When stories fall flat, it’s often because readers are missing something. Even if they don’t consciously recognize it, our readers innately know when stories are missing something, and it keeps them from resonating with our book.

Of course, not every story is going to magically relate to everyone. There are still factors like our ideal reader to consider, but if you’re receiving feedback that something is off, here are a few common reasons that your story might be missing the mark and how you can help fix them.

Reason #1: You don’t know your story point

Stories that stick with us always have a strong point—a specific message/takeaway your characters (and therefore your readers) learn about how the world works.

Knowing your story point allows you to focus your vision and home in on how your main character is going to change. As they make decisions, overcome obstacles, experience consequences, succeed or fail, their journey of change should ultimately prove your point.

When stories lack a point, they become unfocused and often meander through plot points with no cohesion. There is no common thread or clear message that ties the plot and the arcs together. This results in reader boredom and disengagement.

You might be struggling with this if:
  • Your plot meanders from random incident to random incident. It lacks consistency or cohesion between scenes.
  • Your readers often ask “What’s the point? Why should I care about this?”
  • You have no idea what you want readers to take away from your story.
  • You’re more focused on what happens in the story than why it happens.

To fix this, spend some time diving deep into why you’re writing this story. What are you trying to say about the world? What do you want readers to learn? What are you trying to teach your characters? Boil down these ideas to a simple, one line message. Then, use your story point to drive every decision you make regarding plot and characters. Always tie the main character’s journey back to your message.

If you need more guidance, check out our blog about story points.

Reason #2: There’s no arc of change

Readers look for a journey, an arc of change, that they can experience as your character changes. They want to see how your flawed main character will fight for what they want, how their weaknesses will hold them back, and how they’ll overcome those weaknesses in the end.

For an effective character arc to work, you need your character to transform throughout the narrative, starting in one place and struggling against their inner demons, until they finally see the light and reach a higher version of themselves. Specifically, through their beliefs about themselves or the world.

This journey of change is imperative to drawing readers in and holding their attention throughout the story, and action is the proof of change. One of the largest indicators that a story doesn’t hold up is a lack of character development, or character arcs. If your character doesn’t change over the course of the story or their change is not clear, readers will pick up on it.

You might be struggling with this if:
  • Your plot is an endless cycle of “this happens and then this happens” with no connection between events.
  • Your characters don’t learn anything or experience a change in worldview that proves the point of the story.
  • Your characters don’t make choices that indicate their change.
  • You or your readers note your characters aren’t engaging or memorable.
  • Your main character is the exact same person at the end of the story.

You can fix your character arcs by considering what internal obstacle holds your character back from personal growth. The internal obstacle needs to be an idea which your character struggles to overcome, but eventually does in order to accomplish their goals.

Think about what “wrong” thing your character believes about the world. By overcoming this misbelief, does your character’s arc prove your story point? Does your character make clear and specific choices in the later scenes which demonstrate their change?

For more guidance, check out our free email course, The Magic of Character Arcs.

Reason #3: Your character’s goals aren’t clear or strong

Engaging stories have characters that pursue deep, passionate, and clear goals. No one wants to read a story about an apathetic character who sits around and lets things happen to them.

If your reader doesn’t know or understand your character’s goals, they will find it difficult to care about what’s happening because they won’t understand why it matters your characters. When they don’t know what’s at stake, there’s nothing to keep their eyes locked to the page.

When your characters aren’t clearly fighting for something, and are passively waiting for things to happen to them rather than pursuing what they desire, this highlights a problem about agency.

You might be struggling with this if:
  • Plot happens to your characters, instead of your characters’ decisions driving the plot.
  • Readers don’t understand what your characters are fighting for, or what will happen if they don’t get what they want.
  • You tell us what’s happening, instead of showing us, so we never see inside the character’s head.

