How many times have I been watching a film and two-thirds the way through thought ‘finish it now!’. Likewise when reading books, a point often comes where I feel the author is spinning the story out, or we are anticipating the denouement so why another red herring? Some books feel simply too long at this point. I may not be the only author who struggles around the 3/4 mark.
The 3/4 point is the hardest part of a book for me to write. Say chapters 22 to 26 of a 30 chapter book. Starting a book is easy, and the first three to six chapters simply flow. By then I will have an end in mind, and sometimes draft the last half dozen pages so I know where I’m headed. I like a midpoint break, a high point, a crisis, a game-changer which will naturally grow from the character’s actions in the first half. In some of my books I even have a ‘part 2’. I did this in Glint of light on Broken Glass partly to avoid war-weariness in 1916, skipping most of a year where my characters’ lives went on much the same from week to week. So I can work my beginning-of-novel towards that midpoint break.
By this point of the book, key characters, setting, backstory, plot are all established. Moving off from the midpoint is fine, as the reader will be at home with a fully fledged cast, belief suspended, calibrated for the period and style, and immersed in the story. Then comes the 3/4 point. Here the mystery needs to start making sense, without giving away the ending. Characters need to start dropping away so there is not still a cast of dozens cluttering the denoument. Red herrings need to be recognised and real clues appreciated at last. I also need to set up the final sequences – the chase, the fight, the revelation, disillusion or whatever. Characters’ motivations must become clear and their arcs concluded. Loose ends must be tied, and if they are left loose this must be a deliberate conceit of the author not carelessness.
So the 3/4 point is a problem. Introducing new characters is annoying, as the reader will know they are less important that the ones we’ve been rooting for. A shift of scene might be disconcerting unless it fits the style of the plot, such as the Road Movie format of When the Dust Settles or Lady in the Lake. Action sequences or sex scenes or ‘another murder’ can feel like gratuitous padding unless something is resolved – a threat is eliminated or a key twist revealed. Information dumping is even more forbidden now than in the first quarter – this is the wrong time to discover our hero has a forgotten sister or still has a bullet lodged in his back from the war. It is also no time for purple prose as we’ve set the mood already and the reader will become impatient.
Our characters need to be moving inexorably towards that ending, which should still retain at least some surprise if not a twist as such. I’m at that point now in NRT, 50,000 words into draft 1, an end already written about 10,000 words ahead. Don’t pad, don’t give away the end, drop those minor characters, expose the red herrings, raise the stakes, set up that finale.
Deep breath, here we go…
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