Sorry for the long silence. I've been in an intense work cycle. It took some serious, focused work to get through.
Most writers have a section in their writing where things bog down, usually in the middle of their plot. I've heard it called the muddle in the middle a lot. I'm sure there are other terms for it. It happens in chess, too.
The thing about the middle game is this: you still have most of the pieces on the board, all of which interact in complex ways, and they're all over the place as far as who has the most power, who has the best position for a strike, and who has the best position for defense. If you're horrible to your point of view characters like I am, by this point they're weakened, scared and cornered. Sometimes they don't know who to strike or where, even if they were in a position to strike at all. It's really hard to write out of this situation. I feel it's the most critical part of the book to write through, and strains the abilities of the writer. The climax may have more emotional impact and may be more memorable than the middle of the book, but in order to shine, it needs to be supported by that middle section. The better the middle, the more intense the payoff will be at the end.
You do know that fight scenes have plots like novels, don't you? If they don't, they come off as flat. Anyway, to use a fight scene as an example, let's use Gabriel's Revenge in The Patriot movie as an example. (You don't have to see the movie to follow along.) It starts off, Gabriel and his band of militia surprise British troops while the supremo bad guy is cleaning up after a long day of oppressing Americans. It's simple. The British are caught flat-footed, the Americans have the high ground, and the two sides are reacting to each other. Yanks are shooting Brits, Brits are scrambling for their weapons. Then we get to the muddle in the middle. This guy gets that guy, that guy gets this guy, someone else gets shot, people are dropping like flies. And these aren't all spear carriers. They're characters we've come to know and care about.
Writing something like this is hard. Believe me, filming it is no picnic either. It takes a lot of planning, and lots of editing skill to get the pacing.
Then the payoff … Gabriel, fighting closer and closer to the supremo bad guy, keeps getting interrupted. He's wearing out, but he's determined. Finally they meet, and it's looking good … and bam. The climactic payoff. (Didn't want to spoil it for anyone so I got vague there. Sorry.) Without that muddle in the middle, not only would the plot arch be shorter, it would be far duller. There would be no hopes dashed, no hopes raised, no terror, no crushing losses as the protagonist battles his way resolutely on his way to defeat evil.
If Gabriel just snuck up on the supremo bad guy, bitch-slapped him, shot him and spat on him, it might be momentarily satisfying, but it wouldn't be memorable, and it wouldn't have as much impact as the plot arch where both characters gave everything they got just to get to each other and then locked horns … and …. you can watch it if you're curious. Conversely, it would have been annoying if Gabriel charged in and the bad guy stood up and shot the bad guy and he fell and died, and then the heroes all rode away or they fruitlessly attacked and died too. The muddle, the complexity of it, made that scene the first one I thought of as a good example of excellent action plot structure.
It's tempting, when things get complex, to follow the path of least resistance in the middle of a story and have things turn out the way that seems most likely, or to over-simplify things to make the job easier. If all writers did that, the world would have been deprived of some of the great plot twists and turns readers have enjoyed over the centuries. Intrigues would be practically non-existent.
But, when you're writing it, the brain gets tired and confused and ….
I got caught in the middle of a book in November and do you know what my brain did? Come up with the most unbelievably fantastic story idea … for another book in a completely different universe. It was so tempting, so fantastic, that I shot my discipline between the eyes and started writing it.
For about three days. Then I got back to business and finished that middle part on the original work.
If I didn't have the experience of completing many books (most of which won't see the light of day, thank goodness) I might not have come back to it. I might have abandoned that book because it was too hard, or I'd lost my train of thought (it's actually easy to lose an entire train, given a big enough wilderness) or because I thought that I'd run into trouble because the whole idea was flawed.
Or because my brain convinced me that I had a much better book to write. Sometimes resistance is entirely subconscious. It's the same wolf, but dressed in sheep's clothing.
Of course my new book would also have a muddle in the middle, but brains don't think like that. They lure you away when the going gets rough, and then you end up with dozens of half-written works and not a lot to show for it.
Anyway, I still haven't finished that book, or the new one my brain came up as a huge distraction, but they're coming along. In the meantime, you can expect Innocence & Silence, the third book in the Lord Jester's Legacy, to come out in January 2014! I'm excited.
Speaking of which, while I was reading through Innocence and Silence, looking for errors, I came up with yet another idea for a book and started writing it. My brain really doesn't want to do any work. Time to get out the whip and lick my brain until it gets back to work.