Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for our first new-style workshop, where we’ll be digging into a published short story (or novel extract!) every month.

This time, we explored Ursula Le Guin’s iconic short The Wife’s Story, what makes it so shocking and powerful even after all these years, and how we can steal some of its magic for our own writing.

This story is a masterclass in what happens when we take the time to really see through the eyes of our readers, and it was a delight to dig into that with you all.

Without further ado, let’s get into the recording—where you can catch up if you missed the Live, or just revisit whenever you’d like a refresh. I’ve also shared some additional resources below: a crib sheet on the key lessons The Wife’s Story teaches us as writers, and some exercises to help you capture its lightning-in-a-bottle for yourself!

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Speculative fiction scenes come in all shapes and sizes, but the best tend to follow the same rhyming scheme:

1. The protagonist (or point of view character) wants something badly. A temporary goal they must achieve to reach their goal for the whole novel.

2. They take action to try and achieve that temporary goal.

3. Problems and obstacles show up to ruin their day.

4. They try, fail, and try again to overcome those obstacles during the heart of the scene. Often, this uses the storytelling fairy dust that is “yes, but”/“no, and.”

5. Towards the end of the scene, we reach the outcome. The character either achieves the thing they wanted, or they fail.

6. Whatever the case, some new problem or complication appears.

7. This leads to a new goal they must pursue in the next scene.

If you read some of your favourite novels from the past few years, you’ll see that writers don’t follow this pattern slavishly or announce each step. However, most of the elements are usually there somewhere, lurking beneath the surface.

This is where most of my editing clients fall down. Their stories are a jumble of things that happen, rather than an intoxicating rhythm, and this sort of scene structure is their salvation.

It’s the one piece of advice I give out over and over again. An antidote to goalless, passive, or wandering stories that exhaust readers, perish in the query trenches, and cause their authors endless heartache.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at each of the individual elements of the glorious gift that is scene structure.

Now it’s finally time to put it all together.

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A Complete Transmutation

Remember Evelyn, our hypothetical knight-in-training? Here’s a scene from the climax of her story that puts exactly this kind of scene structure into action:

Temporary Goal:
When we left off, Evelyn’s friends were about to be executed by her corrupt knight-commander. Now, Evelyn must find a way to save them and defeat her former mentor for good.

Action:
With no time to prepare, and no one left to help, Evelyn heads out to the old gallows and lies in wait in the rain. Waiting for an opportunity to act.

Obstacle:
Before she gets chance Evelyn’s sickly brother emerges to confront the guards. He’s here to save the family friend that was captured with Evelyn’s other allies, and is carrying their father’s rusty sword. It’s too heavy for him to wield, and he’s hopelessly out numbered.

“Cut the boy’s throat first,” the knight-commander tells her thugs.

Evelyn has no choice but to intervene.

Try/Fail Cycles:
Q: Can Evelyn reach her brother before the guard kills him?

A: Yes, but it leaves her flank open and the knight-commander drives her sword into a gap in Evelyn’s armour. Now Evelyn is wounded, and her brother is still in trouble.

Q: Can Evelyn get her brother out of the way?

A: No. There are guards everywhere and there’s no way for her brother to defend himself with that heavy, rusted sword. Evelyn has no choice but to give him her own. The one that she’s trained with. And take up her father’s old blade herself as the knight-commander launches towards her.

Q: Can Evelyn hold the knight-commander off?

A: Yes, at least for now. And with a lighter sword, her brother is able to get away. But Evelyn’s father’s sword is too heavy in her hand, and the knight-commander shouts to start killing the prisoners—starting with their family friend.

Q: Can Evelyn stop them from killing her friend?

A: No. She can’t reach him in time, and as he dies the knight-commander takes advantage: bringing down a brutal strike that shatters Evelyn’s rusty sword and drives her to her knees.

Outcome:
Evelyn has failed to save her friend and defeat the knight-commander. Now, she’s at the mercy of her former mentor and facing certain death.

Complication:
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Evelyn hears a shout and looks up. One of the guards has her brother and is dragging him up to the gallows.

New Goal:
Find some way to beat the odds. Save her brother and kill the knight-commander.

That then leads us into the final scene of the climax: the one scene that must be answered cleanly: the protagonist either wins the day and achieves their goal for the novel, or they fail and lose it forever.

The chain breaks. The story ends.

And everything the reader is here for finally pays off.

When is a Scene Not a Scene?

Here’s one thing that can trip people up about scene structure: it isn’t actually about scenes at all.

It’s just that “dramatic unit structure” isn’t as catchy.

The truth is, this repeating scene flow (goal → action → obstacle → try/fail/try again → outcome → complication → new goal) can play out over a single scene, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s split over two scenes. Or a chapter. Maybe even two or more chapters, depending on the story.

Again, this structure isn’t meant to be a cage or, gods forbid, yet another thing for us to overthink. It’s just a useful tool that, when we keep one eye on it, can help keep our stories moving.

And help to prevent the dreaded “two hundred pages where nothing really happens.”

(Another) Quick Word on Stakes

As we’ve already talked about, the stakes in any given moment are the answer to the question: What awful thing will happen if the character fails?

Generally, we want to start the stakes relatively small and build them up throughout the book, but life-or-death stakes don’t automatically create tension. To really drive up intensity, we need to hit what the character cares about the most. The more of that we put on the line? The higher the stakes. It doesn’t even have to be something physical. Losing a relationship, or sacrificing a deeply held value is often just as strong. If not stronger.

We also need to set the stakes according to our genre. I’ve seen more than one novel that claimed to be cosy fantasy, but the stakes were the fate of the whole world. Part of what makes a fantasy cosy is very small, very personal stakes.

The fate of the protagonists’ coffee shop is exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for in those genres. It can be every bit as dramatic as the fate of the whole world, and places the book more clearly in that kind of low-stakes genre.

Meanwhile, epic fantasy is far more likely to rest on life-and-death-and-the-fate-of-reality-itself.

As with everything, it’s about knowing the expectations of your genre, and meeting them (or intentionally breaking them) accordingly!

What About Quiet Scenes?

There are also a very small number of scenes that don’t follow this structure at all.

These are our low, slow exhales after something big and dramatic. The quiet and relationship-building scenes that stop the action from becoming overwhelming.

However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind with these:

1. We get far fewer of them than most writers think. Perhaps no more than three or four, and always in the wake of our biggest, most powerful plot points.

2. They are generally just one scene. The more of them there are (and especially the more that follow one after the other) the more the story goes slack and the reader loses interest.

The vast majority of writers add far too many quiet scenes, and let the lulls go on far too long.

Here’s a handful of different ways we can deal with that:

• Ask yourself: Does this truly need to be an actionless scene? Does it come after an important plot point when everything has been shaken to its core? Does the reader need this moment to catch their breath and recover?

• If not, could we add in a small thread of structure? Something the character wants from this conversation, this hour exploring the city, or whatever the scene is? Even a small goal or the tiniest stakes can help sustain a quieter scene and maintain enough tension to keep things moving.

• Do we put the pressure back on in the next scene? Or, even better, at the very end of this one? Especially if this scene truly is a “lull” with no structure at all, are we returning to the meat of the story immediately afterwards? Or is the next scene quiet as well?

We haven’t focused much on quieter scenes because, in my experience, writers don’t need any help writing them. Mostly, they need to know when to stop, and how to keep the forward momentum that readers crave.

Pacing Considerations

A lot of my writers worry about pacing without really understanding what it means.

As we talked about in the Complications post in this series, pacing isn’t about how many things happen. It’s a mixture of:

1. How many of the scene structure elements appear in each scene.

2. How quickly these cycles of goal → action → obstacle etc repeat themselves.

3. The size and severity of the obstacles in the characters’ way, and the complications at the end of their scenes.

Most struggling speculative fiction novels happen because the writer has misunderstood pacing, or paced things too slow. Their stories are packed with far too many scenes focused purely on exposition, exploration, and relationship building [link passive characters].

This happens for one reason alone: the author has lost sight of our starting point—the vital compass of their characters’ goal.

Ensuring the goal is the force behind almost every scene is the one lesson almost every writer desperately needs to learn. After that, we can start to worry about pacing: using shorter, more rapidly-cycling scene structure to speed everything up, and sustaining quieter moments with smaller stakes.

What about the “Scene & Sequel” Structure? How Does That Relate?

I’ve honestly never been a huge fan of this framework.

Not because it doesn’t work (it absolutely does!) but because it leads so many writers astray.

I see so many books where we get a small moment of action, followed by a lengthy diversion into the weeds—where the character thinks about what happened, worries about everything, decides what they’re going to do next, and the story goes nowhere at all. Nothing will kill the engine of a novel faster than this. Instead, we need to do the one thing our readers crave most: keep our foot on the gas pedal, and keep everything moving.

The authors who use the “Scene & Sequel” technique best aren’t starting and stopping like this. Often, the sequel is shoved somewhere inside the next scene, and the character is forced to process everything, feel things, and make decisions, while everything is still moving forward.

That can be absolute magic. It’s how we create powerful internal conflict—as the character struggles with their thoughts, feelings, and decisions while also facing external challenges. It increases the intensity in the most glorious way, weaving internal and external obstacles together through every fresh cycle of try/fail/try again.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use it. Just...make sure it’s not strangling the life out of your story with endless emotional reflection, processing, and thinking scenes when all the reader wants to know (all they ever want to know) is: What will happen next?

Conduct Your Own Experiments

Now that we’ve covered all the different elements of scene structure, here’s how you can use them in your own work:

1. Pick a scene/section of action from your latest WIP.

2. See if you can identify the various parts.

   1. What is the point of view character’s goal in this moment? Is it a clear step on the path to their goal for the novel?

   2. What do they do about it in this scene?

   3. Is there a problem that gets in their way?

   4. How do they try to overcome that problem? Is there struggle, further setbacks, and iterations of “yes, but”/“no, and” in there, or do they win/lose immediately?

   5. What’s the outcome? Do they achieve their temporary goal, or fail to reach it?

   6. Is there a complication? Some new issue that arises to either spoil their victory or make everything worse?

   7. Does that lead to a clear (or implied) new goal that they must now pursue?

3. Identify which parts of the scene structure you’ve nailed. What’s working? And which parts are missing?

We don’t always have to follow this exact process, or include every element. But playing around with the structure, adding in bits that are missing, or tweaking the flow can be a useful experiment. Is the scene that you’ve ended up with stronger as a result?

Is it taking you closer to where you want the story to be?

Let me know how you got on in the comments! Share what you noticed, tell me what clicked, or ask any questions you still have—we’ll be covering them next week for a scene structure Q&A!

