After a couple weeks away from this series, I’m feeling a bit disoriented! If you are too, here are the last few posts:

Editing Process Overview

Fixing Character Issues

Fixing Theme Issues

Like I talked about in previous editing posts, all the story elements impact each other, so it’s impossible to focus on “just plot problems.” You might resolve a plot hole by changing character motivations, or motivate your characters by poking at them with the setting. But for teaching purposes, it still feels helpful to break them out from each other like this.

When you’re looking at your book for plot issues that need to be resolved, here are some tips:

Check your story structure

If you’re the type of writer who thinks about story structure ahead of time, this may feel like an obvious step to you. But when I first started writing, I had no idea that story structure existed outside of, “Beginning, middle, and end.”

Looking through the list of necessary (or advisable) scenes in a story and then identifying those scenes in your own manuscript can illuminate potential problems. For example, maybe you sense that your opening is “off.” Or critique partners have told you it feels rushed, but you’re not sure why. Maybe pushing yourself to do something like identify your inciting incident, call to adventure, or first doorway of no return will help you recognize where the problem lies.

Here’s a resource for helping : Understanding The Three-Act Structure

Identify your story gaps

Story gaps can certainly happen to anyone, but they tend to be more of a consistent problem for outliners. When you’re working from a list of planned scenes, sometimes it’s easy to overlook a logical next step because of the plan you have in mind. That’s when you tend to have issues of, “Why don’t the characters just do X, Y, Z?” And it’s because you didn’t plan on X, Y, Z happening until chapter five.

Gaps in your story can be one of the hardest plot problems for you the author to identify, and your critique partners will be very valuable!

Pay attention to what feels obvious or boring

Now, sometimes as the author we’re so close to our book that we’re not a good judge of surprises or excitement. Especially if we’ve been working on this book for a while. That scene might be great, but you’ve revised it a dozen times, so the shimmer has worn off for you.

Or sometimes we might think something is fascinating, like our ten pages of description of the storyworld, but it’s only interesting to us. Again, this is a great time to lean on your critique partners.

Editing is a great opportunity to play with plot twists or character expectations. Here are a couple resources you might find helpful: How to Create Strong Obstacles and Plot Twists For Your Novel, and Try-fail cycles

Examine the motivation

Sometimes the root of a plot problem is the character’s motivation, so it’s always worthwhile to ask, “What happens if my character fails?” If nothing bad happens if they fail at their goal, why would they bother working hard to achieve it?

Public stakes can certainly be effective. Like if your character doesn’t make it to this location in time, the city of 50,000 people will be blown up. But public stakes aren’t good enough to carry reader interest. Your readers will care more if there’s someone they know and like–and that your main character knows and likes–in that city. We need there to be some kind of personal loss (or stakes) for your character too if they don’t achieve their goal.

Don’t use the same trick twice

I read a book recently where the characters got into impossible-to-get-out-of situation after impossible-to-get-out-of-situation. But eventually I stopped worrying because they always got out of trouble the same way. One character had a super power, and she would use her super power to blast through the situation and rescue everyone. Even super powers get boring when you see them used over and over in the exact same way.

Be careful about this in your book! Just like your main character is changing and growing, your antagonist should be too. He or she will adapt to more effectively fight against your main character.

Don’t over-complicate the story

Often in manuscripts, we try to do a bit too much. We explore four themes or follow too many characters or develop too many subplots. We’re trying to make our stories layered and interesting, but instead it’s hard to find a through line.

I’ve talked about this before in this blog post, Why Every Scene Should Be About Your Core Story, but intentionally focusing our stories has a much more satisfying effect.

Seek out low-tension scenes

Often low-tension exists because the character hasn’t been properly motivated to move things along. (Have you noticed how important character motivation is?) They’re in no hurry to make a decision, because what does it matter if they decide today or tomorrow or next week? If you suspect this is true for your scene, try to add some kind of deadline that motivates your character to act.

Something else that can impact tension is our character’s expectations. If our character expects to get on the bus, go to school, and have a normal day, and that’s exactly what happens … not exciting, right? The unexpected can increase tension. She expects a normal day, but that’s not what happens.

Also, especially in the beginning of your story, you have to watch how much backstory you’re dropping in. I was the #1 offender of this in my early writing days. Chapter one would be present day, and then chapters two through four would be alllllll the backstory that explained the dynamics between the characters. Boring!

A great mantra for writers in regards to backstory is RUE. Resist the Urge to Explain.

Do you have common plot problems that you run across in edits? Or a part of the story that always feels extra hard to write?