There’s no such thing as a perfectly plotted book. In any story, you’re bound to find
plot holes, flawed character logic, and boring scenes. Plus, it’s just not possible to
please every reader. So, when you’re constructing your plot, take some of that pressure off
of yourself and just focus on telling a story that makes you excited to share it with the
world. To create that confidence in your work, you
can avoid these four common plotting pitfalls I’ve encountered as a developmental editor,
reader, and writer: 1) a lack of personal stakes; 2) an unfocused trajectory; 3) a slow
middle; and 4) unsatisfying payoffs. Let’s examine each of these, along with
some examples and solutions. Number One: a lack of personal stakes. What
do the characters stand to lose that’s meaningful to them? In many stories, the stakes include
physical death—but death can come in different forms. There’s the death of a relationship,
of one’s pride or reputation, of one’s hopes and dreams. In Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables,
the Paris Uprising of 1832 as well as illness threaten the characters’ lives, but they
also face more personal types of death. Escaped convict Jean Valjean stands to lose his freedom;
police inspector Javert, in turn, will lose his honor as a man of justice if he doesn’t
capture Jean Valjean; and Fantine risks her daughter growing up in abject poverty if she
doesn’t sacrifice herself in every way. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the
character’s homeland, or their sense of self-worth, these fates are often worse than
death because they must grapple with the pain after the fact.
What’s at stake should be specific to the protagonist and close to their heart. If our
hero wants to defeat the Big Bad for the good of humanity, that’s very noble of them.
But it’s not as emotionally compelling as learning that the Big Bad is the heroine’s
father, and she feels she’s the only one who can stop him.
A character could be driven by their loyalty to their king, or their thirst for revenge
against someone who hurt their loved one, or an unhealthy obsession with someone they
want to claim as their own. And because of those powerful personal relationships, they
can’t just ignore the problem; they are driven to solve it.
An example of highly personal stakes comes from The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail
Carson Levine, a children’s fantasy novel. The protagonist, Addie, is perpetually fearful
and depends on her sister Meryl’s bravery. Then Meryl falls ill with the Gray Death,
and Addie aches to find the cure before her sister dies, even though she’s not the brave
adventurer her sister is. If Addie were simply motivated to find a cure for her entire kingdom,
that would be an admirable goal, but with her sister dying, it adds a personal motivation,
along with a ticking time bomb. What’s more, she must overcome her own fears to achieve
her goal. With novels that are primarily character-driven,
the personal stakes often involve damaging or changing relationships with other people,
particularly when it comes to their perception of others or themselves. Khaled Hosseini’s
And the Mountains Echoed features nine interconnected stories, all with characters caught in troubled
relationships. In one story, a boy’s positive opinion of his father is at stake; instead
of being a good man, his dad might actually be a war criminal. In another tale, a woman’s
daughter becomes sick and she fears the worst—childhood leukemia or lymphoma. A parent at risk of
losing their child is a deeply personal heartache, as we can feel in the woman’s thoughts:
“She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily,
to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish
and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take
from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy
you. I don’t have the heart for this. She actually says this under her breath. I don’t
have the heart for this. At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational
thing than choosing to become a parent.” So, think about personal stakes in terms of
character relationships. Can they protect their family from harm? If they tell their
significant other their Big Secret, will their partner stay with them or leave? If they choose
to come out of the closet, will they risk losing the affection of their friends and
family? The story happens because of the main character;
their role couldn’t be filled by just anyone. Ask yourself, “What happens if the protagonist
walks away?” If there are no negative consequences that only affect the main character, the stakes
aren’t personal enough. Give the protagonist someone to care about.
Number Two: an unfocused trajectory. As readers, we want books to surprise us. At the same
time, too much randomness can leave us wondering, “Where’s this story going? What’s the
character even trying to accomplish?” This is often a result of unclear character
goals. When the protagonist is wandering aimlessly, there’s nothing for the reader to anticipate
or look forward to. Say you have a story where a young boy witnesses his parents’ accidental
deaths. Then, he joins a traveling circus. After that, he becomes a chef’s apprentice.
