3 Non-Obvious Problems Hiding in Well-Developed Drafts

If the line writing is lovely, but the story still falls flat, check for these surprisingly hard-to-spot problems.

You’ve written a draft of your novel. It’s a pretty good draft, actually. Maybe you’ve revised it—once, or twice, or five times. The line-by-line writing is evocative, and a lot of the scenes are exciting and fun.

But.

Come on, you knew there was a “but” coming. You can feel it in your gut. Your story is just not doing everything you want it to do.

There’s something missing. Something not quite right. The ending isn’t paying off the way you want it to. Even though you structured your story with care, crafted the plot and cross-checked it with every story outline you know, something is still falling flat.

You’ve taken it as far as you know to go. So why isn’t it working? And what can it possibly still need, when you’ve done everything you know to do?

I have met so many writers at this exact moment. And I’ve noticed common patterns cropping up again and again—three incredibly common, surprisingly subtle pitfalls stories tend to fall into without their writers even realizing.

I can’t guarantee that your story has any of these problems. But what I can tell you is, if your story isn’t landing the way you want it to yet, these three pitfalls are the first things to check. And the best part is, when you solve even one of them, that solution will cascade down to make so many more things work even better in your story.

So if you’ve taken your story as far as you can, and you’re not sure what to do with it, here’s where to go next.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Get my feedback and find your story’s Next Right Step: alicesudlow.com/nrs 

Go deeper with these episodes:

• The Hidden Half of Your Protagonist's Goal (That Makes Story Structure Work)
• How to Figure Out What Your Character REALLY Wants
• The 12 Core Genres That Power Every Great Story
• How to Use Genre as a Revision Tool (with Savannah Gilbo)
• One Insidious Cause of Disappointing Endings (and How to Fix It)

