I like to proclaim that a good writer works on improving their craft; a great writer works on improving their story as a whole.[1] What I mean by this is that while it’s important to hone your writing skills and craft elements, a story is more than the sum of its craft parts. So, whenever (I myself or) a writer I work with is stuck with a work in progress or a finished draft that needs revision, I recommend starting an assessment from the story as a whole and then move into the smaller details. 

 

    Though I do have one caveat: a lot of the advice I offer is for intermediate and advanced writers. So if you are a complete beginner and have never finished a novel length work before, I strongly recommend finishing a short story first. The below checklist applies to both novels and short stories, but note that with a short story you should be fine with your protagonist’s thematic choice framework and may not need to develop a full theme question, like in a novel. 

 

First: Is the Story Working?

 

    If you’ve engaged with any of my advice or content, you will know that my perspective is that stories exist to show us what decisions are (and are not) worth making in life. For more of a breakdown, read “What’s the Point of Stories?”. 

 

    If the problems you’re encountering include:

• Being unsure about where to go with the story next 

• Story feels meandering or bloated

• The revision process is making it feel more and more disjointed

 

    Chances are the issue you’re facing is at this top story level. My suggestion is to ensure that you have clarity on what your story is trying to say and that structurally all the major characters are illuminating a different angle of your thematic question. The primary tool I can offer you in this is my article on theme and the thematic choice framework as well as my article on character development. 

 

    If you do have clarity on what your story is about and your major characters all have clear arcs, and you know where your story is heading and what its resolution is, but something is still off, let’s move on to reader expectations. 

 

Second: Is It Meeting Basic Reader Expectations?

 

    Provided you’re writing competent and clear sentences and thereby not instantly turning off your audience, one of the first things your reader will use to gauge their interest is a sense of progress. So if your readers are saying things like:

• It drags

• It’s too slow

• It’s boring

 

    Then chances are your plot structure needs some tweaking. Make sure you:

• Have a clear plot question that is established relatively early on in the story. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, read about plot questions. 

• Have the plot progress in accordance with the plot question you’ve opened with. So if in the first few pages you have the reader asking “will the city of Luthadel fall” but then you spend several pages not moving toward an answer for that question, the reader will grow bored. 

• If you’re writing in a certain content genre, ensure you hit that genre’s main beats and tropes. Story Excavator doesn’t offer a list of the genre beats or key genre scenes, but they are ubiquitous and easily available for free on various writing sites. The plot questions approach as well as the decision points outline approach is compatible with genre beats.  

 

    Finally, if you feel you’re nailing all of the above, but it’s still dragging and boring, consult the story momentum measure as a diagnostic tool to spot where your story momentum is lagging. 

 

Third: Is It Making Readers Care?

 

    What if everything is working with the first and second checklist item, but your beta readers are saying things like:

• I don’t care about these characters

• Why are the characters doing that?

• The characters are acting inconsistently

 

    Most often these complaints arise when readers don’t understand the story-wide stakes and/or the characters aren’t acting in accordance with their core motivation. A lot of this can be resolved with three narrative elements:

• Ensuring you understand your characters’ emotional goal and their belief about how to meet that goal. Characters can absolutely change their plot goal mid-story, but if they change their emotional goal, the reader will feel like they’re acting out of character. You can read about character development here. 

• Ensuring story-wide stakes are clear to the reader (and to you). Not only about what the protagonist has to lose if they don’t achieve their goal, but also what they stand to gain. 

• Ensuring scene-level consequences are clear and present. You can read more about scene-level and story-wide consequences here. 

 

    If you feel you’ve got the character motivations and stakes down, but readers are still struggling to care, give a listen to two podcast episodes I did on 

• Writing Engaging Characters and

• Engaging Readers with Subplots

 

Fourth: Is the Craft on Point? 

 

    If you get to this fourth checklist item and you can answer “yes” to all the previous three, you’re 90% ahead of most writers. This is usually the point where stories can go from great to exquisite. It’s also the hardest to offer a generic guideline for without seeing your work. But here are some general tips:

• Make sure your tone matches the content of your story. I’ve read a few stories that had pretty grimdark content and adult themes, but the language read like it was a young adult novel. It made me mistrust the author and after looking at the reviews, many other readers were confused about what to expect from a story that failed to set a coherent tone. If you feel you don’t even know what I’m talking about or how you would spot a tonal issue, I suggest you pick five (ideally well-rated and effectively executed) books from different genres for adults and five for young adults. Read one random page from each. Then as an exercise pick a paragraph from the YA book and rewrite it in the tone of an adult book of that genre. Do the same with the adult book and revise it into a YA book of that genre. Exercises like these can help hone your line by line writing skills. 

• On my engagement resource page, I discuss a variety of writing techniques that delve much more deeply into the craft of writing. Among those, I would suggest listening to the podcast episodes about

  • Readers needing to be active participants in your story, not passive receptacles to be told about what characters are doing

  • The difference between content and function in writing and how it can help you sharpen your prose as well as pacing

  • Using humor in your writing and the effects it can have 

 

 

    I’ve found this four step checklist to be an excellent guide in diagnosing how to make headway on your work in progress whether you’re actively drafting or revising. If it doesn’t fully address your problem or you really would like some personalized feedback, you can work with me by filling out the form below!