I recently ran across this statement from Deb Smith, who consults for Four Blocks, a specialized service for teaching elementary aged students basics like creative writing:

"I have found that my 2nd graders are very good at writing the 'middles' of stories. However they were not good at writing a topic sentence or a concluding sentence."

I find that bewildering. It seems like most of the writers I consult, all of them adults, spend the majority of their time on the first and last 30 pages of their novel. It's the middles which sag, lose their steam, or get overlooked entirely.

Certainly, most of the writing classes that address this more piecemeal approach to writing focus on beginnings and endings. So maybe that is part of the reason why adult writers seem more adept at the front and back ends of their manuscripts. Fewer pay attention to the middle structure.

But what about middles? Why do 2nd graders find them easy to locate?

The middle is the plot, of course. It's the point of the book. Think of all the good books you've ever read. Was it the beginning that made that book? The ending? Or, was it the middle you remember most of all?

Stylists will try to work their way around weaknesses in plotting by using clever tactics to give their books a sense of quality that hinges entirely on a throw-them-to-the-wolves beginning or drop-dead-gorgeous ending. But do we remember these books, aside from these overdeveloped devices? Not really.

TV shows, by the way, are about middles. So are plays. Video role-playing games with multiple endings really must have strong middles to work. Movies should be about middles, but sometimes they're about effects or gimmicks. Poems...well, I don't think of poems as having that sort of momentum. Poems are singular. Poems, unless their thick with narrative, don't necessarily have middles. They are breaths between thoughts.

So why else might it be that 2nd graders can grasp middles but adult writers can't?

I'll have to think a bit more about this. What do you think?