What do you do when your genre just refuses to work? When you’ve tried every content genre you know—Action, Crime, Horror, Thriller, Performance, Love, Society, and more—and every single one just does not fit your story? Sure, some parts of several of those genres fit your story. Those parts even seem essential. Some parts feel like a stretch, but you can make them work if you squint. And some parts don’t fit at all. If you’re honest, it’s like your story is secretly three genres in a trenchc...
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What do you do when your genre just refuses to work? When you’ve tried every content genre you know—Action, Crime, Horror, Thriller, Performance, Love, Society, and more—and every single one just does not fit your story? Sure, some parts of several of those genres fit your story. Those parts even seem essential. Some parts feel like a stretch, but you can make them work if you squint. And some parts don’t fit at all. If you’re honest, it’s like your story is secretly three genres in a trenchc...
Make Sense of Your Messy Middle With the Most Underrated Story Element
Your Next Draft
29 minutes
4 months ago
Make Sense of Your Messy Middle With the Most Underrated Story Element
You don’t need more filler. You need better progressive complications. Your inciting incident hooks your readers and promises them a story they’ll love. And then comes the middle. The messy middle. The quiet doldrums of your story, where plot momentum goes to die. Where your characters wander, your conflict blurs, and you start to wonder if any of it is working. So what do you do? Add some “stuff that happens” and hope it holds your readers’ interest? Toss in a random subplot? Describe your c...
Your Next Draft
What do you do when your genre just refuses to work? When you’ve tried every content genre you know—Action, Crime, Horror, Thriller, Performance, Love, Society, and more—and every single one just does not fit your story? Sure, some parts of several of those genres fit your story. Those parts even seem essential. Some parts feel like a stretch, but you can make them work if you squint. And some parts don’t fit at all. If you’re honest, it’s like your story is secretly three genres in a trenchc...
