The Muddy Middle

According to Hannah Wilson of the Northwest Review (ca. 1994, The Literary Review):

"Three problems seem typical of the stories that are often ably crafted but fall into the middle (in between very good and terrible) grouping:

Structure—In trying to avoid textbook structure (exposition, rising complication, climax, denouement), writers fail to create any line of tension along which the story can move.

Imagery—Writers learn that images matter but can't discover ones that emerge naturally from their material, so that images often seem slathered on for effect, especially at the story's end.

Characterization—Perhaps because they feel the need to get stories into the mail, writers create characters they don't seem to know very well or care much about. If the writer doesn't care, why should the reader?

I remember reading a note, I think of Richard Bausch's about a story of his; it may have been "The Fireman's Wife." He said he had the idea long before he could work through the story. Before he could finish it, he had to develop some compassion for an unpleasant character. That compassion seems missing from too many of the stories we read."