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

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Have you ever beta read for someone else, or exchanged feedback in a writing group?

If so, you probably know how it feels when there’s something just a little bit...off about a book. Things happen in the story. Maybe the characters even have goals. But everything feels disjointed somehow: a series of events that just sort of happen, rather than a single, focused story.

I see these novels all the time in my work as a developmental editor, and the problem almost always comes from the same root—the author has failed to properly build the chain of cause and effect that story needs to come alive.

That’s the issue we’ll be solving today, as we look at the final link in the chain of scene structure: the protagonist’s new goal.

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“And So” vs. “And Then”

Think of your favourite books, and you’ll probably find they do one thing exceptionally well: everything feels inevitable. Not predetermined. Just the sum total of everything that’s happened before. Every choice the protagonist made, every mistake or bad decision, it has all brought them to this moment.

It’s one of the things that makes a book impossible to put down. Novels like this cast a spell over us. Everything feels so important. Like we’re right there with the characters, and everything is on the line.

Stories like this follow an “and so” structure, where everything that happens leads directly to what happens next:

Evelyn escapes from the dungeon where her former mentor imprisoned her. She needs somewhere to hide, so she goes to a tavern at the edge of the city. She must find some way to contact her allies, so she talks to a smuggler. But he recognises her from a “Wanted” poster and sells her out to the city guard instead.

Every event is another link in the chain, welling up naturally from what happened before.

Compare that to our disjointed, “series of events” style book:

Evelyn escapes from the dungeon. She doesn’t know where to go, so she goes to a tavern. With nothing else to do, she meets a stranger. A while later, the city guard show up to arrest her.

It’s the same series of events, but a completely different story. In the first example, Evelyn needs somewhere to hide and so she goes to the tavern. In the second, she needs somewhere to hide and then ends up at the inn.

There’s no clear connection, and no sense of how one thing leads to the next.

This is where the final step in our scene flow becomes so important.

Building a Chain Reaction

By this point, we’ve already done the hard work:

• Our character has a temporary goal, something they need to achieve their goal for the novel.

• They take some kind of action to try and reach that temporary goal.

• A problem or obstacle shows up to ruin their day.

• The character tries, fails, and tries again to overcome that problem.

• We reach the outcome, where they either achieve their temporary goal or fail.

• Either way, some new issue or complication appears to keep the reader on the hook.

All we need to do now is forge the last link in the chain: dovetailing the complication into some new goal that the character will follow in the next scene. Ideally, it lays the groundwork for what will happen next, sets the reader’s expectations, and gently invites them to keep going.

When it all comes together, it might look something like this:

Evelyn needs to find some way to contact her allies (goal) so she goes to the tavern to find a smuggler she knows (action). However, she has nothing to offer him (obstacle) and no matter how many promises she makes, or how hard she tries to talk him around, he’s unconvinced (try/fail/try again). He eventually agrees to help (outcome), but it’s a ruse and he shops her out to the city guard (complication). Now, she must get away before they catch her (new goal).

It’s only a very rough idea, but notice how it builds and sustains tension—mixing that delicious potion of problems, struggles, hope, and doubt that keep our readers addicted.

Revisiting the Compass of Story

By now, you have all the material you need to create a compelling new goal. We just need to select something that’s:

1. Concrete

2. Intense

3. Personal

4. Something the character must achieve to reach their goal for the novel

If Evelyn doesn’t get away from the guards, she can’t take down her former mentor, rid her city of the bandits, and fulfil her goal to be the kind of knight her father should have been. It’s tangible, solid, formed from everything she is, infused with her every hope and dream, and key to achieving the one thing she’s wanted right from the start.

Whenever you feel lost or uncertain, return to the compass of your protagonist’s goal. It’s the north star that will lead you through rough waters. Dig down until you feel the ache of that goal in your bones. For Evelyn: she’s so earnest in her ideas of justice. A young woman, utterly desperate to find her own place in the world. To mean something.

Even though she’s just a hypothetical example—invented for this series—I can still feel the emotional weight of that. To want all the things that she wants.

With all the time you’ve spent to get here, you’re already a thousand times more connected to your own protagonist.

When things go awry, often the only thing you need to do is pause, take a breath, and reach deep into the well of that character that lives inside of you.

Find the beating heart of what they desperately want, and everything else will fall into place.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

Does the new goal always have to be stated outright, or can it be implied?

Sometimes they don’t even need to be implied! Take our example above: when the city guard show up, Evelyn’s new goal is obvious. We don’t need to tell the reader she has to escape, because it’s already clear from everything that’s happened before.

Whether you need to imply the new goal, state it outright, or whether it’s already obvious will vary from scene to scene. Go with your gut!

Can the new goal be something the character doesn’t realize yet? Like a subconscious need?

In most cases, we want to avoid this. A character who doesn’t know what they want is passive, and passive characters generally wreck all your hard work.

A good fix is to give the character a False Goal. They won’t get the chance to pursue it, but the character doesn’t know that, and neither does the reader.

Let’s go back to our hypothetical Evelyn. Perhaps she escapes from the city guard and takes refuge in a storm drain—helpless to do anything but watch as the guards arrest her friends and allies. She’s now completely alone. There’s an implicit or subconscious goal here. She must find some new way to deal with her corrupt mentor, but Evelyn has no clear plan on how to do that. This might happen because we’re just playing for time, waiting for the vital moment when the knight-commander (Evelyn’s mentor) drags all of Evelyn’s friends outside the city to execute them. The knight-commander is panicking, overplaying her hand, and that’s what will force the final confrontation at the climax of the story.

It’s okay, but it leaves Evelyn at the end of the scene, not sure what to do or how to fix things. Just sort of passively waiting while the story slips away.

A False Goal can fix that, and make the story even more compelling.

Trapped in the storm drain, watching her friends get dragged away, Evelyn decides to break into the knight-commander’s office and find proof of the woman’s corruption. In the next scene, she almost manages it. Then a dozen knights march past, dragging her friends out to the old execution grounds on the knight-commander’s orders.

Suddenly, Evelyn’s False Goal is shattered, and we end up in the same place we were heading from the start. But we’ve done it in a way that keeps Eveyln active and keeps her moving. Without letting all the tension drain away, by lapsing into sitting and waiting.

The key here? A character doesn’t have to succeed. We can send them off chasing a goal, knowing full well that’s not what’s going to happen.

In fact, sometimes those moments are magic.

Does the new goal always need to lead to the next scene? What if there’s a time jump?

Time jumps shouldn’t affect things. Ideally, one scene ends with a fresh goal the character must pursue. The next scene starts when they take action to try and reach it.

It doesn’t matter if that action happens two seconds later, or two years.

What if the scene ends with the character giving up? Is there still a new goal?

I’d strongly recommend against any scene where the protagonist gives up. Remember, their goal is the strongest force in the story. It’s what provides every ounce of forward momentum. When they give up, the reader starts to feel like that goal wasn’t so important after all. It undermines the very foundations that everything else is built on.

There are ways to weave in that kind of despair, and even have a character give up (Chapter 2 of Gideon the Ninth does a pretty good job with this!) but they must always be handled with caution.

For the most part, showing a character frantically scrabbling for some new way to reach their goal, even when all hope is lost, will have far more emotional impact than watching someone collapse into inaction.

Another option would be to show the character abandon the old goal (giving up on it) and instead decide that they’re going to pursue something else entirely. For example, when Evelyn hides in that storm drain, maybe she decides she can’t defeat her former mentor. She’s going to escape the city instead and start a new life somewhere else.

Of course, we then start building conflict around that in the same way as any other goal: by throwing obstacles in her path and making the new goal impossible, too.

How do I stop my scene/temporary goals from getting repetitive? What if my character’s new goal is the same as their old one—ie, because they have to try again?

Don’t be afraid to break things down and mix them up. Instead of having a character attempt the exact goal over and over again, spice things up a little.

For example, we might have three scenes like this: The character tries to climb the castle wall and fails. The next scene, she tries again. Fails again. In the third scene she tries again and finally succeeds, but by then the reader is asleep.

Instead, we might have something like this:

Scene 1: The character tries to climb the wall and fails, attracting the guards’ attention.

Scene 2: She has to run away and hide. She succeeds, but now the watch on the castle walls is doubled.

Scene 3: Now she must sneak past all these new guards to reach the servants’ door...

See how every scene has different challenges, requires different skills, and is woven together with different consequences (either “yes, but” or “no, and”)? That’s what keeps things interesting.

If you still have questions, or there’s anything here I haven’t answered, feel free to ask in the comments! I’ll do everything I can to fix that.

Conduct Your Own Experiments

Want to check how you’re handling this element in your WIP? Here’s something you can try:

• Look at the end of a scene or sequence of action, where one chunk of plot ends.

• Is the seed of a new goal there—something the character must do now?

• Does it change the stakes (what will happen if they fail) or alter the character’s situation in some interesting way?

If they just keep doing what they’re doing, or it isn’t clear what they need to do next, you might need to revisit the complication stage to help drive everything forward.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

Thanks so much to Seth for sharing an extract of his novella The Kobold with us. It was such a great way to come back after a month off, and reminded me of everything I’ve grown to love about this community.

And as always, it was incredible to hear the amount of careful thought and consideration everyone gave in their feedback. You are all truly what ma…

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You’d be forgiven for thinking a scene ends with the outcome.

The character either achieves the thing they were fighting for or fails, and either way the scene is over, right? Time to move on.

There’s just one problem with that: a clean scene ending is a closed door. A flat “yes” or “no,” a scene break, or start of a new chapter. All of a sudden, space opens up. Our scene might ask: can Evelyn kill the bandit leader that’s been tormenting the town for years? And then answer: yes.

The vital question “What will happen next?” is confidently answered, and our reader is free to walk away and do something else with their time.

If we want our book to really come alive, we must horde the reader’s attention like a dragon atop a mountain of gold. We have to monopolise their whole being and refuse to let them go. And the outcome of a scene can’t provide that alone.

It needs that little extra dose of magical nitro that can only come from complications.

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The Road That Keeps Unfolding

Fortunately, we’ve already covered the very skill we need to make this happen: the storytelling superpower that is “yes, but”/“no, and.”

To really take things up another level (and especially if we’re trying to keep the reader invested), then we just need to use that technique one more time, right at the end of the scene.

So instead of:

Yes, Evelyn kills the bandit leader and puts an end to his reign of terror.

We might answer:

Yes, Evelyn kills him, but as he dies, he reveals who’s been protecting him all along—the grandmaster of Evelyn’s own knightly order.

One issue might have been solved, but Evelyn’s problems have only gotten worse. And now she must find a way to take down the powerful woman who taught her everything she knows.