The best way to fix this is to work through why your character makes decisions, and determine what they want. Make it crystal clear what your character will fight for, and what will happen if they don’t achieve their goals. Then, revisit each and every decision your character makes. Are these decisions driven by what they want and what they’re willing to do to get it?

For more guidance on character goals, check out our podcast on character agency.

Reason #4: You struggle with Show, Don’t Tell

The Show, Don’t Tell (SDT) technique is one of the hardest writing techniques to master. We often see SDT get edited out of drafts because writers simply don’t understand what it means.

In the simplest terms, SHOW is the technique of bringing a reader into the emotion of a story so they can see and feel a character’s experience. TELL is the technique of narrating about objects, people, and events.

While it’s easy to rely on telling, when we show we’re drawing the reader in so they can experience the story as if they were there themselves.This gives your story what readers crave: emotion.

When you simply “tell” the reader what happens by writing the plot, setting, and descriptions as if you were an observer, you don’t put the reader inside the character’s skin.

You might be struggling with this if:
  • Your writing reads like a play-by-play of plot.
  • Your pages lack internal dialogue, thought processing, emotion, and/or explanation of what plot events mean to the point of view character.
  • You’ve edited out a lot of internal processing because you felt it was unnecessary.
  • Your characters make decisions, but nothing lets the reader into why that decision was made.

Fixing this takes a revision, often at a scene-by-scene level, to understand how what happens affects the characters themselves on an emotional level as well as weave in thoughts and observations that reflect this meaning to the characters. Readers must know how characters feel and why, otherwise they will struggle to understand why they should care about the events unfolding on the page. Instead of telling, “show” the reader how what’s happening impacts the characters and what it means to them personally.

For more guidance, check out our blog The Show/Tell Spectrum and listen to the Story Magic Podcast on The 3 Layers of Show.

Reason #5: Dialogue is flat or unrealistic

Good dialogue often goes unnoticed. When it’s crafted well, a story continues to flow forward, uninterrupted, as you learn more about the characters and the conflict at hand. Bad dialogue, on the other hand, is often jarring, boring or both. It tears the reader from the story as they struggle to make sense of what’s going on or why a conversation is important.

Dialogue is one the trickier skills in a writer’s tool belt. Because it’s fun to write, it can sometimes seem simple, but in reality it’s difficult to master and easy to get wrong. Crafting conversations can be one of the simplest ways to get inside your character’s skin and figure out what they care about and why. However, the dialogue in your story can’t just be fun banter—it needs to serve a purpose in the narrative.

When your dialogue feels stilted, unrealistic or serves no purpose to drive plot or character arcs forward, it can feel flat because nothing important is happening—or at least not for a story-relevant reason. This tears the reader from the story as they struggle to make sense of what’s going on.

Real conversation always has a purpose; people rarely speak without wanting something and they rarely say what they mean. If you’re not considering the various layers of your dialogue, then you are most likely doing your readers a major disservice.

You might be struggling with this if:

  • You used dialogue as an exploratory tool to get to know your characters. (Note: this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially in the first few drafts, but it often results in stilted, irrelevant information or unrealistic dialogue that should be revised!)
  • Conversations don’t drive the story or arcs forward, or don’t carry any additional meaning. They read more like “plot pauses” where nothing really happens.
  • Characters say exactly what they mean and don’t necessarily have a goal in the conversation.

Fix this by evaluating what the purpose of your dialogue is—and what your characters will gain from it. In real life, people are usually trying to achieve something without necessarily directly saying it. What are you using your characters to say about themselves? Or revealing about the story? To give meaning to the scene?

Consider how to cut or revise any dialogue that feels unrealistic or doesn’t add meaning or relevance to the story.

For more guidance, read our blog about writing great dialogue.

We want to keep our readers invested in the stories we’re creating, but because we’re working so closely with our books, it’s easy to miss these problems on our own. Now, whether you’re evaluating your book on your own, or trying to parse out feedback from beta readers—you can use these tips to identify and fix these issues without stressing about what you’re missing.

xo,