5 Mistakes New Writers Make in the MIDDLE of Their Book  don’t do this!

You can't imagine how important the "big cast with no single protag should have a common internal conflict anchor" advice is for me!
Chinese literature usually are ensemble aside from Journey to the West which follows the hero's path structure(shockingly modern). I was hugely influenced by classic literature so I usually write ensemble fiction but I can't manage the main conflict and focus. This is a life saver!

I need advice, how do I write a character that is supposed to be a good person but due to the actions of other people towards them, they become resentful and hateful, but still has some morallity to know that what they’re doing it’s wrong😭-

Thank you so much for your videos! They always help me whenever I'm stuck on a chapter or having really bad writer's block. I was able to improve my writing and have my story flow so much better because of you 😊

Hi Abby! For a beginner writer working on a romance novel, which of your videos/trainings would you recommend? Thanks!

When you mentioned the "large cast of characters needing to have an anchor to the story" I immediately thought of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (not the musical, mind you, the actual 1000+ page book). That book is a whole masterclass on interweaving plots and characters and a bunch of other things.

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I write adventure romance and this helped me too much.

If you have any advice on how to help me I would greatly appreciate it ….. so I was writing a “short” story. For an assignment and I put like an excessively long scene and it’s completely unnecessary. I still need the base of all this happening but I don’t think I need most of it and I don’t know how to fix it

It’s like three pages of how we we’re fixing up the house and I’m not sure if it actually matters or not for it to be that long because I feel like it would make someone stop reading because you start the book with just fixing a house and it takes “forever” to actually get anything into the actual story line 😅😅

You know it's a good book when you get just past the middle and sad that it's almost over.

I want to write a story where two young women become best friends in college (both have very different but big dreams). The main conflict becomes the catalyst and leads to the breakup of their friendship, where one disappears (run away from family and her friend). Then there is 18-year timeskip where the next main character is the niece of one of the girls. How do I make that less jarring if I want to put it into one novel and not a sequel?

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Hi... I am an absolute beginner at writing and I am currently writing Fantasy Fiction with a little mystery and I am a new subscriber... So I have a little confusion.. What is internal conflict?... And love your videos ❤

I took your advice about how to start a first chapter, looked at what I did and saw immediately that the exposition intro to my universe delivers a far stronger punch at the closing of the chapter instead. This is going to take me down a rabbit hole of scene structure in some points in my books, but it was a consideration I wasn't spending sufficient time on, clearly. Thanks.

With regards to the middle of my books, all arcs are observing these points carefully, intuitively. I'm not incompetent at story telling, but I do allow the story enough room to tell itself, seeing as this concept is so strong. It may very well be the case that people struggle with these aspects of the narrative due to uncertainty of where the story is meant to progress. Before I started, I took key scenes I already had in my head and structured the entire story with defined beats, so I knew where it was going the whole time. This stuff fell into place naturally and I hardly needed to make changes.

Ah, yes. The Dreded Sagging Middle.

Getting the objective too easily is something I've seen too much in modern TV. Its like, oh no they have to get the thing! What will they do? 30 seconds later they have thing.

Thanks for doing these types of videos cuz they do help even though I may not understand to the fullest but I have an idea of what you say so thank you.

u look so much like Tabitha Swatosh and Blake Lively

Un-put downable ? Top secret 1A. Spaceship smashes into Earth. Army says, "It didn't Smash." It Set-down, It landed Fair & square. And then we clear away any debris field because the local sheep filed a complaint as they had to go around the wreckage. It's a Balloon people ! -get over it and move on. -please . Roswell 1947 Corona, New Mexico. For Abbie, Everthing you spit out of your mouth, can easily make my story telling "Unput downable."

My brain hurts trying to understand all this.

I actually finished my entire book…in my head😂
Still stuck in the middle part😢

Preach! 😭

Child I am so vested in my characters...I need rest

The books I love the most, like Rendezvous with Rama, At the Mountains of Madness, or Teatro Grottesco, have no internal conflict at all. Any internal conflict would make them prosaic instead of awe inspiring.

Good advice for any length story. Thumbs up and subscribed

Thank you for making this video. Got all of it written in my College Rule.

"...the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." -- William Faulkner

I want them to have an ability to put the book down. It's not a tv or tiktok. I want them to read only when they want to read/.