The book ends with him falling in love with a girl at a festival. This is an interesting
sequence of events, but without any thread connecting them all, it doesn’t have as
much emotional impact as it could. This episodic story would benefit from greater focus.
On her Fiction University blog, author Janice Hardy states that some stories are all premise
and no plot, meaning they’re based on an appealing main idea, but there’s no real
plot because the story lacks character goals, conflict, and stakes. Hardy compares examples
from The Wizard of Oz: PREMISE: A farm girl gets transported by tornado
to a magical world of talking animals, wizards, and witches.
PLOT: A farm girl transported by tornado to a magical world must travel to the capital
city to ask a wizard for a way home. Hardy also says, “If you can't describe
what your novel is about in one sentence (even a bad sentence) using the standard ‘protagonist
has X problem and she needs to do Y to win Z or A happens’ then you might have a premise
novel.” I’ve linked Janice Hardy’s blog posts in the video description.
The premise vs. plot problem is the issue in my example with the young boy. His parents
die, and he wanders from place to place—that’s just a premise, not a plot.
Adding an external goal could help. After his parents’ deaths, maybe the protagonist
wants his family name to become famous, which had been his mom and dad’s dying wish. So,
he joins the circus his mom once worked at in hopes of becoming a headliner. But then
he gets kicked out for trying to rescue the lions, and he decides to become a famous chef,
working for the man his father washed dishes for. Then, while cooking food at a festival,
he falls in love with a girl and feels that instead of finding immortality through fame,
he wants to attain that by passing along his family name to their future children.
You could also add an internal character arc. The protagonist feels lost after his parents’
deaths, and no longer knows how to define his identity. So, each of these destinations
and the people he meets—at the circus, the chef’s kitchen, the festival—are his attempts
at finding his place in the world again. Having both an external goal and an internal
arc is ideal. Usually, they’re intertwined. In the above example, the protagonist’s
quest for fame overlaps with his desire to find a new version of home.
Character goals can transform over the course of the story as part of the trajectory. A
well-constructed plot often moves along a cause-and-effect chain, with the previous
event motivating the character to pursue the next plot point. Take the classic adventure
novel and revenge tale The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
Edmond Dantès is at the pinnacle of his life—he has a beautiful fiancée, a burgeoning career
as a ship’s captain, and a stellar reputation. All that is ruined when four men, jealous
of his successes or fearing the secrets he knows, frame him for treason. Dantès is imprisoned
for years, but he befriends a man who tells him of a treasure hidden on the island of
Monte Cristo. After he escapes prison, Dantès finds the treasure, and a decade later, he
reemerges in society as the wealthy and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. The men who falsely
accused him have become rich and powerful—and one has even married his wife. Dantès plots
his revenge against all of them: “He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his
inflamed imagination could devise, while still considering that the most frightful were too
mild and, above all, too brief for them…” It’s easy to trace the cause-and-effect
chain of events. Dantès’ internal arc also gives the narrative a sense of structure,
as he shifts from optimistic to jaded. His revenge mission is clear throughout, as we
can see in his dialogue: “What is truly desirable? A possession that
we cannot have. So, my life is devoted to seeing things that I cannot understand and
obtaining things that are impossible to have. I succeed by two means: money and will.”
If it’s not clear what your story is really about, you might be chasing too many character
goals. Will he find his mother’s killer and discover who stole his car and be promoted
at work and get the girl? You could also be trying to tackle too many internal arcs or
themes. How will she come to terms with her divorce, understand her sexuality, forgive
her mother, and learn what it means to be a good teacher?
You can definitely have multiple threads at once, but it can help to view them as three
interwoven trajectories: the characters’ external goals (what they want to go out and
do in the world, whether it’s attend school, find their father, or destroy a city); the
internal arc you as the author have planned for the character (such as the protagonist
discovering something new about themselves, like realizing their true heritage); and the
personal relationships that might change over the course of the story (they acquire a love
interest, become estranged from their family, kill the antagonist).
If your plot feels unfocused, define how the characters’ goals, attitudes, and relationships
change over time, and use that to create a thread connecting the beginning, middle, and
end. Number Three: a slow middle. For many writers,
the “muddy middle” is responsible for slow pacing. Point A and Point B are clear
enough, but the path to get there can seem unclear, resulting in the characters just
running in place, with the plot not really going anywhere.
