Surviving the soggy middle

 I'm nearly at chapter forty of my novel re-write, and I'm firmly in the soggy middle of the story.  This is the place where many writers struggle, and often abandon stories.  That's especially so if they're pantsers  and don't have a clear enough idea of their story to carry them through.

I don't generally struggle with soggy middles while I'm writing.  The major reason for that is that these days I'm a serious plotter.  Every new novel gets a comprehensive chapter plan worked out before I start to write the first word of fiction.

The plan allows me to work out the viewpoint of each chapter.  Given that I write multi-viewpoint stories with up to five viewpoints, knowing which one is carrying the story at any given point is crucial.

The other advantage of writing a detailed chapter plan is that it helps me to spot soggy middles early on and fix them before I've done a lot of writing I need to discard.  I can see from the outline if nothing happens in the chapter.  If there's no action, and the chapter doesn't deepen the characters or move the story on in some way then I know there's more work to be done on the plan.

I didn't do that for the novel I'm re-writing.  I decided to re-write the story direct from the original 2009 chapters.  But a lot of changes have been made from that original.  I've cut four characters who weren't earning their keep.  I've also changed the identity of two of the main characters, making them black.

But the real problem is with the soggy middle.  On my first pass through this rewrite I added twelve new chapters at the end.  I beefed up the big fight and added some new content to round off the story.  Now I have to link that new material to the old middle.

A couple of the old chapters were just the viewpoint characters ruminating on what they'd learned about this place so far.  I did add some backstory which told the reader a little more about them, but it didn't link up properly with what they were doing in the present.  So the soggy middle is being re-written

So far I've added a scene where a thug has threatened a woman Governor and tried to take over her city.  The man is mentioned in the manuscript before, but I've never shown a scene with him in it.  This will be relevant for the big fight later, so the setup is relevant.

Most of the rest of the soggy middle is being rewritten to lay the groundwork for this fight.  It feels a little like groping around in the dark working this way, and I don't find it comfortable.

I'll certainly be returning to doing detailed chapter plans for future novels.