Alternatively, the scene ends in defeat, and we add an additional punch to make things much worse:

No, Evelyn fails to kill the bandit leader, and he takes her prisoner instead.

Notice how we’re doing the same thing in both cases: we plant the seed of some new problem inside the solution of the last. This doesn’t just keep the reader on the hook (and keep them turning the pages), it’s also exactly what they want. That feeling where they can’t put the book down, can’t look away, and are completely invested in what happens next.

This is especially true when a complication or new problem takes the story in an unexpected direction. These detours, wrong turns, and fresh disasters are the reward our reader is searching for.

Most often, it’s the most exciting part of the novel for them—the sticky jam of storytelling that keeps them coming back for more.

Choosing the Right Complication

Not all setbacks are created equal, and the glorious rise and fall of a novel requires a delicate hand. This is what a lot of writers mean when they talk about pacing: the slow build of momentum, dramatic “exclamation point” of action, and the quiet lull that follows. Then immediately stepping back into the flow: building everything up again towards another dramatic set piece.

To manage that, we need to treat complications the same as obstacles: choosing them carefully, depending on where we are in the story and how quickly we want the reader to progress. Some scenes call for a small inconvenience or delay. Others for an absolute wrecking ball. Most will fall somewhere in between.

Ultimately, there are three things that control the pace of a book:

1. the amount of failure vs success

2. the size of the obstacles in the character’s way

3. and the seriousness of the complications that arise

As we’ve already discussed, failure and success are like the accelerator and the brakes of our story.

The same is true of obstacles and complications. The bigger they are, the more dramatic everything will feel, and the more forward momentum we create.

A Small Note on Random Chance

Ideally, we want everything that happens in our story to be the direct result of our main character—they actions they take, and the decisions they make as they chase after their goal.

When that happens, the story runs like balanced clockwork. Everything belongs, victories feel earned, and the character truly becomes the architect of their own fate. Because everything that happens next depends on what they do, their actions matter.

It all hangs on what the character does next.

But when we go against that—when disasters come out of nowhere and our protagonist is saved by random chance—it all falls apart. Then, readers feel like it doesn’t matter what our characters do. The story will always turn out the same way: some random saviour or catastrophe will appear whenever it’s needed, and there’s nothing our protagonist can do about it.

We need to keep this in mind at all times, but especially when adding in complications and consequences.

Take Evelyn’s example above. The discovery that her mentor was the one behind the bandits makes sense, because the only reason Evelyn finds out is because she was there—pursuing her goal and taking down the gang leader. Everything follows a smooth chain of cause and effect: Evelyn’s story goal is to prove herself to her knightly order → that leads her to discover the bandits → she confronts their leader and defeats him with her own skills and courage → the story “rewards” her by revealing the truth about her mentor.

But just one small change could make the whole thing fall apart:

Evelyn goes to the bandits’ hideout, confronts their leader, and defeats him in battle. She takes him prisoner. When she’s finished, one of the other knights arrives to tell her they’ve discovered the knight-commander of their order was behind things all along.

Notice how this strips Evelyn’s agency and robs her of her rightful place as the story’s protagonist. Instead, the next part of the plot just falls into her lap the moment the novel needs it.

So, choose wisely when picking your scene complications. The more they’re the direct result of everything your protagonist has done up to this point (and ideally, the more they’re caused by their actions in that very moment), the better!

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

What’s the difference between an obstacle and a complication?

These are both unwelcome things that happen to our character. The difference is mainly a mechanical one: obstacles come in the start and middle of a scene, and get in the way of our character’s best efforts to reach their temporary goal. Complications happen at the end of a scene, when the character has either achieved or failed at their temporary goal.

They’re one last iteration of “yes, but” or “no, and” that forges the next link in the chain, and plants the seed of what will happen next.

Does there always have to be a complication? What if my scene ends cleanly?

There will always be some scenes that end with a flat success or failure, especially at the climax or at the end of a particularly dramatic moment. In those cases, we want to open up some breathing space—making room for a quiet moment in the wake of something explosive.

Also, complications aren’t the only way to keep the reader turning the page. Ultimately, all we need to do is have some source of tension that carries over into the next scene. Depending on the story and genre, that could be an unanswered question, something that doesn’t quite fit, or a strange and threatening element. Mysteries, gothic novels, and the like are especially likely to build and maintain tension in this way.

Can a complication be unrelated to the obstacle or the rest of the scene—for example, the protagonist finds the arcane book they were looking for, but then a fire starts?

Absolutely. Just remember that everything must happen for a reason, and that reason is our character and the actions they take in pursuit of their goal.

If the fire happens because they knocked a lamp over earlier, set it right, then wandered off and thought they were fine? That’s perfect. If they unintentionally reveal their location, and the bad guy starts the fire to incriminate the protagonist? Even better.

It’s only when the fire is completely unconnected, caused by something our character had zero control over, that we can get into trouble.

Can there be too many complications? How many is too many?

One at the end of each scene is usually fine. Any more than that, and you risk overwhelming the story and leaving the reader confused.

What’s the difference between a complication and a cliffhanger?

A cliffhanger puts a big ole scene break right in the middle of the action. It takes us through the flow of goal → action → obstacle, then leaves us hanging right in the middle of the try/fail/try again stage.

A complication comes after the character has either achieved or failed at their scene goal—threading some new problem in just as we resolve the last one, and keeping the reader on the hook.

Still have questions? Ask them below, and I’ll answer them if I can!

Conduct Your Own Experiments

What to check how your handling complications?

• Scroll to the end of a scene (or section of action) in your work in progress.

• Is there some new issue or problem that appears—either just before or immediately after their temporary goal is resolved, before we hit the scene or chapter break?

• Does it either raise the stakes (increasing the cost of failure) or change what the character must do next?

• Is the problem the result of the character’s own actions, or does it appear at random?

If you’re lacking a complication, try adding one. If the protagonist/point of view character succeeds at their temporary goal, what new problem might they have to deal with now? If they fail, what else might go wrong?

You might find this fresh issue at the start of the next scene or chapter. What if you moved it to the end of this one instead? How does that change things? How might it affect the reader’s desire to keep going?

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

The outcome of a scene is where we find out if all the character’s hard work has paid off.

Will they get the thing they’ve been fighting for, or will everything go horribly wrong and leave them further away than ever from their goal?

The seed of the outcome is planted right at the start of the scene: when we establish the temporary goal—be it breaking into a library, convincing a guard to look the other way, or crossing a treacherous marsh.

To properly nail the end of a scene, we must return to that compass, and see where we’ve ended up.

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Success, Failure, and Everything In Between

Immediately, we have a few different options here:

1. The character achieves the temporary goal we established at the start of the scene.

2. They achieve their goal, but it turns out to have dreadful consequences or be awful for some reason.

3. The character fails, and something happens that means that goal is lost forever.

4. They fail, but they can try again.

5. Their goal is lost, but the character is rewarded with something else instead. Something that they (and the reader) didn’t expect.

Of these, the first and fourth options are the least interesting to our readers, because there’s no innate tension here. The character has the thing, or they don’t have it but can just try again, we’re still stuck in the same place we were at the start.

Options 2 and 5 are much more tempting, since they pull the story somewhere the reader wasn’t expecting—adding a change of direction, and a little jolt of excitement and adrenaline.

That said, all five outcomes have their uses, and we’ll likely want to employ all of them. Most importantly, each of them answers the question: did the character succeed or fail? And that is the most vital part. It’s how we end up with a story that feels cohesive, focused, and like it’s making progress.

Clarity: The Most Important Guy in the Room

I work on so many novels where maybe the protagonist wants something, or maybe they don’t, and by the end of each scene they might have made progress, but aren’t sure.

Maybe they’ve learned something, but have no idea how it will help them. They might have escaped, defeated an enemy, or scored some political points, but there’s no clear sense of how this brings them closer to their goal—or if it brings them any closer at all.

Outcomes like that are poison for one reason and one reason only: the reader has no way of understanding whether the character is “winning” or “losing” in any given moment, and as a result, they have no reason to care. Instead, they’re left wandering around in the fog with no idea of where the story actually is, what’s on the line, or what the character needs to do next.

Uncertainty between two options can be powerful. The character has achieved something important, and it’s either going to be an absolute gamechanger, or it will blow up in their face, and everything will go sideways. There’s tension in that.

But vagueness? When an outcome might be good or bad or completely unrelated? Or when the reader has no idea of how close the character is to their goal, or what they need to do next?

It makes the whole story feel meaningless, lacking in direction, and predetermined: like the character is just going to wander around vaguely, not really achieving anything tangible until the story decides to move them along.

Fortunately, if you find this happening in your own writing (and all of us do at some point), then it’s extremely straightforward to fix. We just have to ask:

• What does the protagonist/point of view character want in this scene?

• How are their actions a concrete, tangible step towards their goal for the whole novel?

• Do they achieve this temporary goal before we move on? Do they fail? Or are we using one of the other five options above?

Implementing the revisions might be tiresome, but by the time you’re finished, your scene will be much stronger.

The Power and Mechanics of Failure

Failure is one of the most undervalued tools in a writer’s arsenal. We tend to avoid it for two reasons:

1. It’s scary, uncomfortable, or we just love our characters and really don’t want to hurt them.

2. We know where the story needs to go, and are so focused on getting there that we draw a straight line. The character does a thing, succeeds, and takes a step closer to the next thing we have planned.

Our aversion to failure is great news for the characters (who doesn’t want an easy ride?) but it’s dreadful for our stories.

Think about the books that have gripped you the most. The ones that kept you up until two in the morning, desperately reading to find out what happens next. Remember the intoxicating mixture of anxiety and excitement? How you genuinely weren’t sure how things would turn out and you wanted, you needed, to know?

If you look back at those stories now, you’ll probably find the same mixture of things: the characters fail, often badly. They hit setbacks and unexpected twists. They make a plan and the story smashes it to pieces with a wrecking ball. Everything gets bad, and then it gets worse, and the reader cannot look away—they have no idea how the character will get out of this mess, and will keep reading until they find out.

That’s what makes failure the accelerator (or “gas pedal”) of our stories: it increases the amount of excitement, builds momentum, gives those little jolts of something unexpected. And that makes the story real—hitting the characters with the full consequences of what they’re fighting for. It puts the outcome in danger, and makes that doubt physically, painfully real.

Don’t be afraid to hit your characters with that. And then make it even worse.

By default, we tend to try and keep things the same. To follow the map or idea we have of our story. But we have to fight that unconscious urge. Fight it with every fibre of our being.

Because grabbing our readers means punching the protagonist down in the dirt and making them get up again. Strip them of something important. Take a scene where they get what they want and ask: “What if everything went horribly wrong instead? What’s the worst thing that would happen? And what if it actually did? What would this person do next?”

