October Novel Prep Challenge

Ah, the muddled middle! The eternal curse! The best advice I've ever heard for middles is to take whatever your protagonist views as the best or worst thing that could possibly happen—the thing they see as their ultimate, the one they imagine as either their best ending or the worst case scenario, and make it happen at the midpoint. When someone told me the midpoint should FEEL like the climax to your characters, it really changed my writing life and led to better, fuller books...and then the characters have the rest of the book to deal with the consequences and escalations caused by the midpoint.

Another thing that helped me is to plan with four act structure instead of three. Three-act structure posits that the second act comprises 50% of the book, with acts one and two 25% each on either side, which—at least for me—means that massive 50% chunk is more likely to meander. But with four act structure, the second act escalates toward the midpoint, the third act accelerates toward the climax (the fourth act), and it all feels more neatly organized.

Good luck!