in the wastelands of Act 2.
If you’re following a beat sheet, such as save the cat, Act 2 is notoriously thin on checkpoints. Sure, you’ve got your midpoint (ideally a false victory or defeat for your MC or MCs) which is a MAJOR checkpoint, and some of the tastiest story beats occur at the end of Act 2 (All is lost, I’m looking at you). But in Save the Cat, just TWO beats — commonly called ‘Fun and Games,’ and ‘Bad Guys Close In’ — account for approximately 20% of your ENTIRE novel EACH!! WOW, that is a long way to travel without many roadsigns.
Let’s look at these two monster-beats in more detail.
‘Fun and Games’ is often also known as the ‘promise of the premise’. It’s what your story is REALLY about. If you’re writing a big action thriller, this will be packed with gun fights, chases and all the good stuff. If you’re writing romance, this is where things get steamy. The problem is, how do you deliver on your promise?
This is a great place to start weaving in cool sub plots (but don’t forget to tie them up later or dovetail them with your main plot), or introduce new characters. It’s also the place for that really DEEP character development you couldn’t quite jam into Act 1.
After halfway, your reader wants to think they know your MC like they know their best friend. They don’t want to suddenly find out all this baggage and have the goalposts moved. But they equally don’t want to be bombarded with too much about a character in Act 1. Think oversharing. If you meet someone and ten minutes later you know their life story and all the dark stuff, chances are you’ll run a mile. So, part 1 of Act 2 is THE place to really get under the hood and let your reader know EXACTLY what makes your MC tick.
Onto the next half. They call it ‘bad guys close in’ because this is often where the evil writer makes his reader and his MC really SUFFER. The antagonist (internal or external) will be getting stronger, and the reader will be wondering how the hell the MC can possibly win. The time for character development and introducing important new people is mostly over, so you need to ratchet the tension as the narrative heads inexorably towards the final act. For romance, the relationship might be getting more volatile, with complications piling up. For horror, the ghastly monster is terrorizing your MC’s every waking second.
But just how do you keep the pedal to the metal for an entire 20% of a novel!? If I knew the answer, I’d be a million-seller already, but one surefire trick is to keep raising the stakes. A great way to do this is to introduce a TICKING CLOCK, meaning there is sudden time pressure. Perhaps there’s a bomb which will go off if not found in 24 hours, or one of the lovers is leaving for a new life tomorrow and the other has to act FAST to change their mind. Or your band of space explorers discovers some existential new threat to their survival which will not give them the luxury of time to solve, such as dwindling oxygen supplies, or a growing alien threat.
So, there you have it.
If you are still lost, try zooming out and looking at your outline. Do you know your end? If you don’t know how the story ends by the time you’re into part 2 of Act 2, it will be really hard to pull it together. Is your throughline (your major beats) still solid? Is the story moving forward? Make sure every scene is moving the plot a little further towards conclusion.
Whatever you do, don’t panic. Your reader has followed you this far and will allow some leeway to meander a little. I don’t believe the perfect Act 2 has ever or will ever be written, and rest assured you are not alone. Every great writer has got stuck in the soggy middle, probably more than a few times. The trick is to write through it, make sure you by now know your ending, and remember you can always fix problems in the next draft. The real magic often happens in revision and editing.