Be brave.

It might feel like it will spoil all of your carefully laid plans, but your own creativity will surprise you.

I promise.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

Can the outcome ever be ambiguous? Should it always be clear success or failure?

There are always exceptions. But for the most part, we want to stick to the five outcomes above: the character succeeds, they succeed but it’s awful, they fail forever, fail for now, or end up gaining some other/unexpected thing.

As we’ve talked about, an outcome with two potential options can be good. A door opens, and inside? Only darkness. It seems too quiet, but what our character wants is inside. Is it still there, or is it a trap? The reader is caught up in the tension between those two possibilities, and will keep reading to find out the truth.

But when the door opens, and the character doesn’t know what’s inside? If they don’t know how (or if) it will help, or even if there’s anything there at all? That’s where things get vague, and the story gets in trouble.

What if a scene ends in partial success? Can that ever work?

Sometimes. But I’d be careful of relying on it too much. It can create the feeling that the story isn’t getting anywhere: the character doesn’t have the thing yet, they just get the chance to try again, and we’re essentially still in the same place that we started.

An easy fix is to break the goal down into multiple steps.

Say our protagonist is trying to reach the top of a tower. In one version of the scene, she fights up halfway and now gets to keep going in the next. A partial success that leaves things feeling a little flat. In another, there’s a locked door halfway up the tower. Same fight up the winding steps, but now she must find the key (or pick the lock) before she can advance. Now we have two smaller goals instead of one, and two potential points of success or failure, rather than the foggy middle ground of partial success.

How do I avoid the end of a scene feeling deux ex machina, or like the character gets lucky/unlucky?

Follow one of the most useful pieces of writing advice: everything should happen for a reason, and that reason is the actions our character takes in pursuit of their goal.

If the grumpy alien from three chapters ago appears out of nowhere to haul our protagonist out of a fight, it feels random and predetermined. If the protagonist worked hard to win that alien over when he met her (and especially if he takes a risk to open a door, send a signal, or call for help now) then the problem is fixed—now she’s there for a reason, and it’s because of what the protagonist did.

What if the outcome changes nothing? Can that work?

Not really. There’s always going to be that one scene where it makes sense, but in 99% of cases, when nothing changes, the story doesn’t move. And when the story doesn’t move, the reader is stuck.

Trust your own abilities. What if the outcome did change something? Let the character win in chapter 3 and grab the magical weapon that will kill the bad guy forever. What would happen then? Maybe the magical weapon is cursed, or it draws an enormous counterattack that kills all of the protagonist’s friends. Or let them fail in the worst possible way and ask: What would they do now?

Let things change, then look for ways to keep the story going. You’ll find them.

And it will probably be more awesome than whatever you had planned before.

How do I stop my scenes feeling predetermined, flat, or inevitable?

This is another place that planners struggle. The story feels predetermined because we know how things will turn out. So, we have to be vigilant, and rely on that felt sense of when the story feels flat.

Try to genuinely consider multiple outcomes. What if they failed here instead? What would they do next? What unexpected thing might happen in this moment?

Sometimes we must put our outline away, grit our teeth, and throw a massive spanner in the works. Something we hadn’t planned to keep things fresh.

Something I’ve missed? Drop your own questions in the comments below, and I’ll answer them before the end of the series!

Conduct Your Own Experiments

Want to do a quick temperature check on the outcome of your own scenes? You can try this!

Find the resolution of a scene, chapter, or important section of your WIP.

• Does the protagonist/point of view character achieve the thing they were fighting for? Does it fit one of the five possible outcomes?

  • They succeed.

  • They get what they want, but it’s awful.

  • They fail and lose the thing forever.

  • They fail and can try again.

  • They fail, but find something different or unexpected that helps in a new way.

• Is this outcome earned? Does it happen because of the character’s own actions as they pursue their goal, or does it arise at random?

• Is it clear? Will the reader automatically understand if the character is “winning” in their attempts to reach their goal, or if this has set them back?

Addressing any problems that come up will likely give the scene and immediate boost!

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

We’ve come a long way in exploring the anatomy of a scene: our character has something they want in this moment, has done something about it, and encountered an obstacle or problem that gets in their way.

This is where we enter the engine room of a scene: where they try to overcome the obstacles with mixed results and more setbacks landing in their way.

If there’s one technique I teach my developmental editing clients, it’s this:

The “yes, but”/“no, and” approach, and its role in the try/fail/try again parts of our story.

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Setbacks and Complications—What is “Yes, But”/“No, And”?

Here’s the thing to remember: our character’s goal isn’t just one thing. A big part of writing a novel is taking the protagonist’s goal and breaking it down into ever smaller chunks.

We talked about this right at the start of the series—how to turn one big goal into a whole host of temporary scene goals. But the truth goes even deeper than that. Because a scene is ultimately just a collection of small, moment-by-moment actions as the One Big Thing the character wants dissolves into hundreds of teeny tiny questions:

• Can they convince this heavily armed droid they mean it no harm?

• Can they dodge its opening shot?

• Can they get around the corner before it shoots again?

Any one of these moments might be answered in a simple and straightforward way:

Yes, they duck under the droid’s opening shot.

No, the character fails to get around the corner in time.

But these answers a flat. A full stop at the end of a sentence. They don’t take us anywhere new, or convince the reader to keep going.

This is where the magic of “yes, but”/“no, and” really shines. Suddenly, we have something more like:

Yes, they duck under the droid’s opening shot, but the effort overbalances them. They slip and stumble.

Or:

No, they don’t get around the corner in time. The character is shot in the leg and when they finally get clear, they run straight into the droid’s backup.

Notice how now, the reader is never off the hook?

Every success or failure contains the seed of some new problem, and that’s what keeps them reading. Because it means they’re asking the most vital question in story:

What’s going to happen next?

Unstable Compounds and Unexpected Turns

We don’t need to slavishly follow this technique. It should never become a cage or make our writing lifeless and rote. All we need to do is keep one eye on the ball—introducing some new issue or problem for every one we resolve.

Almost all great modern speculative fiction stories are built on these foundations. If we’re going to keep our readers invested, they have to keep asking, “what’s going to happen now?” until it’s 2AM and they’re questioning their life choices.

Which, of course, is exactly what we want.

The repeating cycles of try/fail/try again are also key to how we control the pace of our story. The bigger the “buts” and especially the more the character fails (then gets hit with an additional “and”), the more everything speeds up. The more we choose quiet, small-stakes setbacks, the slower things move while still making forward progress.

As with our obstacles, it’s often best to start small.

Working Example: Pity Poor Evelyn

We aren’t done with Evelyn yet, our hypothetical knight-in-training. There are definitely still some ways we can make her life much worse.

That’s bad news for her, but great news for the story.

Having discovered that her father was corrupted—running a group of bandits that massacred innocent civilians during his time as a knight—Evelyn returns to one of her father’s old friends, Serafine. Her scene goal is to convince the woman to help take the bandits down for good. Unfortunately, Serafine is old, jaded, and definitely not inclined to help. She’s been burned too many times.

The scene that follows might play out a little bit like this:

Question: Can Evelyn appeal to Serafine’s sense of justice and convince her to help that way?

Answer: No. Serafine scoffs at her. Justice is for children and fools. She tells Evelyn to stop bothering her and walks away.

Q: Evelyn follows, offering to protect Serafine’s identity. Will she at least give her the location for the bandits’ hideout?

A: Serafine shoves Evelyn down an alleyway and pins her to a wall. It seems like she’s considering it (a soft “yes”), but she’s clearly scared. Doesn’t Evelyn know the bandits have ears everywhere? Is she trying to get them both killed?

Q: Evelyn pushes her advantage. If Serafine wants her to shut up, she should just tell her what she wants to know. Is it enough to convince Serafine?

A: No, Serafine doesn’t want to take that risk and if Evelyn wants to change her mind, she’ll have to give Serafine enough money to disappear. Money that Evelyn has been saving up to help her sick brother.

Q: Reluctantly, Evelyn hands over the money. Will Serafine help now?

A: Yes, she reveals the location of the hideout, then disappears with all of Evelyn’s coin. But when Evelyn goes home, her brother’s condition has worsened. And now she has no way to help him.

This is a useful example of how a slightly quieter scene is still driven by the same engine as our dragon fights and zombie attacks. We start relatively small, and with the most obvious way forward (Evelyn being a Person of Integrity and appealing to Serafine’s better nature), then slowly build things from there—dialling up the intensity as we go.

In this case, we end with a painful, permanent cost that takes something vital from our protagonist and applies pressure to the whole core of her being.

How tightly does she cling onto her morals and integrity? If she has to steal her brother’s medicine, will she do it? Will she be slowly corrupted, just as her father was?

One thing is certain: the reader will keep going to find out.

And the more of our scenes are propelled by this sort of momentum, the more thoroughly we’ll have them in our grip.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

How many try/fail cycles should a scene have? Is there a maximum or minimum?

There are no hard rules. It depends on the length of your scene. Remember that longer scenes create a “dragging” effect—slowing the story down—while shorter ones build intensity and encourage faster reading.

To create the satisfying rise and fall of a story (where action builds to a crescendo, followed by a lull, before building things up again) we need to use both.

How long does each cycle need to be? Can a try/fail cycle be just one sentence?

It can definitely be one sentence! A missed punch, a grabbed arm, done.

They can also be as long as they need to be, although again, the more one cycle of “yes, but” or “no, and” stretches out, the more of a lagging effect it’ll have.

Sometimes, we want to use that intentionally to create space. Just make sure you’re not bringing everything to a dead stop.

What if my character succeeds (or fails) on the first try? Is that always bad?

There is no “always” in writing. Sometimes a character succeeds, gets what they want, and surprise! It’s actually awful. Sometimes they fail immediately and we use that to twist the story in a surprising direction.

But mostly, we want to temper each success with a “but” and add an additional “and” to every failure—keeping the reader on the hook, and pushing them onward.

How do you avoid making the cycles repetitive or predictable?

Firstly, trust your own inner sense of when this is happening. If it starts to feel repetitive, then it probably is.

When that happens, return to the rich source material you have for your story: the sum total of who your character is, their skills and flaws, goals and obligations, the obstacles and problems they’re facing. The people and things they care about. The things they’re scared of.

In the example scene above, pulling Evelyn’s sick brother back in at the end helps to keep things interesting. Weaving your most important elements back in, over and over again, will help you develop the story in new and interesting ways.

Have questions I haven’t answered? Drop them in the comments below and let’s fix that.

