Writing Excuses 10.30: Q&A on Middles, with Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan joins us again, this time to help us field your questions about middles. Here are the questions we collected from the various social media feeds:

* How do you maintain interest without having something explode every other chapter?

* In short fiction, how do you prevent try-fail cycles from bloating the story?

* How do you prevent the introduction of POVs during the middle of the story from being jarring?

* How do you keep subplots from turning into side quests?

* In longer stories, how important are "breather" chapters that ease the tension?

* Do you have methods for weaving plot and subplot threads together? Do you outline this, or keep it in your head?

Fifty-Cent Word: Proprioception, which serves as an excellent metaphor for what expertise with a set of tools feels like. Thank you, Marie, for simplifying the whole "the tool should be an extension of your hand" thing.