Last month we wrote tips on writing a better exposition, and you asked for more! While the exposition sets expectations for readers and creates promises, the rising action of your novel is where it really hits its stride—or falls on its face.
Sometimes it can feel easy to lose momentum after the first act break. There are fewer key scenes. There’s less at stake for the book structure. But that’s why you have to double down on improvement through the editorial process. After the first 10 pages, this is the place where you’re most likely to lose readers forever. So, it’s important to keep it in peak shape!
Create Complications
By the time your novel transitions out of exposition, you should see movement in character motivation—something that drives your character to take action. So in the rising action, you have to put obstacles in their path to continue raising the stakes. We’ve all had to read books in school that don’t succeed at this. They’re horribly boring.
Alternate Scene Outcomes
One of the keys to making creating complications that are both believable and interesting is alternating scene outcomes in your rising action. Readers don’t want things to get worse and worse scene after scene. They want to see them make progress and then have it undone or met with another challenge. So give your characters some wins, too.
Step Up Tension Levels
If your middle story is feeling a little less rising action and a little more flat stillness, it’s likely because you could use an extra dose of conflict. You may have a killer inciting incident and climax on your hand, but without added conflict, your second act is going to lose reader attention.
There are many ways to raise the stakes in your novel, but the simplest is by having one character tell another “no.” We live in a society where we work as hard as we can to say yes, so saying no in your novel is a clear-cut way to get blood boiling. Plus, we all deserve a little more no in our own lives. Let’s live out the fantasy on the page.
Know Your Midpoint
Shortly after your book's midpoint is the second most likely place for a reader to put a book down after the first few pages. Many authors don’t realize this because it’s largely intuitive, but the midpoint is where a main character shifts from reacting to complications placed upon them to working proactively to solve the problem. Take 50% of your word count, find that scene, and you should be smack dab in the middle of that shift. A couple of scenes too early and the tension will feel lax. A couple of scenes too late, and the slog will feel too predictable. But you can probably be off by a scene either direction.
Integrate Well-Woven Subplots
If you already have a steady decline (or incline) planned that you are in love with, a great alternative to keep readers on their toes is to weave in a subplot between scenes. There are four basic types of subplot, and two work particularly well in this situation: the romance and the contrast.
A romance has the possibility to complicate your main plot, but it could also create moments of positivity in an otherwise declining narrative. But a contrast subplot can give another character similar choices to your lead and create more tension for them. Either they feel the weight of their own missteps more clearly or they feel conflicted in their continued success.
Make Room for Failure
This goes along with alternating scene outcomes, but your characters shouldn’t have an easy ride! And even if they’re taking a long time to piece out what steps to take next, they should still experience failure. Why? Because humans fail, and your characters are human. Even if your characters aren’t human, your readers are. So, get on their level and make sure that you aren’t building up some Mary Sues.
Ask Your Beta Readers!
We’re big fans of putting together a list of questions for your beta readers to help guide their feedback. Your beta readers may not be experts in story structure, but they’re experts in what it felt like to read your story. So, they’re a perfect resource to tell you when they get tired or had a hard time reading your story. If you are wanting an expert in story structure to help you pinpoint strategies to fix it, you can always seek out help from professional beta readers with editorial experience as well.
So by now your exposition and rising action should be ready for readers. Want to write a climax that will make readers cry? Come back next month for more tips to write better!
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