Don’t worry; more irrelevance to follow…
It occurs to me that there are three types of writers.
There are those who are good at beginnings. Writers who are able to hook you in immediately with a well-turned phrase or an irresistible concept that’s immediately and instantaneously riveting.
There are those who are great at endings. Writers who are able to draw all their disparate threads together, and provide the perfect conclusion to their tale. They specialize in conclusions that are as brilliant as they are inevitable.
And then there are those who are good at middles. They may not be able to grab you initially. They may not be able to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. But they take a perverse joy in piling on the twists, the complications, and the mayhem.
If the beginning of a story is a promise, and the end is the fulfillment of that promise, then the middle is the… the…
…Wait. Let me start over.
Think of a story as a sandwich.
A sandwich is only a sandwich if it’s two pieces of bread with a filling in the middle.
(There are, of course, open face sandwiches. But let’s face it, bringing that up is a bit of a dick move…)
My point is this: yes, you need bread to make a sandwich. But bread, in and of itself, is a bland object. The filling, be it peanut butter and jelly, ham, or even egg salad, is what makes a sandwich a sandwich.
So it is for sandwiches, so it is for stories.
If you’re wondering which kind of writer I am, please note that this is the final sentence of this post.
Pryorball. 