Conduct Your Own Experiments

If you want to experiment with this technique yourself, find a section of struggle in your current manuscript—ideally, a scene where the protagonist (or point of view character) wants something, and a problem’s in their way.

Then ask yourself:

• Does the character overcome this issue immediately? Alternatively, are they defeated right away, without any struggle? Or does the scene take multiple tries and attempts?

• If they succeeded or failed immediately, could we add a “but” or an “and” to make things more interesting?

• Is the character constantly winning every micro-struggle they encounter? If so, try hitting them with a “no, and.” How does this failure set them back, or put them in danger? And what would they do about it?

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

In the same way a fire needs oxygen, fuel, and heat, speculative fiction novels have three things they need to catch light:

1. An interesting character who provides the air a story needs to breathe.

2. A powerful goal, creating the fuel to sustain things.

3. And an obstacle that’s getting in their way. The spark that sets everything aflame.

Our protagonist is important, and their goal even more so. But without the life-giving crackle of obstacles, it’s all just a pile of wood sitting out in the open air. Inert.

To bring it roaring into life, things need to go horribly wrong.

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What Conflict Is, and What It Isn’t

Conflict suffers from the same misconceptions as action.

Some writers think that it’s all gun battles and car chases. But it’s much simpler (and much more useful) than that:

Conflict = Goal + Obstacle

The problems that get in the way of our protagonist’s goal can be anything: the wrong ingredient for a recipe, something left behind while moving house, navigating bad blood with their best friend. Sometimes, it’s two characters who both want different things. Or who want the same thing but in different ways. Most intoxicating of all: obstacles also happen when the character’s past mistakes come back to haunt them.

The best problems aren’t just a locked door. They’re a guard that must be bribed or convinced.

They happen when the character must sacrifice something they love to get what they want.

And they’re there when the protagonist reaches some goal, only to get more than they bargained for.

In short: if your character takes action, and something gets in the way? You’ve found an obstacle. And one of the things your scenes need to shine.

The Trouble with Internal Obstacles

I see a lot of stories when the thing getting in the character’s way is themselves.

They need to take action, but they’re scared. They doubt themselves. They’re faced with a moral dilemma.

The problem is that speculative fiction, more than almost any other genre, lives and breathes through what actually happens. It exists to make the intangible into something physically real. So, if we want the reader to feel the tension (and keep frantically turning the pages) we often need to do one of two things:

1. Dramatise the internal obstacle, transforming it into an external one.

2. Weave the internal struggle around an external one, and let those outer obstacles keep everything moving.

Dramatising: making the intangible tangible

Remember Evelyn? Our would-be knight from the first post who discovers that her dead father was actually a corrupt monster? She can be our victim today.

While she’s investigating her father’s past, perhaps she happens upon the site of a decades-old massacre: old bones and broken weapons, half buried by earth and fallen leaves. She knows her father was responsible for those deaths, but she doesn’t want to admit it.

With a purely internal obstacle, we might have several chapters where she thinks about it, tries to find alternative explanations or excuse his actions...and nothing really happens. She’s stuck in her own way, and the reader is yelling at her to get over it. Desperate for the story to move on.

We can do better than that.

What if, the night after discovering the massacre, she wakes up in the pitch dark to see the howling ghost of one of her father’s victims. Silent and static, like a photograph. Its face twisted in a ghastly mask of betrayal. Now, we have a juicy external obstacle we can use against her.

She goes back to her training, an important scene where she must prove herself capable to her sword master after skipping out the day before. But as she goes to deliver the final strike, she sees that phosphorescent ghost in front of her, and everything goes wrong. She fails and gets kicked back down to basic training.

Now, her reluctance becomes something tangible. And those chapters where she flopped around, complaining about things and not going anywhere? They’ve become something much more visceral and interesting.

Mixing external and internal struggles

The other option is to weave internal struggles through external obstacles to help keep tension in the story.

So, maybe there’s no pointing ghost of a past murder victim. Perhaps we let that struggle stay entirely internal, and Evelyn goes back to her training. But she’s distracted, and we dial up the external challenge enough to make her suffer. Instead of a simple training test, she’s sent out with a few other knights-in-training to catch some petty smugglers.

Only she is still thinking about that massacre. About her father. She makes a mistake and doesn’t see one of the smugglers coming with a knife. One of her friends gets hurt.

Again, we avoid the scenes where she sits around just thinking about it. Instead, we force her to deal with these internal struggles alongside the external plot. Both feed into each other. And in either case, things keep happening.

The reader stays invested.

And we, the writer, smile quietly behind the scenes.

Then we ruin our character’s day even more.

Writing in Practice: The Art of Making Things Worse

One of the most important questions we can ask while we’re writing is:

What’s the worst possible thing that could happen at this point? And what if it actually happened?

As writers, we tend to keep our powder dry—holding things back for later or protecting our characters. Making the reader wait. Instead, ask yourself: What if this happened right now? What would happen next?

Plotters and planners tend to fall particularly foul of this issue. Because we know where the story is going, we subtly smooth the road to help our characters get there. If there’s a locked door, then one of our characters suddenly has a lockpicking skill. If they need a piece of information, then their friend or love interest already knows it. Or maybe it’s sitting right there, waiting in the first book that they open.

But to hold the reader’s attention, things need to feel unexpected.

To achieve that, we must start looking for problems instead of solutions. Let the character try the thing and fail. Increase the number of seemingly impossible problems standing in their way and ask: How would they try to deal with this?

A writer’s job is to be the arsonist of everything we know and love.

For the sake of our characters and their story, we must learn to set everything aflame.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

Can there be multiple obstacles in one scene? If so, how do I manage them?

There absolutely can and often should be many different obstacles and problems! There’s just one condition: make sure they’re resolved one at a time, instead of throwing them all in together.

The protagonist escapes from their cell and runs into a guard. They almost get away, then stumble on some stairs and twist their ankle. The door at the end of the hallway is locked.

If we want our scenes to stay focused (and we absolutely want our scenes to stay focused!) let the character deal with one issue, succeed or fail, then add something else.

Hitting them with everything at once will likely just cause confusion, jumble the narrative, and mean the reader gets lost.

How do I stop the obstacles and problems from becoming repetitive?

Escalate. Don’t be afraid to make things worse, then make them worse again.

Often, it works best when we start with something small and build from there: the door is locked, so the character tries to pick it. The pick snaps off in the lock, and now the mechanism is jammed. Someone is coming.

Start with one small problem, then add more. Add bigger problems. Let things go wrong.

Your readers (and editors!) will thank you for it.

How do I know if an obstacle is strong enough to create tension?

Is it standing between the character and their goal?

Is it enough of an obstacle that they can’t overcome it easily?

Does it force them to try things, improvise, and work to try and figure out a way forward?

If so, it’s enough!

What if there are no obvious obstacles in a scene? Can it still work?

Sometimes, but very rarely.

We do have breathing points during a novel—lulls in the action where the reader gets to absorb what’s just happened and process things. Usually, they come immediately after some Big and Dramatic Plot Point™

But we only get a very small number of these over the course of a novel. Perhaps just two or three, almost certainly less than half a dozen.

The more of these lulls we have (and especially when they follow one after another) the more the story comes to a halt.

In many cases, a minor problem or low-stakes issue will keep things ticking over. Remember, not all obstacles are sword fights and car drifting. A person or object that isn’t where it’s meant to be, an unexpected piece of information, or a friend falling sick can all help inject tension into an otherwise lifeless scene. Just make sure it’s at least partially in the way of your character’s goal.

Something I haven’t covered? Leave your own questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Conduct Your Own Experiments

If you want to explore conflict and obstacles further, here’s something to try:

Identify a problem or roadblock in one of your scenes.

• Is it external, or purely internal resistance?

• Does it present a significant obstacle—something that forces your character to adapt, take a risk, or try something new?

• What is at stake here? What good thing will they get if they succeed? Or what bad thing will happen if they fail?

If you’re missing sufficient external conflict, ask yourself: what’s one concrete thing that could get in the character’s way here? How can I make their life unpleasant in some small (or not so small) way?

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

May Writers’ Room Workshop: Recording, Notes & Resources

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The single greatest way that speculative fiction authors can strengthen their novels is this:

Make sure your scenes follow the intoxicating rhythm your readers expect, flowing through the unbreakable chain of goal → action → obstacle → try/fail/try again → outcome → complication → new goal.

This is what keeps everything moving forward, and gives your stories a sense of identity and purpose.

Our characters either step onto the page with a goal (or at least have the makings of one), and it’s broken down into fragments that push the story through every single scene. That sort of scene structure is what makes a story come alive, and what keeps your readers invested.

But a goal alone isn’t enough. It’s a noun, and if it’s going to become the driving force of our novel, we need a verb.

The character’s goal has to become an action.

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Keeping Your Hands on the Wheel—What Action Is, and What It’s Not

Action is what separates a story from description.

It’s the difference between an active protagonist and a passive lump that sits at the centre of the story and thinks about their problems.

Writers often get stuck here, because they think action is just the blockbuster stuff: explosions and fighting, foot chases and ticking time bombs. And those are the high points of tension—the action at its most actiony. But that’s not all action is.

Action is anything the character does in pursuit of their goal.

That’s it.

So, sure, it’s winning a fight or diffusing a bomb (or it can be). But it might also be:

• baking a cake

• finding a missing key

• convincing a reluctant friend to help

• climbing a wall

• following leads

• researching an important detail

• reading a letter

Or any one of about a hundred thousand other things.

The goal is what the character wants, fine. But what do they actually do about it?

That’s what will set things in motion, and the starting place for every chapter. Too often, the scenes I work on as a developmental editor end up rooted in exposition, explanation, thinking, reflecting, or wandering around. And those scenes aren’t really scenes at all. They only become a scene when our character does something.

That’s what gives everything else its shape.

And it’s also how we show the readers who our protagonist actually is.

You Are the Route You Take

When it comes to our main character’s personality, new writers often tell far too much and show us far too little. They don’t understand that writing this way turns the character into a distraction from the story. Someone we leave the action to hear about, rather than the force that drives everything forward.

Action is how we adjust that balance. It’s the tool we use to show the reader who the protagonist is: their strengths and weaknesses, skills and flaws, what they value, and how their desires and traumas affect them.

Let’s return to Evelyn—our hypothetical protagonist from last time, who’s trying to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a knight. A character like that might have a mixture of skills and personality traits: swordsmanship, personal integrity, naivety, a deep inadequacy and desire to prove herself. If Evelyn’s goal is the compass of each scene, then the action is the route she follows to get there.

Say she’s taking her entrance exam for the order. How does she act during that exam? If there’s a chance to cheat, will she take it? Her integrity says no. What if the other person does cheat and Evelyn loses out? Her naivety might make her go to the instructor and explain the truth, shattering her illusions when that instructor is just as rotten as the cheater.

