Let Them Win
There are a million guides on how to structure your plot out there. The Hero’s Journey, Save The Cat, The Rollercoaster Method, etc. But all of them have a few basic components. You have to start with a little exposition followed by an Inciting Incident. Then, well, more stuff happens. This eventually leads to a climax, followed by tying up any loose ends.
So what goes in that part of the book in the middle, between the Inciting Incident and the climax? That’s the bulk of the story, after all. Heck, for my book, that’s Chapters 3 through 34, out of 36. Well, there are a whole host of things you can put in the middle of that book, and some of it will depend on the genre you’re writing and/or the structure model you’re following. But one thing I feel is an important addition to nearly any story is a “win”.
Overall, the plot of any good story is that the protagonist is presented with a conflict or problem of some kind and that conflict or problem is resolved satisfactorily by the end. But along the way, there have to be bumps in the road. Your heroes have started on their quest to find the magic sword, but there’s an evil troll blocking their passage across a river. The crime has been committed and the detective is gathering clues, but they run into red herrings and that guy they were sure was the murderer turns up dead. The lovers are getting hot and heavy, but Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend is back to cause trouble!
The thing is, if ALL the characters do is lose over and over, it can get to be kind of a drag for your reader, not to mention it makes the main characters look incompetent. If the adventurers just get their butts kicked by bandits all the time, how can they hope to defeat the dragon guarding the magic sword? How did this detective even get licensed when they’ve arrested the wrong guy six times and been kicked off the case? How can Lisa hope to prevail when Jeremy’s ex has whisked him away to Fiji and he’s filed a restraining order? Unless you’re writing an avant-garde tragedy about unending misery, you’re going to want to have some wins to balance out those losses.
As a reader who writes, I personally like to see a small-scale “win” somewhere between the one-third mark and the halfway point of the book. This means we’re solidly in the conflict of the story, we’ve probably seen the main character suffer some setbacks, and we need to see some improvement start to happen, so we believe the protagonist can resolve the conflict later. Let your heroes beat the crap out of that troll, to show they’re getting stronger and better at working together as a team. Let your detective speak to a witness who gives them a huge clue about the identity of the murderer. Let Jeremy and Lisa go on their first date and share a big old kiss, even though Jeremy is supposed to be at his ex’s annual clam bake.
A lot can be done to make the middle of your book as interesting as the beginning and end are, and one great way is to sprinkle wins and losses, increasing as the stakes rise, until finally, you’re ready to write your hero’s big win in the climax. (It should also be noted that if you’re writing a tragedy, this information still applies, but in reverse. There need to be smaller losses along the way, leading up to the hero’s big loss at the end of the story, with some glimmers of hope thrown in to keep things from getting monotonous.)
In The Case Of The Cheap Suit Plot, the gang’s first big win happens late in the first half, and it involves cranky geese.