You might have a slow middle if the protagonist is…
• Comfortable where they are • Unsure what to do next for several chapters
• Doing nothing except waiting for something • Traveling across a vast landscape
• Worrying about the same thing over and over (e.g., the character is always thinking
about how they can’t trust anyone, a feeling they express every other page or so)
• Experiencing repetitive conflict (e.g., four scenes that involve running away from
bad guys) • Having circular conversations with other
characters (e.g., repeatedly arguing with their spouse about the kids, yet never coming
to a decision) The best way to test for slow pacing is to
ask your beta readers or critique partners, “What parts felt slow to you?” Ask why
those parts felt slow, then determine if you can a) cut those scenes or b) replace those
scenes with something more exciting that accomplishes the same objectives, which is what my “Adding
Spice to a Scene” video is all about. If your story is on the lengthy side, think of
the most boring or repetitive scene—and cut that one. Then think of the next least
exciting scene and consider cutting that one, and so on, until you reach your ideal word
count. However, pacing isn’t really about word
count; the key is forward momentum. A novel can be 400,000 words and still have great
pacing because things are constantly changing—there are new plot developments, the character relationships
are evolving, the setting shifts. What keeps readers reading are unanswered questions.
This applies to all genres. What’s in the envelope? Why does Richard hate his father?
What will happen when Carol confronts her abusive ex-husband?
You can present a cycle of questions and reveals. One of these reveals might even be a midpoint
reversal. This is when something major changes for the main character around the 40-to-60%
mark. If the character’s goal was to reach the Floating Castle to find her husband—oops,
now it’s in ruins, destroyed in battle. Or the character thought for years that his
dad had killed his brother—nope, his mom was the culprit and his dad entirely innocent.
It doesn’t need to be a huge plot twist, but rather something that forces the protagonist
to take a different action than they had originally planned. This breaks up the monotony and gives
the characters new things to worry and wonder about.
The Young Adult sci-fi novel Unwind by Neal Shusterman uses the midpoint reversal to maintain
the opening’s fast pace. In this near-future dystopia, parents can choose to have their
unruly teenagers “unwound,” meaning all of the child’s organs are transplanted into
new donors. The story opens with a bang—three teenagers scheduled for an unwinding cross
paths and flee together. The teens encounter obstacle after obstacle, but they manage to
escape through an Underground Railroad type of system that leads them to a place called
“the graveyard,” where other unwinds are in hiding, including a bully antagonist.
At the end of the chapter, Shusterman builds narrative questions around this new setting
before revealing it. Here, Roland is the antagonist, while Risa is one of the protagonists. They’re
all in a truck with some other kids, being transported to what they’ve been told is
a safe haven: Roland, sitting toward the front, turns to
the driver and asks, “Where are we going?” “You're asking the wrong guy,” the driver
answers. “They give me an address. I go there, I look the other way, and I get paid.”
“This is how it works,” says another kid who had already been in the truck when it
arrived at Sonia's. “We get shuffled around. One safe house for a few days, then another,
and then another. Each one is a little bit closer to where we're going.”
“You gonna tell us where that is?” asks Roland.
The kid looks around, hoping someone else might answer for him, but no one comes to
his aid. So he says, "Well, it's only what I hear, but they say we end up in a place
called . . . ‘the graveyard.’” No response from the kids, just the rattling
of the truck. The graveyard. The thought of it makes Risa
even colder.
Shusterman generates intrigue by not giving the characters, or the readers, all the information
at once. We start with the question, “Where are they being taken?” The answer of “the
graveyard” leads to even more questions about what this place might be like. As the
characters get used to their surroundings and their new leader, the midpoint reversal
introduces a different problem: someone goes missing, and Roland is a definite suspect.
This escalates into accusations and riots, which propels the story into its climax.