Evelyn’s skill with a sword might open a path to get back in when the instructor throws her out.

Her desire to prove herself means that she keeps fighting.

Suddenly, we have a whole host of smaller scenes and temporary goals, and Evelyn is no longer passively sitting in the story, waiting for something to happen—she’s pushing through every moment, showing the reader who she is through what she does.

Stalled Engines and Wrong Turns—The Vital Importance of Failure

As writers, we so often tie ourselves in knots: explaining why our character can’t do something, or can’t act a certain way. This usually happens because we have certain ideas about how the story will play out, or because we need it to play out a certain way for plot-related reasons. Sometimes, it happens because we’re scared (or hesitant) to do horrible things to our characters.

Whatever the case, it leaves us with sentences like:

She needed to get across the moor, but the blizzard showed no signs of letting up. There was no way. She’d freeze to death long before she reached the other side.

This drains a little more momentum out of the story. Our protagonist loses a little more agency, and everything drags to a halt. Things start to feel inevitable—like the character can only do whatever the story wants them to do, and everything will turn out the same way regardless.

As the writer, we know that the character can’t go across the moor. If they do, they won’t be here when an Important Plot Point™ arrives. But the character doesn’t know that, and neither does the reader. Throwing a blizzard in the way is like throwing up a wall: railroading the story into where we need it to go.

There’s no quicker way to lose our readers, and the solution is as simple as it is beautiful:

Have them do the thing. Make them fail.

Let the character try to cross the moor. She puts on all her warmest clothes and thickest coat, makes everything ready, and starts walking. First, the cold gets through her inadequate clothing. Then, she gets lost. Finally, she trips and falls, gashing open her arm and tearing her best winter coat. She turns back, barely makes it home alive. And when the Important Plot Point™ shows up, she’s shivering, bleeding, still trying to get warm again.

Because we allowed the character to take action, the tension positively sings off the page.

Our readers cannot get enough of it.

Action vs Activity

As always, your protagonist’s goal is the north star you need to keep everything on track.

Without it, there’s nothing on the line. Packing a bag has no dramatic tension. But if the character’s goal is taking them far away from home, and they can only bring a few things they might need? That has power.

Wandering a city with no destination lets the story go slack. Having the character searching that same city for something, choosing which direction to take, has life.

Their goal is their compass. Let them clutch it tightly, and make them take one step, and then another.

Before you even know it, you’ll have a story.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

Does the action in a scene have to be physical? Can it be a decision? A conversation? Thinking about something?

It has to be something they do. A conversation can definitely fit the bill. Thinking or making decisions? Not so much.

We want to weave those things around the action. What if the character doesn’t have time to think or decide? What if something happens first, and they have to figure things out while also doing something? That’s what keeps things moving.

Can inaction be a form of action? What if my character chooses not to speak, or can’t act because they’re overwhelmed?

It can work. But we need to be very careful. If we aren’t, the character becomes passive and sits in the middle of the scene, doing nothing. The story stagnates. The reader wanders off to do something else.

The best way to make action from inaction is to make inaction the character’s goal, and then build tension and conflict around it. We’ll be digging into this more in the next post, but here’s an example of how it might work:

Cipher has been through a lot and he’s had enough. He locks himself in his quarters. The ship’s engineer buzzes him—there’s some unusual readings, can he come and check them out? Cipher resists. Increasingly frantic sounds come from the other side of the door. He ignores those too, but now he’s just getting more and more restless. He gets in the shower. Turns it up hot. The whole ship lurches and now alarms are going off everywhere.

His inaction becomes action because we challenged it at every turn—making it more and more difficult for him to do nothing.

How do I handle action in a scene where my character is imprisoned, trapped, or restrained?

Exactly the same way we handled the character trying to cross the snow-covered moor: let them try to get away. If the story needs them to say captive, then they fail. Have them try something else. Make them fail again. Have their attempts to escape make something tangibly worse.

The character doesn’t have to succeed to move the story forward. They just have to think that they can.

What if the action that’s needed uses a skill my character doesn’t have?

Then let them fail! Failure is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our story. It’s what drives the reader’s increasingly breathless desire to know what will happen next.

Having a character try to take action, fail, and making everything worse is far more compelling than finding some way to give them the exact skill they need to solve the problem.

How do I stop the action from feeling repetitive?

Vary it. Remember that action isn’t just chases and fight scenes. It can be careful negotiation, sneaking around, picking a lock, casually tricking someone into revealing a piece of information, crossing dangerous terrain, getting somewhere without being discovered...

Anything and everything they can do to get them closer to their goal.

Have more questions about action in your scenes? Drop them in the comments below, and I’ll answer them at the end of this series!

Conduct Your Own Experiments

If you want to check the action in your own stories, you can try this!

Choose a scene from your most recent WIP and ask:

• What does the character want in this moment?

• What do they actually do in this scene to get that thing?

• Is something standing in their way?

If the character is thinking, reflecting, exploring, or having something explained to them—without really doing anything in pursuit of their goal—you have a place to start revising.

Consider how this character specifically would act. How would they deal with their problems? Is there a way that would actively show the reader who they are and what they value?

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

You don’t need to spend thousands to start editing your novel. You just need to know where most stories go wrong.

After six years as a developmental editor, more than 95% of the books I work on suffer from the same issue.

This series is about fixing it.

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Driving Without a Destination

I’ve edited over fifty novels at this point, and almost all of them struggle in the same ways:

• The protagonist(s) doesn’t have a clear goal.

• They have a goal, but don’t do enough to reach it.

• The author fails to structure effective conflict around the character’s attempts to reach that goal.

Goals are the guiding light in speculative fiction books. They’re what gives the novel a sense of identity, and what creates the forward momentum that keeps our readers glued to the page.

They’re also the foundation of every single scene—the building blocks of our narrative.

Pick up any fantasy or science fiction novel from the last ten years, and you’ll see the same cycle play out over and over again throughout the story:

1. The character wants something. A temporary goal that’s a step on the path to their goal for the whole novel.

2. They take some kind of action towards that goal.

3. An obstacle or problem arises to get in their way.

4. The character tries, fails, and tries again to overcome those problems until we reach...

5. The outcome, where they either achieve their temporary goal, or fail to reach it.

6. Either way, a complication comes up and creates a different problem.

7. This complication leads to the character’s new goal for the next part of the story.

It’s not meant to be rigid and dogmatic. It’s a roadmap—a rhythm or refrain that echoes in the background from the very first page to the last.

And it’s where almost all my writers get into trouble.

The results are painful to say the least, because when this goes wrong, it undermines the whole foundations of a story—leading to scrapped drafts and countless rewrites.

If you want to avoid this (and give your book the best possible chance to thrive), the best way is to learn the base rhythm of scene structure until it’s in your bones.

In this new Scene Alchemy series, I’ll be helping you do just that. And it all begins back where we started: with your main character’s goal.

Your Story’s Guiding Light

A great character goal is almost always...

• one single thing

• concrete, tangible, and clearly defined

• something the character wants badly (and would sacrifice anything to get)

• something that arises internally—that is, something they want for themselves

• the single thing they’re focused on in every scene

• something they either achieve by the end, or lose forever

All too often, writers fall at this first hurdle. Their protagonist is caught between two different goals, or their goal is vague and intangible—a woolly “deal with the situation” instead of the more concrete “imprison the evil mage that’s corrupting the kingdom.” The character might not really care about their goal, gets easily distracted, or it might not even be something they want in the first place: handed down to them by a king, captain, or diplomat.

It might be a preference more than a burning desire, or something they want but aren’t actively fighting for.

And whenever we go down any of these paths, we’re causing fundamental problems for our novel. Problems that cascade down through every level of our story, poisoning each scene along the way.

That’s why it’s the number one thing I look for when I open a client’s novel:

Does the protagonist have a single, concrete, powerful goal?

Are they constantly pushing towards it?

If so, the writer has already won half of the battle and given themselves (and their story) the best possible chance of success.

Following the Path

Once we have that north star grasped firmly in our hands, the next step is to start walking.

A goal that floats above the novel is no use at all. If it’s going to drive the book (and keep our readers desperate for more) then we need to put it to work. That process begins with taking our character’s novel goal and breaking it down into a number of different scene/temporary goals.

Working example: Evelyn

Let’s say our protagonist is an aspiring knight named Evelyn, who wants to join the same order her father belonged to, because she’s desperate to measure up to his legacy. Along the way, she finds out that her dad wasn’t the man she thought he was. He was corrupt, taking bribes, and the leader of a gang of bandits that’s still plaguing the kingdom after his death.

We might take her goal of “become a great knight like my father” and break it down into smaller chunks, like this:

1. Pass the entrance exam and get into my father’s knightly order.

2. Earn my first commission and knight’s sword.

3. Investigate the corruption uncovered during my first commission.

4. Learn more about my father’s involvement with it.

5. Confront my father’s friends about his link to the bandits.

6. Destroy the bandit gang he founded and become the knight my father should have been.

Each one of these can then be broken down further, until we have a bunch of smaller goals—one for each individual scene. Let’s take “learn more about my father’s involvement with the corruption” as our example. That might lead to scene goals like:

• Track down my father’s best friend.

• Convince her to share what she knows.

• Follow her, try to find out what she’s hiding.

• Spy on the shadowy figures she’s meeting with.

All of a sudden, our goal isn’t just some vague desire. It’s nailed into the underlying structure of every moment. More than that, we’ve made it specific and given it a sense of progress—Evelyn isn’t caught in a novel-length loop of: try to become a knight, fail, try to become a knight again, fail again, etc etc until the reader falls asleep.

Instead, each step along the way (large or small) comes with its own challenges. It’s become a chain of smaller, equally concrete goals she’s fighting for throughout the book.

And that’s what makes a story shine.

A Quick Word on Stakes

The final piece of our goal-shaped puzzle is stakes, a confusing and often-misunderstood part of writing that can be summed up really simply as: “Why is it so important this character succeeds at their goal? What terrible thing will happen if they fail?”

Again, the clearer and more concrete the better, but stakes can often show the powerful, internal forces at work inside our characters, too.

With Evelyn, her goal is ultimately about integrity, and about finding her place in the world. If she fails to join her father’s order, then who is she really? What will she do with her life? To make the stakes even more clear, perhaps her little brother is sick, and Evelyn needs this job to help get the medicine he needs. Suddenly, passing that entrance exam isn’t just something she’d like—there’s an existential dread of what will happen to her brother (and to Evelyn herself) if she fails.

