Finding and Fixing Your Story’s Critical Flaws

Sometimes the smallest flaw can bring your entire story crashing to a halt, much like a stripped screw can immobilise an otherwise perfectly functional motorcycle. In both this blog and my next subscriber-only Monday Writing Motivation mailer, I explore how to identify and repair those critical narrative elements that, though small, might be worth the entire value of your manuscript.

Finding and Fixing Your Story’s Critical Flaws

• Map your narrative forks: When you sense your story has taken a wrong turn, trace backward to identify exactly where the deviation occurred. Mark these decision points in your manuscript and be willing to return to them when revisions are needed.
• Test your coincidences: For each coincidence in your plot, ask yourself if a reasonable reader would accept it. If not, strengthen the foundation by adding earlier scenes or details that make the coincidence more plausible or replace it with a more credible alternative.
• Scrutinise character motivation: When a character’s decision feels arbitrary, return to earlier sections and build psychological underpinnings that justify their later actions. Remember that believable behavior grows from seeds planted throughout the narrative.

Writing Exercise

Take a problematic scene from your current work-in-progress—one where something doesn’t quite ring true. Rather than trying to fix it directly, go back three scenes and write a completely new bridging element that would make your troublesome scene more believable. This might be a brief conversation, an observed detail, or an internal realization that, when inserted earlier, makes your later scene work seamlessly.

The integrity of your entire story could well rely on the solution you seek – and so it’s worth whatever hard labour it demands of you.

This captures the essence of story maintenance—recognising that some narrative problems require significant backtracking and reconstruction. The effort isn’t wasted if it preserves the integrity of your entire manuscript. Like Pirsig’s screw in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that’s worth an entire motorcycle, certain story elements are worth your entire novel.

Further reading

Writing Secrets: A piece of writing is like a set of dominoes

Writing Secrets: A character needs ‘oomph’ to power a story

Writing Secrets: The self-awareness trap

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Want to discover how to systematically diagnose and repair the critical “screws” holding your narrative together? Sign up for our Monday Writing Motivation emails and read the essay where I explore this approach to story maintenance further.