Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between (Bell on Writing)

I am in the middle of writing a long novel and was lost. This book helped me pause and rethink what I'm doing and where I'm going with the book.I'm grateful. Thanks.

A very simple book for a beginner. I hated that I spent the money on it because I read the whole thing an a short time, but the information has been really useful.

Interesting task... to rate this book, given that I'm not an accomplished author and in many ways, not qualified to rate Bell's help here. But here goes anyway... This short book is packed with excellent ideas. So, from that perspective alone, I highly recommend it.IN SHORT: this has many helpful concepts, and some concepts that really don't seem as clear cut as he states them, yet even those concepts remain highly helpful even if they are somewhat hard to codify. Yep, get this book and read it.A BIT MORE EXPLANATION of areas that lack clarity to me:ONE, He refers to the three acts and the two pillars that largely define them. To me, it seems that these pillars are not always a distinct moment, but a gradual realization (for character driven stories) or gradual shift in context (for plot driven stories). Small point maybe.TWO, he refers to the golden triangle. One can glean how it relates to the pillars and acts, but it's not clearly laid out. The golden triangle refers to the entire book, and certainly it includes the beginning of the book. It doesn't address whether the triangle encompasses the end (although it seems to) and in fact, the contents of Act III is never specifically addressed anywhere in the book (not even to say "it includes a resolution to the death issues that were fought in Act II"). It refers to the right side of the triangle being the transformation, but that could include only the end of Act II (with Act III as being resolution after transformation) but he never explicitly says. ONLY in examples does he refer to the right tip of the triangle as being the "show us the transformation." So, I can glean that it extends to the end of the book even though he never directly addresses it.THREE, the descriptions of the first pillar, the second pillar (and to a degree, the middle mirror moment) takes a bit of absorption to get clear.FOUR, I don't recall the book addressing the cases in which one might want more than one mirror moment, or might have multiple pillars/acts like I've seen in some books (e.g. The Stand by King).HAVING SAID ALL THAT: The key point is that these seem to be incredibly valuable points, even the ones that were not stated as clearly as I'd like. These are valuable even if your writing requires deviations from this core structure (this is a short book and thus has little room for filling in anything other than the core framework). So far, I find it very valuable in thinking of changes I want to make, and we will see how valuable it is as I put this structure to a current story, and then in 2020 as I practice.CONCLUSION: If you're at all new to writing, I highly recommend this as a fantastic kickoff to assuring you have core concepts laid out well. If you have even medium experience, I can't reliably address how much it will help, but I suspect it will help a lot. Any experience beyond that is beyond my ability to address it... yet. :-) I may come back to this as I put it into practice; we'll see how that goges.Thanks James Scott Bell! This is a great resource for me.

