sag  (s?g)   
v.   sagged, sag·ging, sags

1. To sink, droop, or settle from pressure or weight.
2. To lose vigor, firmness, or resilience: My spirits sagged after I had been rejected for the job.
3. To decline, as in value or price: Stock prices sagged after a short rally.

I have to deal with my sagging middle.
No, I don’t mean go on a diet, and exercise. (Though I ought to!)

I mean that tripe I managed to put in my book.
It sags. It’s overweight and it is out of shape.
I’ve hated it even while I wrote it. It has to go.
But how do you give your story a lean, toned six-pack?
Perform surgery. Not the plastic kind, either.
First you open the belly. Then you rip the guts out, tie a knot in them and cut off unnecessary parts.
Be brutal.
Go to the point where the story still moves forward and put a marker there.
Go to the point where the story continues to the end and put a marker there.
Rip out everything in between, lay it out and examine it.
Does it have conflict?
Does it move the plot (not the story, but the plot) forward?
Does it offer new insights into the characters?
Are the conflicts something the characters need to deal with?
Do things get worse when they do? (And create more conflicts.)

Middles are hard for me.
Difficult and tricky.
I tend to fail at being mean to my characters at the point where it sags.
So I’ve concluded to send my inner nice person for a week on the beach, so it won’t bother me while I’m mean to the people in the book.
Then I’ll start in the middle with some “What If’s” and see where it takes me.
I’ll send those guys up a tree and throw rocks at them. Big ones. Stuff they can’t dodge.
Things they have to deal with, or things get worse. Of course, they will get worse no matter what they do. They need to fail a few times and find another way.
And when they think they made it across the bridge, I’ll show them a frazzled rope to make them hurry up before it rips and drops them into the abyss, or some broken slats they need to get over. (I’ll cut the rope afterwards, so they can’t get back that way, either…)

Doing all this should tighten that flabby belly.

Now if only this would work for the other saggy middle of mine, too!

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