Katie Fforde
Writers' Forum spoke to the bestselling author Katie Fforde.
Saggy middles are something that I have experienced myself and seen in others – and I am not talking waistlines here! Even though you think you have your novel mapped out, now and again a lull can crop up with the odd book, or you go through a phase – perhaps you are a bit tired or something – and you just think ‘Oh, I don’t know where this is going.’ This is when you need to take action and very often working your way backwards can help. It can lead you to the point in the book where it is starting to sag. I first used this method with Practically Perfect which was published in 2006, but the approach can be applied to all books. The problem crops up when you have started writing. You think you have a whole book’s worth of prose, then you suddenly realise you’ve run out and you don’t know what to write next. So I stop and break it all down by asking ‘Okay, where am I now and where do I want them to be?’ With all my novels I know I want a happy ending and I know I want the hero and heroine to get together. So, depending on where I am – where I am starting to sag – I have to think: Have they already been together? If they have, have they made love and it’s gone wrong? Or have they not got that far? Or did they nearly get that far and, if so, what happened?