Context and disclaimer: Most of these thoughts are not the kinds of things I take into account when I'm drafting. I'm hoping that looking at them in the abstract will a) train my subconscious in useful directions, and b) help me un-stick some WIPs.

I’ve mulched a bunch of Writing Excuses podcasts and Brandon Sanderson's Youtube writing lectures over the years, which have deeply influenced this random crop of ideas. I made some of it up myself, but I'm not claiming any kind of authority or even experience.


What Middles Are For

Arguably a story consists of 1) promises, 2) progress, and 3) payoff (cf Sanderson, Youtube). The promises are "here's what you're in for", including main characters, setting/genre/tone, goals and stakes. Most of that gets set up at the start. The payoff happens at the end, obviously, as all of it comes to fruition or failure. But middles can feel a bit formless. What does "progress" even mean?

Here are some thoughts about what the middles of stories are for.
( Many bullet points beneath the cut. )

Anyway, all of this has been swirling around my head for a while now. What do you think? Do you get stuck in the middles of stories? Do you have other ideas about what middles are for (other than putting some space between the beginning and the end)? Does thinking about it in these kind of terms help you, or do you prefer to frame your writing in other ways? If you look at your current WIPs or just-finished stories, what broadly/structurally are the middles of those stories "doing"? Do you think all this is different for fanfic, where you can assume a certain amount of reader pre-investment in the characters, at least, and where backstory is often canon?