All these new narrative uncertainties prevent the book’s middle chunk from dragging. What
will the characters do in the graveyard? Since Roland is a conflict grenade ready to explode,
what trouble will he create? What happened to the missing kid? How will the culprit be
punished in this lawless place? So, the midpoint reversal reinvigorates the plot by changing
the setting, introducing new characters, and adding new complications.
If you’re really struggling with a slow middle, it might help to have the character
achieve their primary objective at the midpoint—but it’s not what they expected, so they have
to reevaluate what they want. That can serve as your midpoint reversal. Take the example
from earlier: with the Floating Castle destroyed, the protagonist discovers her husband was
taken captive and is to be executed, which increases the stakes. A ticking time bomb
hovers over her head as she races to infiltrate the enemy camp and save him before it’s
too late. Most books with slow middles should have made
their ending the midpoint reversal and then followed the story from there in a new direction.
Room by Emma Donoghue does this effectively. A mother and son have been locked in a room
for years by a rapist, and the mother desperately wants to escape. I somewhat expected the story
to end with her escaping the room, but to my surprise, that was the midpoint. The story
continues after they leave the room, to show that things don’t end happily ever after
the moment she’s saved; she and her son still have to deal with the trauma of their
time in the room. Those narrative questions drive the story into the last act: How will
this boy who has never seen the outside world react to it? What will happen when the woman
reunites with her family? How will the man responsible be punished? This adds a layer
of realism and allows Donoghue to explore deeper questions about human psychology.
At the midpoint, you might also take away the protagonist’s support system (such as
killing off or having them argue with a friend, or perhaps they lose all their money). Another
character could betray them, or they suddenly need to finish the task sooner than expected—the
princess is now getting married in three days, not three weeks. Maybe the protagonist learns
that something they previously believed is wrong (their sister was thought to be dead
but is actually alive). Adding a midpoint reversal allows you to continue that cycle
of questions and reveals. Number four: unsatisfying payoffs. If narrative
questions are what keep the pace moving forward, then the answers, the reveals, the payoffs
to those questions are what drive your readers to leave positive reviews.
With an unsatisfying payoff, the author has made a promise to the reader and not delivered
on it. Say there’s a character who always talks about how much they loathe their brother
and how they’ll kill him if they ever see him again. As a reader, I’m going “Ooh,
this is juicy,” and I’m expecting that confrontation. But if the brothers never confront
each other, I’ll be disappointed. The author has promised me future conflict and then not
delivered any payoff. Even when the author does deliver on that
promise, the payoff might be weak. All that build-up, but then…it fizzles out. Instead
of heating up, the story cools down. This is usually a result of not pushing the characters
to their limits. The author doesn’t introduce any bigger conflict, plot twists, or surprises.
To use my earlier examples, say the wife who’s searching for her husband goes to the Floating
Castle and discovers…he moved to the next village over. Or the son who thinks his father
murdered his brother finds out…yeah, he was right all along, even about his dad’s
motivations, no surprises here. These are boring answers to the narrative questions
because there’s no conflict for the characters to wrestle with.
The situation should go from bad to worse—out of the frying pan and into the fire. The musical
and adapted novel Dear Evan Hansen has a plot that naturally crescendos, increasing in intensity.
The main character gets trapped in a lie, and he decides to roll with it because it’s
easier than telling the truth. But then his subsequent lies grow bigger and bigger, until
he’s dug himself in a hole that’s impossible to escape without ruining his life. It’s
like you’re inflating a balloon, until the air pressure becomes too great, and it has
to pop. And for Evan Hansen, the audience expects that his lies will be exposed—and
we’re waiting for the moment when that balloon pops.
Unsatisfying payoffs can happen at any point in a story, but endings are especially susceptible
to this problem. The climax ends with a whimper, instead of with a bang. A few methods for
ending with a BIG BANG include plot twists, death, character turning points, and earned
triumph—oftentimes a combination of all four.
