Plot vs. event
I’ve been re-reading Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau.
‘But it’s just derring-do’ says my wife, dismissively. ‘Boy’s own adventure.’
Aged fourteen I cried buckets over The Prisoner of Zenda. Maybe that was misspent youth when more mature young women were reading Jane Austen. but I was a tomboy and I loved the gallantry, the sword-fights, the gentlemanliness and the romance. There’s no harm in revisiting the young Charlotte, and the old friends she made in these books.
More seriously, reflecting on why the sequel is not nearly as good as the Prisoner, has given me a lot of insight into my own efforts to wrangle my second novel through what is sometimes called ‘the sagging middle’.
Plot trumps incident: The Prisoner of Zenda
Yes of course The Prisoner is dated. It’s frightfully English and very male-centred. Leave that aside for a moment, and enjoy it for what it does well. For the most part the first-person narrative moves at a rattling pace with the old trope of someone impersonating his double––in this case, Rudolf Rassendyl impersonating King Rudolf of Ruritania. But in the first place, Rudolf’s motivation is good––to save the king from the machinations of his half brother––and in second place, Rudolf does develop from a light-hearted layabout into someone a great deal more serious, willing to serve the king at some cost to himself, wrestling with the moral complexity of his position and his love for the Queen.
Plot bogs down in incident: Rupert of Hentzau
Unfortunately, the sequel is wordy and at times tedious. Partly because it is told through the eyes of Fritz von Tarlenheim rather than Rudolf, and as Fritz is not present at all the key events there is a lot of retelling of stories that others have told him. But that needn’t have slowed the pace as much as it does.
Some of the problem may be Fritz’s penchant for describing his own feelings in detail, slowing down the pace of incidents.
But more seriously, there are far too many incidents. Too many complications, too many people missing trains, or failing to see the person lurking in the shadows; too many telegrams and letters going astray. Too much reliance on the fact that the reader already knows the main characters. Far too much dependence on our remembering Rudolf as a noble and gallant chap of the first water. We do not see Rudolf struggling with his position, deepening his character, until the very end of the book.
Fixing the ‘sagging middle’
While I was struggling to redraft a very long, over-complicated passage in the middle of my book, one of my colleagues commiserated with me over the ‘soggy’ middle. Apparently the ‘sagging middle’ is a common problem. Here are some ideas how to fix it.
https://thehistoryquill.com/five-ways-to-fix-a-sagging-middle/
The one that resonates most with me is ‘Up the stakes’. When I am writing at my best, I’m often asking myself ‘What is at stake.’
Focusing on the deepening of the characters, on their motivations and conflicts rather than on too many small events, really helped me chart a clearer trajectory. Did I need yet another detailed account of a weather event (crashing thunder, drenching rain) so that one character could show another where to shelter under an overhang? Wouldn’t it be simpler just to have A offer to show B a better path to the village? Leaving me more space to envisage how each character was responding to the other.
I hope that Water-stone will be much stronger for these reflections. Thank you, Anthony Hope.
https://charlotteclutterbuck.com/gannet-quartet/