The Second Act

Sorry the post is a little late. I know they're usually up by Monday morning, but my laptop had been doing the slow death crawl for a few months now and it's on its last leg. Poor thing. I hope it lasts through my last two online tests. But anyway, you all are expecting a blog post, so here we go.

The second act is where most of the action happens. Have you ever heard the analogy that writing a book is like getting your character up a tree, throwing rocks at him, and then getting him back down again.

Act one is putting him up the tree.
Now we get to throw rocks at him.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

The first point I will make is that the second act is always the longest. It’s all the problems your protagonist faces along their journey. This is often when first-time writers sag the most. It’s also where I sag the most.

 

Sorry. Moving on. Anyway, making sure you have ideas planned for the middle is important. The beginning and the end are important too of course, and in fact the end and the climax is almost the most important part, but if the reader gets bored in the middle, they’re never going to read the end. Usually you want between 3 and10 big planned events in the middle. I usually go with somewhere around 5. 10 is kind of extensive, unless you’re writing a high fantasy novel, which I do not recommend on your first try.

Have fun writing everyone!

Good luck with your middle!