Transcript

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You've written a draft of your novel. It's a pretty good draft actually. Maybe you've revised it once or twice or five times. The line by line writing is evocative and a lot of the scenes are exciting and fun. But come on, you knew there was a butt coming. You can feel it in your gut. your story is just not doing everything you want it to do. There is just something missing, something not quite right. The ending isn't paying off the way you want it to. Even though you structure your story with care, crafted the plot and cross-checked it with every story outline, you know something is still falling flat. You've taken it as far as you know to go. So why isn't it working? And what can it possibly still need when you've done everything you know to do? I have met so many writers at this exact moment, and I've noticed common patterns cropping up again and again. Three incredibly common, surprisingly subtle pitfalls that stories tend to fall into without their writers even realizing. I can't guarantee that your story has any of these problems. But what I can tell you is if your story isn't landing the way you want it to, yet these three pitfalls are some of the first things to check. And the best part is when you solve even one of them, that solution will cascade down to make so many more things work even better in your story. so if you've taken your story as far as you can and now you are not sure what to do with it, Here's where to go next. Welcome to your next draft. This fall, I've been working with a lot of writers. In my next right step process, it's where I start with every new client, a deep dive into your seamless so that I can see the arc of your story and spot what's breaking down and why, which we then triangulate together into one clear next right step in your revision process. The manuscripts I work with in Next right step are typically pretty polished. They're second drafts, fifth drafts, the polished draft that a writer has been querying to agents but not receiving responses, sometimes their first drafts. But even then, the writer has usually done a lot of work on structuring the story before they wrote that draft. The point is, the problems in these manuscripts are not obvious. You can read several pages, even many chapters without a glaring issue jumping out at you. The problems are subtle, nuanced, hidden, beneath layers of really lovely line writing and intentionally crafted story structure, which means that the writer can't see them. They can feel the symptoms of them, that the ending doesn't pay off quite right Or the character arcs feel flat, or the plot loses steam in the middle of the story and the pacing doesn't feel right, but they can't figure out why these issues are happening. When they look at their outline, it seems to hit all the important beats, and when they read their scenes, the writing seems lovely, like the scenes are well crafted and doing everything they should. This is one of the major reasons why at this stage I actually don't read the manuscript. In order to spot the non-obvious under the surface problems, we need to strip away the line writing and focus on the bones of the story, and it's actually way easier to do that by reading the seamless list, a really robust outline that tells me exactly what's happening in the story and why it matters. In fact, a lot of my goal in next right step is to strip away everything that's overwhelming. Overwhelming for me as the editor and for you as the writer. I read the scene list instead of the manuscript so that I don't spend a lot of time and energy on a task that actually makes it harder to see what your story. And I give you one clear next right step instead of a really long editorial letter so that you know exactly what to do with what I find. I don't want you to get lost in a mountain of feedback with no direction. I want you to move forward with purpose and direction on the one thing that matters most for you to figure out next. And I thought that for this episode, it'd be pretty cool to give you a peek at what the next right steps have been lately for the stories that I've been working on. I want you to know what it is that I'm watching for when I walk into a manuscript that's working pretty well and my job is to spot how to make it better. What is it that I'm spotting in the scene lists? What do these stories need next? I want you to see how identifying just one next right step for your revision process can solve a whole cascade of downstream problems. How can one next right step make such a big impact on your story? And like I said, I've done a bunch of these this fall and I have several more coming up. And because my brain is basically a pattern recognition machine, I'm noticing patterns in the next right steps that these stories need. So I'm going to share three patterns that I've observed in these well-developed, polished stories with non-obvious problems, and I'd be willing to bet a good bit of money that your story could use attention in at least one of these areas, if not all three. Now, if you love what you hear in this episode and you'd like me to bring this sort of analysis to your story, I would love to help you find your next right step to get started. Go to alice subo.com/nrs and tell me about your story and I'll be in touch. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the episode. And yes, this is a break from the series I've been doing on the six elements of story. We'll come back to that, I promise. But those episodes are very intensive for me to create because I'm articulating so many deep thoughts in them that I've never expressed anywhere before. that's what makes them so rewarding, of course, but it also means I've got to pace them out so I don't burn out. So this week we're drawing directly from my current client work, which is also one of my favorite things to talk about on this podcast. Without further ado, let's get to it. Three patterns. I'm noticing in solid drafts with non-obvious problems. Problem number one, the protagonist's goal isn't clear. If you've listened to recent episodes of your next draft, you know the goal framework that I use, a character wants X without Y. X is the thing they want to get to achieve, to attain, and Y is the thing that they don't want to do or don't want to give up in