Mind the middle

Mickey Spillane

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

Mickey Spillane

When reviewing Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge the other day, I complained about the Dutch travelogue the author inserted into the middle of her story, which seemed to me to be mostly padding intended to make her novel for children longer than it needed to be. True, Dodge does introduce some characters in this part of the novel and creates some subplots. Even so it is the dullest part of the book and over the years has probably caused many readers to put down the novel and never pick it up again.

So many novels are like this, even if not to the extreme of Dodge's book. Most novels start out exciting, or at least interesting, to get the reader hooked. And they conclude with a flourish, as love, truth or whatever prevails and questions are answered and loose ends are tied up.

But then there is that middle part where the story slows down. The novelist fills in the background, telling us what happened before the opening chapter. We find out more about the characters and are introduced to new ones. Sometimes all this is necessary, yet often it seems like padding, sort of like Dodge's travelogue. Even mysteries and thrillers often have dead spots in the middle where nothing much seems happen.

Novelist Siri Hustvedt said, "Novels often sag under their own weight halfway through." Readers are reading for resolution of the plot, while writers are struggling to achieve 300 pages or 400 pages or whatever the desired length may be.

Ideally the author can let tension build during this central part of a novel, rather than hit a pause button on the plot. Of novels I have read recently, I would rate William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember highly this regard. The author brings in backstory without seriously slowing down the momentum of the main story. In a very different kind of novel, Thrity Umrigar does something similar in The Space Between Us.

And so it can be done. Too many authors fail to do it well.