I recently came across Amazon’s “100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime.”

As a fantasy writer myself, I decided to spend the next few years reading every book on this list and record the lessons I learned from each volume on how to be a great writer.

PLOT: Days before his release from prison, Shadow’s wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You’ll be surprised by what – and who – it finds there… –Goodreads

LESSONS LEARNED: In my recent post on A WRINKLE IN TIME I created a line-by-line breakdown of one of the best openings in children’s literature and presented some elements that are necessary when writing a first chapter.

Well, you know what’s harder than writing a strong opening? Writing a strong middle. The middle fifty percent of a novel often sags. It isn’t as fresh as the beginning and isn’t as exciting as the ending. All too often readers find themselves wishing the author would just hurry up and get us to the climax already (I’m looking at you, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS).

So what can we do to make our middles just as fresh and exciting as the beginnings and endings?

One of the most effective tools in the writer’s toolshed is the midpoint twist. Your characters have been off on their adventures for quite a while now, events have taken place, the reader has a firm grasp of what kind of story they are experiencing and they think they can predict what is going to happen next. Suddenly, the story shifts and the reader finds the characters in a completely different situation.

AMERICAN GODS does this nearly perfectly.

Obviously, I’m about to get into some pretty heavy spoiler territory.

By the middle of the novel, the story’s hero, Shadow, has accepted the fact that the world’s “old gods” (Anansi, Kali, Chernobog etc.) are not only real, but they are going to war against the “new gods (TV, The Internet, The Government etc – all things modern Americans worship). Shadow and his employer, Mr. Wednesday – if you know your origins of the days of the week, you can figure out which god he is – have spent much of the novel traveling to various regions of the country recruiting various gods and goddesses for this upcoming war. Most are reluctant, none are enthusiastic.

At a certain point, just over halfway through the novel, the reader starts to pick up on a pattern. Shadow and Wednesday drive/fly to a place, recruit a relatively obscure god who is reluctant to join the cause and then Shadow returns to the small town of Lakeside where he stays when he is not traveling. This pattern reaches a point where it almost starts to become repetitive, a state many novels find themselves in during the middle.

But then everything changes.

Shadow (who is an ex-con) is arrested by a sheriff he has befriended. While he is waiting in handcuffs in the station, the television starts to talk to him – remember, TV is a villain in this story – and it shows him Wednesday, who has been taken prisoner. Wednesday is (MAJOR SPOILER) shot to death. Soon afterwards two of Wednesday’s associates show up disguised as officers and “escort” Shadow out of police custody. Shadow learns that because of the assassination, all the gods who were on the fence are now enthusiastic about going to war.

So what did the author, Neil Gaiman, do here? He gave us a story that was interesting, but just as it was starting to feel predictable, he threw in a twist none of us were expecting.

However, it is a twist that makes sense (the only kind that works). Throughout the novel, we have been aware that Wednesday was in great danger. So it does make sense that he would eventually be captured and killed and instead of intimidating the other gods, his death throws them into action. And many/most/all novels need some event in the middle section that will either push the characters forward or take them in a completely new direction.

Had Gaiman saved Wednesday’s death for the climax it would have been dramatic and maybe even tragic but it would have been more predictable and it would not have been as effective at driving the plot forward because the story would’ve almost been over. By placing this twist closer to the middle, he gives the story the “punch” it needs to get to the climax.

While you are writing the middle portion of your novel, keep an eye out for chapters that start to “sag,” where the characters aren’t doing anything interesting or they’re doing the same things over and over again. When you reach that point – and most of us do – that is where you should include a twist that makes sense within your novel’s world but will still shake up the story.

A character we thought was “safe” is suddenly killed. The city the heroes have been defending from page one is burned to the ground. Demons escape into our world and cause havoc.

Or if you are writing a more down-to-earth novel: Our hero sees the boy they love kiss the hero’s sister. Our hero has a panic attack and crashes their best friend’s car. The hero’s cat runs away.

Think outside the box (AKA outside your outline). Think of a direction you have never considered going before. If you can surprise yourself, you will surprise your readers.