This is another fine five star effort by James Scott Bell. Starting your novel from the middle provides a different POV on the process of creating a page turning story. Bell puts this point at the dead center of the book and has it often as a point within a scene – a mirror point where the main characters ‘sees’ himself for what he is or will soon decide he will become from that point to the end of the book.I find it useful to look at your WIP from this point of view in a way to check for weakness in your storyline which you would not otherwise notice. What is so interesting for me is that I am now taking a course on Shakespeare in which the professor also claims that Shakespeare has this same ‘hinge’ point at the end of his act three in his five act plays. It is at this hinge point that the play gets locked into the path it will follow until the end. Like much of Bell, Shakespeare’s characters are very concerned with finding out what kind of person they really are…that is, who they are as opposed to who they have appeared to be.The ‘who am I really’ hinge point works classically well for the bard and it would be hard to improve on it. I believe that Bell has intuitively seen what makes great writing work and last through the ages. Bell has expanded this idea and make it easily obtainable for many different genres.The author shows how this method can be used by plotters and pantsers while at the same time allowing them to mostly follow their natural writing MO. While I think ‘starting in the middle’ is as useful as using a preflight checklist before taking off in your private plane, I don’t think it is per se a method that either plotters or pantsers will actually adopt.As a plotter I want to be sure the book is going to be a great book before I being the project. So I write the last chapter first. I write a chapter that I call a ‘stand up and cheer I can’t wait to buy your next book’ ending. I can’t stand the idea of working on a book for a year or more and not knowing the whole time if it is going to be a good book. That does not make sense if your goal is to make money from your writing. First write a great ending then make that ending come true. This way you can keep your eyes on the prize; you can look up and see the shining city on the hill; you can find motivation during the dark moments of the writer’s soul because you know there really is a prize behind door three. You know because you put it there. A pantser, after a year of work, may have to take the only ending that will work given what came before. This is no way to get a stand up and cheer ending. Also, when the dark days of the sagging middle get the pantser down, it is easy to think the whole effort is not worth the candle.To sum it up, I will use the guidance offered in this book which I feel is a great return on my investment in time and money. However, I will still write the way I write but I will be going back and making sure my midpoint moments take place and, when possible, I’ll have them take place on all three levels Bell mentions. I see the midpoint mirror moment as a handy midcourse correction on the way to the moon.Actually, there is a lot more writing advice in this book as a bonus and just that material alone would be well worth the price.I will be reading this book several more times so that the ‘trip’ to the middle becomes second nature to me.James Scott Bell Does it Again! A five star return on investment!

James Scott Bell's succinct approach and specific examples made this book both easily digestible and incredibly informative. I will be using a lot of his tips in my writing.

I'm a James Scott Bell fanboy, so let's get that out there first of all. The man has seen it, done it and owns the tee shirt. If he advises that I look at the midpoint as a place to start, I'm willing to run with him for a while. Turns out he's right. Nailing that midpoint - mirror moment - really does help you to understand just what it is your protagonist needs [as opposed to wants]. It still hasn't made writing my latest Fantasy novel any the easier - because that's not how writing goes, but at least it means I knew from the get go where I was heading. An easy read and a great new way to look at how to get into the meat of your story

A slim, read-in-one-sitting book containing one original-ish idea and several rehashed ones. The original-ish idea is that each novel has a ‘mirror-moment’ of reflection (what am I becoming? Or the odds that face me are overwhelming) at its centre, and this moment defines what the story is about and anchors all the scenes before and after it. Scott Bell doesn’t prescribe that you must start planning or writing with the mirror-moment. He suggests, however you work, know that moment is necessary and test your story against it. I found midpoint mirror-moments in the novels I’ve written, but I’m not sure the idea will be much help to me in planning the next one.

I can't recall when I bought this book on Kindle. Months, maybe a year ago. Maybe longer. An impulsive buy but until today I never got beyond that.I'm a nonfiction writer by trade but contemplating NaNoWriMo... so I surfed through my library to see if anything might inspire me (counter the fear & sense of ridiculous of such an undertaking, more likely)I found this. Write Your Novel From the Middle. Surely no more ridiculous than contemplating NaNoWriMo?..So I read it. This afternoon. Swiftly. With increasing enthusiasm and head-nodding.The idea is genius and simple to see(1) how it would work - for the author(2) make for a far more powerful novel - for the readerToo late I started highlighting the flurry of wonderful tips and how to's.Time to go make dinner and re-read the whole thing again, pulling from it everything I can.(it's only 93 pages but I'm guessing I'll probably end up with almost as many ideas, helpful directions and inspiration..)Suddenly NaNoWriMo doesn't seem so personally ridiculous after all...

This was such a simple idea, I can’t believe I haven’t come across it before. It really made sense and got me thinking about my plots in a different way. The style was clear and informative and whilst I expected the examples at the end to be “fillers”, I thought they enhanced the book, particularly the analysis of the 1950s pulp paperback.

Let me sum this entire book up for you:1. In the middle of your novel, create a single beat in which your protagonist reflects on their situation/mental state/flawed character trait.2. If you're just starting to write your novel, then begin with that middle scene of reflection and work backward/forward from there.That's it.That's the whole book.I really struggle to understand these glowing reviews.