That’s the final part of the alchemical potion that transmutes a series of events into a story. When we combine:

• a powerful and concrete character goal

• multiple steps and smaller goals to make it happen

• a clear (and terrible) cost of failure

At last, we have pure storytelling rocket fuel.

Asking the Alchemist—Questions & Answers

Does the character’s goal have to be stated outright, or can it be implied?

We almost never need to state it outright. It should come alive through everything the character does, what they value, and the actions and decisions they make throughout the book.

Evelyn might tell her sick brother, “The entrance exam for the Rose Order is today” (making her goal clear) and we might see how much she venerates her dead father, through her dialogue and action.

Trust the reader to put the pieces together and feel why it matters so much.

What if the character doesn’t know what they want yet?

Then we (the writer) definitely need to find out! Or rather, we need to make them want something, even if it ends up being the wrong thing.

A character who doesn’t take action, and doesn’t want anything, will sit at the centre of a scene like lead weight—and often drag the whole story down with them.

Can one character have multiple goals?

Yes and no. A character can absolutely have multiple goals, so long as they meet one condition: they come one after the other, and each one leads to the next. You can see that in the example with Evelyn—she moves through multiple sub-goals, but they’re all connected, and each one leads her naturally into the next.

When a character has two or more conflicting goals, we get into trouble. They end up being pulled in two different directions at once, and often, the story goes nowhere.

Remember: your character’s goal should be the strongest force in their life, and if it comes into conflict with anything else, their goal should always win. Maybe it doesn’t win easily. Maybe the choice causes a huge amount of pain and sacrifice. But it should always win.

How do I know if a goal is strong enough to carry a scene?

Is it something the character wants deeply, all the way down into the marrow of their bones? Can you feel that ache when you dig into it? Is it something they will take action towards in this moment?

If yes, then you’re good!

Still unsure about goals, or have questions I haven’t answered? Comment below and I’ll answer them at the end of this series.

Conduct Your Own Experiments

If you want to put this knowledge into practice, here’s where to start.

Pull up a recent scene from your WIP and ask:

1. What does the protagonist (or point of view character) want in this exact moment?

2. What happens if they don’t get it?

3. Do they either achieve this thing or fail to achieve it—either before the end of this chapter/scene, or at least before they start following some new goal?

If you’re not sure about any of these elements, you’ve found a potential place for revisions.

Try answering these questions and rewrite the scene accordingly.

How does it change things?

Does the scene feel stronger and more focused as a result?

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

April Writers’ Room Workshop: Recording, Notes & Horror Stories

Thanks so much to everyone who joined our workshop today.

Izz’s horror short “In Too Deep” gave us a lot to talk about, and the workshop ran a little longer than usual, but it was well worth the extra time!

Short stories (and especially anything under 7.5k) are a really expansive and experim…

Read more

“This writing is trash. It reads like an emo kid’s wet dream.”

I was so proud of that story. But in the space of a few moments, a stranger in a writing group burned it all to dust.

Later, a moderator messaged me privately: “Don’t mind him. He’s just like that.”

But they didn’t say anything to him.

They didn’t stop him from treating others the same way.

And I didn’t share my work for five years after that.

Have you ever shared a story and regretted it immediately? Because you were met with silence, cruelty, or useless feedback? It’s a depressingly common experience, and this writing group wasn’t the first time someone had made me feel worthless. It wasn’t even the first time I’d quit.

It was just the final straw: the moment when I stopped trusting people. Convinced myself that I didn’t need anyone else. That I was better off alone.

But the truth is, I was scared.

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The Plan

That moment taught me lessons I’d carry for years:

First: That writing communities weren’t safe.

Second: That I must be the problem.

Third: That the only way to protect myself was to handle everything alone.

Those beliefs kept me safe for a very long time.

So, when I started the Writers’ Room earlier this year, it wasn’t because I believed in community. I wanted to run a workshop. Provide the same level of developmental editing feedback I give to my private clients, without the hefty price tag.

Craft focused. Professional feedback. No emotional entanglements. That was The Plan.

And then everything went horribly wrong.

What I Didn’t Expect

Slowly, the community built itself despite me.

While I focused on the workshop, people started talking. Checking in. Commiserating over rejections. One of our writers started saying “welcome home” to everyone that joined.

After two months, we were reading The Haunting of Hill House together—and sharing wildly different opinions. One person loved the ambiguity. Another found it frustrating. Neither was wrong. We just all saw different things.

After three months, we had writers from all over the world. Different ages, faiths, genders, backgrounds. I hadn’t made it that way. It just happened. Because the door was open, and everyone felt safe.

That’s when I realised: this wasn’t my workshop any more. It was theirs.

I’d built the Writers’ Room for professional feedback. For the workshop. Because I was following The Plan. But what actually mattered—what kept everyone talking, bringing their messy and unfinished work—was each other.

The community wasn’t a bonus. It was the whole point.

And something inside me started to shift. Because, for the first time, I’d seen a community actually work.

Inside the Writers’ Room

Slowly, the Writers’ Room became what it is now:

A monthly workshop, where writers bring stories they’re not sure about, and feedback acts like a compass—guiding the author exactly where they need to go. Where I give developmental feedback, and the community constantly surprises me with things I hadn’t considered.

Quiet encouragement and permission to explore. Where writers are met with curiosity and care. Small wins are genuinely celebrated. Where everyone is different, and all of us feel a little less alone.

Daily connections that remind me, time and again, that writers are astonishing. Capable of both incredible strength and deep vulnerability.

Creative exchange and inspiration. Helping blocked writers start moving again, and letting confidence build slowly.

And yet...

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

As a developmental editor, I’ve edited dozens of fight scenes. And most of them have the same problem.

On the surface, they have everything: action, danger, high stakes. And yet so many of them feel crowded, confusing, or strangely weightless. Like nothing really matters.

These scenes don’t fail because of the action, but because of how the action is presented.

And that’s taught me something important: if a fight scene feels slow, overwhelming, or strangely dull, it’s usually because of these three things.

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Problem 1: The Play-by-Play

What is it? The writer explains (or lists) every movement and action.

What it looks like:

Fisher stepped left, pivoting on her right foot. She ducked under the guard’s swing, then brought her elbow up and drove it into his throat. He staggered back. She raised her pistol and fired twice.

How it happens: We think the reader needs to know every detail so they can picture it (or immerse themselves in the story).

Why it fails: When we choreograph everything, the reader feels nothing. They end up lost or confused, and spend the whole scene trying to figure things out.

What to do instead: Focus on creating the emotional flow, and let the reader choreograph the details themselves. Individual punches and swings don’t matter. All the reader cares about is the intoxicating mixture of anxiety and doubt. Is the character in danger? Do they make a mistake? Is there a chance to wrestle victory from the jaws of defeat? Let that light the way.

What that looks like:

Fisher moved before she could think. The guard’s swing whistled past her ear and her elbow hit his throat with a wet crunch. Blood and sweat burned in her eyes. Space. She needed space. Her boot slipped on icy cobbles and she fired blind, the first shot blazing wide.

Problem 2: The Balcony Seat

What is it? We pull back into the point of view of an observing character, switch between several different povs, or let narrative distance creep in.

What it looks like:

Caelum watched as Fisher punched the guard to the ground. She began to turn, and Caelum realized she was scanning the area, looking for more enemies. Her eyes locked on something off to his left and Caelum looked towards it. A guard was coming right for him with a drawn knife.

How it happens: As writers, we’re watching the fight from the outside, so it makes sense to narrate it the same way. We switch between different points of view to try and add tension.

Why it fails: Switching povs creates whiplash and confusion. Watching from the outside kills doubt.

What to do instead: Write from the perspective of the character who has something to lose. Show the reader what’s on the line—what terrible thing will happen if they fail? Let the reader feel the blood running down their face.

What that looks like:

The guard crumpled and Fisher twisted, already scanning for the next threat. A flicker of movement above, too close to Caelum. A second man was climbing the fire escape, knife drawn and gleaming in the streetlight. There was no way she’d get there in time. She was already running.

Problem 3: The “No Struggle” Fight

What is it? The character wins every exchange easily, or immediately loses and becomes powerless.

What it looks like:

The guards swarmed Fisher. She tried to fight back, but there were too many. They disarmed her and pinned her arms behind her back. There was nothing more she could do. They dragged her away into the dark.

How it happens: We already know the outcome, so it’s hard to write like we don’t. With characters who win easily, we want them to look competent.

Why it fails: The most important question our readers have is: “What will happen next?” That doubt is where the struggle lives. A fight without doubt is just noise. Either the danger never feels real, or the outcome feels preordained—like they never stood a chance.

What to do instead: Add try/fail cycles using the storytelling rocketfuel of “yes, but”/“no, and”. Create the seed of failure in every success, and a grain of defeat in every victory. Keep the reader guessing.

What that looks like:

Fisher raised her pistol and pulled the trigger. Nothing. Jammed. And now she couldn’t avoid the shock baton to her ribs. She folded, lashing out with one boot and kicking the guard’s legs out from under him. The world smelled like white static and burned skin. She didn’t even notice the second man until his arm was around her throat.

Field Test: Fix Your Fight Scene in 10 Minutes

Want to see if your fight scenes could be stronger? Try this:

☐ Set a timer for 10 minutes

☐ Pick a fight scene from one of your stories

☐ Highlight every physical movement (punches, steps, turns, grabs)

☐ Try cutting them by 30%

☐ Rewrite so you’re inside a single pov—the character taking most of the action

☐ Remove any filter words and clarify the prose

☐ Add one “yes, but” and one “no, and” (learn how here)

☐ Reread the scene. How has it changed? Which parts are stronger now?

Here’s What Really Matters

A fight scene isn’t about who hits who.

It’s about anticipation, doubt, and the fear of what will happen if they lose.

Don’t be scared to let your hero lose. Make whatever they’re fighting for your “north star.” Everything else will follow.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Stories are a sanctuary to those who need it most.

For many of us, reading was our first escape from a cruel and hostile world. Later, we started writing, just so we could build our own sanctuaries from words.

If it hadn’t been for the endless volumes of ghost stories I devoured in the corner of my school library, I don’t know if I’d be here. But this path into writing comes with a dreadful cost.

It meant that all of my early stories had the same fatal, unsolvable flaw at their heart.

Solving that (and actually connecting with my readers) is one of the most painful and challenging things I’ve ever had to do. I learned a lot of things the hard way, and now that I edit stories for a living, I get to help other writers follow the same path I hacked through the weeds.

That’s what we’ll be doing today, and while this post won’t be useful to everyone, if you started writing to escape from your life (or even yourself) and kept going so you could help others who felt the same way, this is for you.