order to get x. I often find that that without y side of the goal is revelatory for writers. It's the missing piece you hadn't thought of that brings meaning and conflict to the protagonist's pursuit of their ex, and in the next right steps that I've been doing lately, I've noticed that too. I've worked with several stories where the why side of the goal isn't clear or is just entirely unknown. What is the protagonist avoiding what makes X difficult to accomplish? We don't know, which means we don't know what tension or conflict will come up against the protagonist to put pressure on their pursuit. We have to know what they don't want in order to throw challenges at them that matter, that pressure them in the ways that are most painful. but it's not just the Y where these stories are missing something. I'm also finding that many of them are unclear on the X, what the protagonist wants. Every story has a vague sense of what X is. we know generally that the protagonist wants to do well at her job or make it home from her journey, or stop a villain from doing something bad or solve a mystery. But that goal feels a bit like a stock placeholder, waiting for something more specific. It's not clear enough, not personal enough to the protagonist to really give us something to work with. We don't understand the character well enough on the first page of the story to know what she's going to do throughout the rest of the book. What drives her? What's she chasing? Why does it matter to her? Let me ask that again. Why does it matter to her? Why does it matter to her? Why does it matter to her without a clear and specific X for the character to pursue, she literally won't have anything to do. She'll just sit on her bum for pages and pages because there's nothing pushing her to move. That want creates character led momentum for us to follow throughout the story. Without it, we won't have a goal pulling us through the story and all the events will feel like things that happened to the protagonist rather than her own driven pursuit of a goal that she must achieve. So the want X side of the goal gives the protagonist something to do. Something to chase, though The without why side of the goal determines what kind of obstacles and challenges will most get in her way. And I see both of these sides breaking down in the next right step manuscripts that I'm working on. The solution is to go back to page one and get to know your character better and identify with even more specificity what exactly her X and Y are and why they matter so dang much to her. Stock placeholders for X and y can get you to a finished draft. Even a draft that looks pretty good. But to elevate your story from here, you've got to bring more nuance and sharper clarity to both X and Y. the more specificity you can uncover here, the better. So ask yourself, what does your protagonist want? What do they not want to do or sacrifice in order to get it? And y do those two things matter so much to them. If you want to go even deeper here, I've linked to a couple episodes in the show notes. The first is the hidden half of your protagonist goal that makes story structure work, which unpacks that want X without Y framework. And the second is how to figure out what your character really wants, which will lead you through a process of inquiry to uncover more specificity, not only in what your character wants, but why it matters. All this brings me to problem number two. The stakes are unclear. The next pattern that I've noticed in these manuscripts is that the stakes are unclear. I like to think about the stakes like this. What will happen if the protagonist fails to get X? What will happen to the protagonist? What will happen to the protagonist's, friends and family? What will happen to the antagonist? What will happen to the world? As you can see, this is predicated on us knowing what X is. If we don't know what X is, what the protagonist wants, it's really tough to identify, measure, or track the stakes of the story. You might be thinking, well, what about why? The same goes for why. We need to understand really clearly what the protagonist doesn't want as well and why. What will happen if Y comes to pass? What will happen to the protagonist? What will happen to the protagonist's, friends and family? What will happen to the antagonist and what will happen to the world? And as an added bonus, we can get even more precise about the stakes when we break this into internal and external. What are the external impacts of losing X or experiencing Y? And what are the internal impacts of losing X or experiencing Y, especially on the protagonist when manuscripts come to me in next right step. We usually know the general shape of X and the general shape of Y, but I have a lot of questions about Y, both X and Y matter. I find that the stakes start off fuzzy in the first act. In the middle of the story, the stakes might be roughly penciled in or they might start to feel a bit all over the place. And in the final act, the stakes have generally shifted to pay off something different from what was set up at the beginning. All of this is a symptom of the stakes being unclear, which is often about us lacking specificity about what the protagonist wants and why that matters. And so much of what I'm telling writers at this stage is you've got good bones. Now it's time to go deeper to understand your protagonist at higher resolution, with more clarity, with more nuance, with more empathy, with more depth To go deeper here, honestly, I'm going to send you back to the same two episodes that I mentioned in problem one about goals, and there's a third episode I'll recommend on genre, but I'll tell you more about that one after I share Problem three, the inciting incident and the climax are two different genres. Or to put it another way, the problem we're solving at the end of the story is different from the problem we had at the beginning. you'd be amazed how common this pitfall is, I'm amazed. I see it all the time that the inciting incident and the climax of a story don't match. The story in which this jumped out most clearly for me is one I worked on a few years ago where the inciting incident was an attack by the villain with life or death action stakes. And the climax was a piano recital with honor or shame, performance stakes. You might think that's so