The Missing Element: Conflict
When I encounter a manuscript with a sagging middle, the very first thing I turn to is the conflict. Is there a clear conflict in the ms, and is it of sufficient weight to support a full story?
Conflict drives narrative. Without it, we often have a lot of splashing around that makes everyone wet but doesn’t win any races.
Conflict at its essence is what a character in the story is attempting to do (their goal) and what is getting in the way of the character achieving that goal (challenges). The attempt to reach the goal despite challenges equals conflict.
A character may want to do a number of different things over the course of a story, and may have more or less difficulty in achieving these goals, and so a story can have any number of conflicts.
A character trying to finish her term paper (goal) who is stymied by her little sister interrupting her and her best friend texting her (challenges) is experiencing a conflict.
As readers we would not be interested in following this character’s attempt to reach her goal for more than a paragraph or two but it is, in fact, an example of conflict playing out in a story. And a conflict such as this one could be embedded in a larger narrative conflict about a character trying to land a college scholarship despite having an unsupportive family.