Plot twists are a reversal of expectations, where the story seems to be heading toward
one ending but suddenly changes course. The character receives or reveals new information
that makes you view the whole story in a new light. I won’t spoil them, but some books
with great twist endings are Gone Girl, Fight Club, Dark Matter, Atonement, Ender’s Game,
Life of Pi, These Broken Stars, and Mockingjay. Death can also act as a type of plot twist
if it comes as a surprise to the reader. This could be the death of a villain, the main
character, or an important minor character—and it should always serve a purpose beyond shock
value. It might prove a point about the novel’s theme, or up the stakes by showcasing the
villain’s villainy, or serve as a heroic sacrifice. Maybe it’s the culmination of
tensions between different characters. It could be an expected death that you hope doesn’t
happen, like in tragic tearjerkers. With a character turning point, the protagonist
must make a big choice—the one they’ve been confronting for most of the novel. This
is the moment Jane Eyre decides if she wants to be with Mr. Rochester. This is when Winston
chooses whether or not to continue rebelling against Big Brother. This is the choice between
immortality and death in Tuck Everlasting. An earned triumph shows the characters have
experienced hardship, changed, and lost things important to them. These endings are bittersweet,
but ultimately happy. Through perseverance, suffering, and sacrifice, they have made it
out the other side. They defeat their enemy, they arrive at their destination, they find
freedom—almost always at a cost. Everything in life and in story comes at a price. After
a lot of death, Mockingjay and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows end in earned triumph.
So does East of Eden, with a father finally forgiving his son. Children’s stories often
focus on a main character going on an adventure and coming out better off in the end. They
follow their heart without losing their values, like Charlie does in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, resisting the greed that caused the other children to fall into a chocolate river
or inflate into a giant blueberry. A book that uses all four strategies in its
ending is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. I’m going to spoil the end
of this book, so if you want to skip this part, click forward two minutes. As the story
goes, four human children travel into the magical world of Narnia, where the White Witch
has cast a spell of eternal winter. The four children join forces with the lion Aslan to
defeat the witch. A character turning point happens at the midpoint,
when one of the children, Edmund, chooses to betray the others and side with the White
Witch. However, at the end of the book, he regrets his decision and rejoins the side
of good, fighting alongside his siblings. Death comes in the form of Aslan’s sacrifice;
he gives his own life in exchange for Edmund’s. But this isn’t a true death, as Aslan comes
back to life—which feels appropriate, given the story is a Christian allegory.
What follows is the earned triumph, where they defeat the White Witch after experiencing
the pain of Edmund’s betrayal and Aslan’s death and rebirth. They are all crowned as
kings and queens of Narnia. The last scene delivers a few plot twists:
the four of them spend decades in Narnia before coming upon the wardrobe again, and when they
pass through, they are once again children, with no time having passed since they left.
The professor they’re staying with not only believes their story, but also implies he
once visited Narnia himself. He assures them: “Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia
again some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to
use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when
you’re not looking for it. And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves. And
don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the
same sort themselves.” The narrator ends the story on a more open-ended
note, informing the reader that more tales are to come:
“And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was
right it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.”
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is one of the most influential children’s novels
of all time, in part due to the author delivering on the promises he’s made to the reader,
with questions like “How will the great battle between good and evil turn out? What
will happen to Edmund, the traitor? Will the children ever return home?” Even if the
ending didn’t work for you personally, it showcases how one writer has created a cohesive
narrative. Think about the promises you’ve made to
your readers. What questions have you got them excited about? If the answers make the
reader go “Oh…” instead of “Oh!” try brainstorming a list of ten other ways
that question could be answered and choose the path that would stir up the most conflict
and excitement. To avoid these pitfalls, remember that plot
grows from who the characters are, what they want, and what they’re willing to do to
get it. Try to surprise your readers by letting your characters face tremendous obstacles
and their greatest fears—and let them have some satisfying successes along the way.
The Hunger Games is an example of an incredibly well-plotted book that has high personal stakes,
a focused trajectory, smooth pacing, and satisfying payoffs, but it’s been analyzed to death
in other blogs and videos; I enjoyed the breakdown on “Writer’s Edit,” which I’ve linked
in the description. Suzanne Collins uses a three-act dramatic structure, and that’s
one of many frameworks that might help you nail down your plot.
Our characters change within the crucible of conflict—and choosing change over stagnation
is the essence of story. What plotting problems have you faced recently?
I’d love to hear your angst in the comments. Whatever you do, keep writing.