obviously different. I'm sure I would notice if my inciting incidents in climax were from two different genres, but I see the same issue come up again and again and again. Yes, it is one of the subtle hard to spot, non-obvious problems that I'm watching for when I read a seamless in next right step. And yes, I do find that many manuscripts at this stage run into this pitfall. I've seen stories move from performance to action or from action to society. I've also seen stories move from unclear, beginning to unclear, but definitely different end, and it's surprisingly hard to spot. If writers noticed the mismatch, they wouldn't write the mismatch match. Instead, they usually feel this sense that the ending isn't paying off in the way that they want it to, but they can't pinpoint why. You might be thinking if the beginning and the end are two different genres, the solution is simply to pick one of those genres and make the other end of the story match it. But here's the thing, this mismatch is a symptom of a larger problem. The beginning and end aren't aligned because the stakes aren't clear. Because the protagonist wants X without Y. Goal isn't clear. All this is often because the writer hasn't yet decided what they want this story to be, so to solve it, I rarely approach the genre's head on. I don't give the writer an ultimatum, pick A or B, red pill or blue pill. Instead, we explore the stakes, laying out everything the writer knows about what is at risk at the beginning of the story, and what is actually won or lost at the end of the story. We explore the goal, what precisely the protagonist wants and what they don't want to do to get it, and why that specific goal is so important to that specific protagonist, not as a stock placeholder, but as a deep core need, and we explore what's driving the writer to tell this story. Which part, the beginning or the end is more compelling to them. What is the story about at its core? Why does it matter to the writer to tell it of every aspect of the story? What are they most attached to? What is most important? Because if you're beginning and your end don't match, it's not because you set out to create a disjointed story with a strange genre pivot halfway through. It's because there are many ideas competing for space in your story and your imagination, and you have not yet rooted down securely enough in the one that's most important to you, which means all those ideas are weaving their way into the story all at once and pulling it in a variety of directions. Way too many for your reader to follow a clear thread. So look for clues in your story stakes. Look for clues in your protagonist's goal. Look for clues in what drives you to tell this story, why it matters so much to you. That you would spend years of your life wrestling it onto the page and triangulate from there. The core that you'll shape your story around that core will point you to the genre that fits your story best. Which will bring all these pieces into alignment from the beginning to the end and pay off a story that your readers will absolutely love. To go deeper into this, I recommend all the episodes that I've already mentioned, plus three more. First, the 12 core genres that power every great story, which lays out what's at the heart of every content genre. Next, how to use genre as a revision tool where Savannah Gibo shares how she diagnoses genre problems in stories. And third one, insidious cause of disappointing endings and how to fix it, where I talk about what it looks like when the beginning and the end of a story don't match links to all those episodes are in the show notes. So you've got quite the playlist to dig into next. So there you have it. The top three non-obvious problems that I'm observing in these pretty polished manuscripts. The first problem is that the character's X without Y goal is either unclear or not specific enough. That tends to cause the next problem, which is that the stakes are unclear, and that cascades into the third problem, which is that the inciting incidents and the climax are from two different genres. Writers who join me in next right step. Typically haven't spotted these precise problems themselves, but they do feel it as a gut feeling that their ending isn't paying off the way that they want it to, no matter how much more drama they try to pack into the climax scene. And they feel it as the sense that the character arc isn't arcing, right? That there's something about this character's development that just isn't working. The good news is that I can normally pin down one specific thing for the writer to explore that will unlock all the rest of this. I don't give writers a laundry list of to-dos at the end of next right step or an editorial letter laying out in granular detail a thousand things they'll need to fix because these are cascading problems. That also means we can find cascading solutions. and I send writers right to that one thing in their story that will cascade down to solve everything else. Of course, this doesn't mean that solutions are easy to find or to implement. It takes a lot more time and space to solve the problems that we find. I do that work with writers and side story clarity, which is a much larger coaching container. But identifying one clear next right step does mean that you don't have to try to solve a thousand things at once. It gives you focus and direction in your revision process so you can stop wondering why your story still doesn't feel right and start solving the root problem. So if you have a completed manuscript, you've revised it to the best of your ability, but you still feel like it is not fulfilling everything you want it to be, and you're not sure what to do with it next. Then I would love to help you find your next right step. To get started, go to alice sudler.com/nrs. There's a form there that will ask you a lot of questions about your story. Fill that out and I'll be in touch. That's alice sudler.com/ns. And of course, that link is in the show notes with a ton of other links to episodes that go deeper into every story problem that I've shared here. I hope those episodes help you find a bit more clarity on what's going wrong and going right in your story. And if you need some outside feedback to help you see what your story needs, come join me in next right step. Until next time, happy editing.