There's a reason they call it the muddle in the middle.

Abbie, you should write a book all about the science of writing 😿

So if I'm writing a mystery series, the Detective has to be personally connected to every single case he takes on? I hope I don't sound rude, but that's completely ridiculous.

Hey so question, what if one of the characters has a personality that switches back and forth? The last one there, with the consistency, made me question if it was too sudden, or if making it a repetitive thing that's like, delved into more each time could work? I mean uh...asking for a friend? Lol

number 4 that's a hard one unless a person is using a study group to write a book really how in the world can a writer predict who the reader will love or not love? personally feel that most avid romance novel readers have been conditioned by previous books to like certain kinds of characters Romance is way over done to the point there's a known formula to it all. write it interesting a bit corky and full of emotionally gut wrenching obstacles how hard can it really be?

I though you'd say Internal conflict is important cuz I love it. Heck halfplotted and internal conflict helps a lot listen to her

I’m on my first story, at least, one I’m taking seriously. Even if I’m inexperienced, I feel like the middle should just be the point where you’re expanding the world view and start to chip away at the insecurities or flaws of the characters physically and mentally. And the obstacles should just be amping up or challenges before the confrontation, to the main goal or villain.

I don’t think there’s a way to really make a middle part of a book boring unless you don’t know your characters well enough— or give them enough flaws.

Or you don’t know the scope of the world and it feels like you just took two steps outside your house and the villain just kind of chilling, being like “howdy, neighbor.”

One thing I hate personally is when the story doesn’t slow down for a good amount to let the characters breathe, and all it is action. I feel like that’s a good reason to DNF. I’m not watching two people throw punches, if I don’t know who they are as a character. Or whatever the plot is making me watch.

People can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just my impression of the middle of the book should be .

I've seen many professional authors do #4. I always HATED when the story did that. You've just read several chapters from one character's point, then at an exciting point--there's a divider, a new character, and this person is the one we follow for several chapters. I tried reading this one book, and it followed 3 different characters this way. Every 3-7 chapters or so, it switched. I couldn't stand it. It was like three different stories that were all uniquely different, and I'm assuming at some point toward the end they were all going to meet, but I never got that far. I ended up quitting about half way.

Yep, Nr. 4 is crucial for me. I hate it when writers take me away from beloved characters, especially when it feels like they're just trying to buy time to pad the page count by explaining something again, only from a different perspective. Nr. 1 reason for me to dnf a book, honestly.

Writing through the middle of a long book can really be time-consuming, and I’ve definitely hit those rough patches in the past. What’s helped me is BeLikeNative. This extension has been great for fixing grammar mistakes I miss when I'm in the thick of it, and the paraphrasing tool helps me smooth out those repetitive or unclear parts. BeLikeNative really supports me in making sure my drafts flow better and stay clear—especially when fatigue sets in. It’s been a game-changer for keeping my writing on track when I need it most.

I'm not even 2/7 of the way through the story that I'm writing and I'm looking at this video 💀💀💀

For me its a mix of too much fluff, action or angst without proper balance, or the characters are so unlikeable and stupid and I finally had enough that I stop reading.

Abby: no mushy middles
Me: story is sad, lovey dovey, happy, healing, tears of joy, more sad, alot more sad, exciting, heartbreaking, ironic justice, peaceful, robbers, more robbers, they die, battle, blood, gore, sad again, hopeful, 10 minutes of mundane, joyous, ACK! wedding bells, depressed, happy, tragic, more romance and ends at the end of the characters life.
Readers: (hopefully) tears, straight jacket and padded room

I gotta admit, I am totally a 'discovery writer', but I found it took me a long time to finish the novel I was writing. I had an idea of how it ended, and some concepts for scenes I wanted to include, but the middle was a little bit undeveloped as a result and I had to keep going back and forth. I would write in a scene, find it was going in places I didn't want it to, and have to take it out. Now I see I have a lot more editing to do than I thought. I'm hoping to get it published and I want the people reading it to connect with the characters and not find that the plot was going nowhere (which it kind of is).

Character Driven ist mein Jam

You are a excelent teacher. Very clear

THIS IS the first time writhing a chaptetrbook

You talked about mystery as an example. I feel like Holly Jackson did this ABSOLUTELY perfectly in A Good Girls Guide to Murder.