Act two (or the middle) is the largest section of your novel. This section of your story is dedicated to a diverse collection of scenes. These scenes increase the suspense and the stakes in your novel. Act two is where readers will see obstacles being thrown at your lead character, continually.
The goal of act two is to keep readers interested as you build towards the end (or act three). This article provides six tips that will help you to do just that. But before you start act two, you should have at least started act one.
1. Use the Opposition
The best way to keep a reader interested is to have a convincing opposition. Though making the opposition a person is the easier approach, your opposition can be nature, a corporation, or even a thing. The aim is to have an opposition that is stronger than your lead.
If your opposition is a person, this character doesn’t have to be a villain. The opposition can be a decent character that has a good reason for preventing your lead character from reaching their goal.
The Silent Patient (by Alex Michaelides) has many unique and interesting oppositions for each protagonist. Alicia Berenson battles a very formidable opposition in act two in the form of a mysterious figure who is watching her. She doesn’t know who this person is or what they want.
Alex utilizes this mysterious figure by escalating them from watching to following Alicia. What further amplifies this threat is Gabriel’s failure to believe that this mysterious figure exists, so Alicia must face this opposition alone.
Theo Faber’s opposition lies in Alicia’s silence, several people connected to Alicia not being forthcoming with the truth, and the restrictions imposed on him by the heads of the Grove mental institution. In act two of the novel, it seemed like every step Theo took he was faced with another obstacle from one person or another.
2. Keep the Objective High Stakes
Your protagonist should also have a good reason why they need to reach their objective (or goal). And your opposition should be effective in preventing them from doing so. If your protagonist can simply step away from the goal and continue with their lives, you need a different goal.
A prime example of a high-stakes objective is a story that revolves around life and death. Your protagonist could have a professional or moral duty to apprehend a killer, while the antagonist has a solid reason to prevent your protagonist from achieving this goal. Some of these reasons could include:
- Protecting oneself (self-preservation).
- Protecting a family member or a friend.
- Obsession or some other mental illness can influence the antagonist to think that they are in the right.
In act two of The Silent Patient, Alicia can’t just close the window curtains and will the stalker away. The only way to get rid of him is to first identify who he is and what he wants. Theo has a professional obligation bordering on obsession to help Alicia, so he can’t just walk away from the case. Not without a fight.
3. Keep Your Protagonist Moving
Because of the length of act two, it can drag on and become terribly slow for a reader. The best way to guard against this is to keep your protagonist in motion, by continually placing this character in confronting situations.
These confronting situations can be physical, involving other characters or the antagonist. But they can also be emotional, where your protagonist starts to experience emotional turmoil. Your protagonist can go from shock to doubt, then acceptance followed by guilt, and finally fear.
Alicia’s confronting situation in act two is the stalker watching her, which escalates to him following her. The emotional turmoil comes when her husband doesn’t believe her, and she has to keep reassuring herself that this stalker is real while pretending to everyone else that all is well.
Theo is continually in motion and experiences many confronting situations, one of the first physical confrontations is with Max Berenson. His emotional turmoil develops when he stumbles upon some evidence that his wife is cheating. Evidence that he starts to doubt over time until he catches his wife in the act.
4. Alternate The Intensity of the Scenes
Another way of preventing the middle from being dull is by raising and lowering the suspense from scene to scene. Your story’s middle should present a series of obstacles that increase in difficulty as the story progresses. But in some of the scenes, your protagonist will need to rest and regroup before returning to the intense action.
5. Stretch the Tension
Readers will keep reading if they want to see what happens next. The tension can either be large or small, but it must be present to compel readers to continue reading. A large tension scenario is one where the protagonist moves in next door to a top government official who is also their boss. Then discovers that the new neighbour (whom the protagonist idolizes) is locking his housekeeper in his basement at night.
One of the many examples of a high-tension situation is in part two chapter twenty-seven of The Silent Patient. At this point, Theo isn’t even sure that the emails he saw truly exist or if he somehow misinterpreted them, so he decides to follow his wife as she goes to meet a friend. The tension builds as he waits for her to leave rehearsal and continues to build as he follows her through the streets.
There is even a point during this scene where Theo thinks that their eyes lock. The tension continues to build until the friend emerges and we are left as disappointed as Theo.
6. Introduce Subplots
One of the best ways to spice up a long middle is to give your readers a new storyline with interesting characters. Many remarkable stories don’t have subplots, so you need to decide if this is the correct fit for your story.
Some readers enjoy an occasional break from the main plot, while others enjoy focusing on the main plot with no interruptions. For a subplot to work in a novel, it must add some sort of value to the main plot.
The Silent Patient has two subplots that feed into and are essentially connected to the main plot. The first is relayed through Alicia’s diary entries and it gives us some insight into who Alicia is and what her relationship with Gabriel was like.
The second subplot is the implosion of Theo’s marriage, which is more connected to the main plot than we could have ever imagined.
Final Thoughts
The middle of your story shouldn’t be boring or tedious to read. You should use act two to help develop your lead character by having them overcome one challenge after the other, and experience real growth. As your protagonist travels through act two you should try to build tension, one way of achieving this is making their challenges progressively difficult as the story continues.
Act two is also a great place to introduce subplots that connects to the main plot in ways that blow your reader’s mind.
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