Here are all the things I wish someone had told me when I was wounded, lost, and clinging onto writing with everything I had.

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The Stories We Most Need to Write Aren’t the Ones That Reach Others

My early stories all played out the same way: an endless loop of hurt-comfort, where terrible things happened to the main character, they were powerless to stop it, and the only relief came when someone else stepped in to put them back together.

As a traumatised person, it felt like a warm blanket. Like the most natural thing in the world. Because when real people live through terrible things, we live that same desperate cycle. Our reactions become frozen, passive, or avoidant, and we desperately crave the support of someone who loves us—of anyone who will love us, and give us the care and compassion we’ve been starved of.

But here’s the heartbreaking truth about those stories: they make for terrible reading.

To create meaning (and ultimately, stories only exist to make meaning), readers need the main character to have agency. The protagonist doesn’t need to be the most powerful person in the room, but their actions need to matter.

The main character has to drive every moment forward with the ferocity of their goal. It’s the only thing that creates the vital, life-giving tension we need. It drives the whole engine of story, and when our protagonist is passive and powerless, it brings everything to a dead halt.

To make things even worse, every time a character cries, rages, or vents their emotions, we let a little more air out of the balloon—allowing more and more tension to vanish away. Most of the time, stories only come alive when emotions are expressed through action. Often while the character is fighting not to speak them out loud.

My stories were the exact opposite of this. They were rooted in passivity, venting pain and raw emotion, fixated on some saviour character who was there to give comfort. It was like plunging a knife into the balloon of the story: all the tension poured out immediately.

I was asking readers to simply witness suffering, and that sort of prolonged powerlessness can become overwhelming for our audience. Because when nothing the character does matters, and horrible things keep happening, it drains the story of meaning. Worst of all, it feels hopeless. And if we’re hoping to reach wounded readers (and offer a helping hand) then we’re doomed to fail from the start.

Because those people are reading to get away from those feelings.

There’s Nothing Wrong with You, Or Your Stories

It took me a long time to understand my writing could never reach others, and it hurt.

Accepting that my stories weren’t working was traumatic in itself. Like being told that my writing was wrong, that I was wrong, and the things I needed most were shameful and bad.

For someone who felt like I didn’t have a right to exist in the first place (let alone be myself), it was devastating.

The kind of agency I was being asked to write—where characters know what they want, take action, and persist no matter what—was completely alien to me. I had no agency or control over my own life. I’d only survived by collapsing, making myself small, and giving up. So of course I wrote characters who functioned the same way.

It was a while before I pulled myself out of that mire, but there was nothing wrong with the stories I was writing back then.

I just hadn’t decided who they were for.

Three Paths Diverge in the Forest, and You Must Choose Your Way

If we’ve been wounded in the past, or we want to write wounded characters, we have to start by deciding what we want.

• Are we writing for others?

• For people who are wounded like us?

• Or just for ourselves?

While none of these choices are wrong, they all head in separate directions and require different skills.

The First Path: Writing for Yourself

There is something sacred about stories where a character suffers, feels powerless, and is rescued by someone else.

Writing these hurt-comfort stories is beyond validating. It’s personal survival work.

They help us to regulate our nervous system—creating (maybe for the first time) a feeling of safety. These stories exist to make us feel held. So we can be loved and nurtured in the way we always deserved.

Stories like that need to be written. They exist not to reach others, but to save the life of the writer, and there are few things more powerful than that.

So, if you feel the need to write these stories, follow that call. They have vital medicine to give. And when they’re finished, hold them close to your heart. If you have a therapist, or a trusted person who cares about you, then share these stories with them if you’d like. It can help them to understand you, and help you to feel seen.

Just don’t pressure these stories to be something they’re not. Don’t force them to change to meet the expectations of others. Accept that writing stories for an audience requires a different set of skills, and you can learn those skills whenever you’d like.

Write stories for others when you’re not actively drowning, fighting just to keep your head above water.

Or else, never write them at all. Keep your stories as something sacred and private: a map of your own inner psyche and your personal guidebook to healing.

The Second Path: Writing for Others

While writing loops of hurt-comfort can bring relief and healing to the writer, readers require a different approach.

To reach others, we have to create meaning, and in speculative fiction meaning always springs from the same source: the goal of our main character, and their agency in fighting towards it.

The protagonist doesn’t have to be all-powerful. Even bound and gagged in a pitch-black room, a character can have agency—so long as they have something to fight for, and so long as they never give up.

They don’t even need to reach their goal, or win every battle they fight. In fact, it’s often better if they don’t. Failure and setbacks are like the accelerator pedal of our story, adding tension and increasing the pace.

But whatever the case, the reader needs to feel like our protagonist’s actions mean something. That everything only happens because of what that character wants, and the things they do to get it.

The Third Path: Writing for Wounded Readers

If we’re writing for readers who have suffered too, we need to kindle a light in the darkness. And stories where harm is constant, agency lacking, and relief only comes from external caretakers often do the opposite. Unless we’re actively participating in the creation of those stories, they can feel hopeless.

Worse, stories of powerlessness can reinforce the idea that only someone else can save us. That puts the responsibility for healing onto others, and while magic can happen in stories, real-world saviours are few and far between.

Because of that, stories where the wounded protagonist is saved by someone else has two key effects on traumatised people:

1. It leaves them thinking, “Why has no one turned up to save me? It must be because I’m doomed. Or because there’s something wrong with me.”

2. It pushes them into a lifetime of seeking out love at all costs, opening the door to co-dependence and domestic abuse.

How do I know this? It’s because I was that traumatised reader. I spent decades lost and afraid, in brutal and abusive relationships, waiting for a saviour who never came for me.

To avoid doing this kind of harm, we need to witness and validate the pain of the wounded, while also throwing down a rescue line of agency to help them pull themselves out.

After years of trying, failing, and trying again, here’s how I’d do that.

Externalise the fight

All stories (and speculative fiction especially) thrive by transforming inner obstacles into external ones. As writers, this presents us with a whole host of glorious opportunities.

For example, instead of returning repeatedly to memories of a character’s violent alcoholic father, what if:

• The father, or someone who fulfils the same role, comes into the story’s present moment with an agenda of their own?

• The protagonist is tormented by a demon, ghost, or other supernatural creature that has many of the same behaviours, and hits the protagonist’s triggers in the same way?

• We use the character’s traumatic reactions to create obstacles that actively get in the way of their goal?

By turning intangible forces into tangible or physical threats, we make the struggle more real.

And by having the character continue to fight towards their goal at every turn, we add vital tension and forward momentum.

Show imperfect agency

More than any other type of character, a traumatised protagonist’s goal must be infused with deep personal meaning.

It’s their light in the darkness: the one thing that’s worth fighting for, even when the world is unbearable. And even when things keep getting worse.

To make sure they have agency, the character needs a powerful, personal goal. After that, it doesn’t matter if they win or lose, so long as we make sure that:

1. Their goal is everything.

2. They never, ever give up.

Allow failure without collapse

It’s not that wounded characters can never cry or fall apart. But every time there’s a big release of emotion, it vents all the tension out of our story. And most of the time, that’s the opposite of what we want.

Bottling feelings up, trying to ignore them, then letting those emotions burst out sideways (through what the character does and the bad decisions they make) can be an important technique in achieving that, but it isn’t the whole picture.

Almost all traumatised people have a variety of coping mechanisms. And these might be constructive and helpful, or unhealthy and even destructive.

At the start of the story, the character might rely on their healthy strategies to deal with any problems. They might go for a run, use a mantra, or spend time in nature. But as the tension mounts and things get worse, those techniques can start to fail. That’s when we show the character spiralling into progressively more unhealthy coping mechanisms: relapsing into drug or alcohol addiction, disassociating, isolating themselves, or exploding in fits of rage.

If we want to create healing and resilience, we can even show them pulling themselves out of that nosedive, returning to their healthier strategies, and starting again.

When done right, this is an effective way of showing psychological stress while still building vital tension and keeping the character fixed on their goal.

Remove external salvation

This is the one that hurts.

But while our characters can find deep meaning, solace, and companionship in others, we cannot allow those other characters to be their constant safety net, providing unconditional comfort whenever the protagonist needs it.

The painful truth is that trauma causes profound and long-lasting difficulties in relationships—compromising our very ability to get the love and acceptance we need from other people.

“Hurt people hurt people,” as the saying goes, and traumatised people often act in ways that others find challenging, infuriating, upsetting, and even damaging.

Don’t be afraid to show that: how the wounded character acts in unacceptable ways, lashes out, or clings to others beyond the point of suffocation. The Emotional Wound Thesaurus can be extremely helpful in this work.

Whatever resources you use, remember that the goal is to show the reader three things:

1. Relationships are especially hard for traumatised people, and often cause pain to both sides.

2. Other people cannot save the character, or give the unconditional love they should have (but didn’t) receive when they needed it.

3. Relationships are still worth fighting for despite this. They’re worth enduring the difficulties and pain, worth working at, and finding a way through.

Let meaning shine

What good things exist in the character’s life? What can they salvage out of the awfulness? And what is still worth fighting for?

This can be the protagonist’s goal, their relationships with others, and a wide range of other things. Their values. The places they find beauty and purpose.

Character arcs are a vital piece of this puzzle. How does the character grow and heal, or regress, over the course of the book? And how can we dramatise that change through the obstacles they face, and the challenges they overcome?

How are they rewarded at the end for all their hard work? Or else, how are they punished for taking the wrong path and becoming the very thing they were fighting against?

I cannot recommend K.M. Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs highly enough for more on this!

There Are No Easy Answers

Nothing about trauma is ever straightforward, and that applies to writing about it.

Stories can be healing. But the kind we feel most drawn to write are often not what others want to read.

This forms a dreadful feedback loop with the traumatic experience: where we always feel like we’re doing something wrong, rejected in everything we do. It can trigger deep feelings that we aren’t good enough. That we have to change ourselves to fit the expectations of others.

It’s hard. It’s horrifically, intolerably hard. And deciding to write for ourselves is a totally reasonable response to that. Raging at the world, because the stories we most need to tell are the ones least likely to reach others, or getting upset about that fact, is a reasonable response.

I wish I had some way to fix that—an answer that would make the problem go away.

All I can say is that you’re not alone.

And that, if you keep treating yourself with compassion, keep writing your stories, and keep moving forward, then one day you’ll turn around and be in awe of how far you have come.

I promise.

Further Reading

If you’re interested in stories that “do trauma well,” here are some of the best that I’ve found over the years.

With the TV shows in particular, watch with care. I’ve provided a quick summary of content warnings, but you may want to investigate the subject matters further before throwing yourself in.

The Nightrunner Books
(Fantasy Novel Series)
Lynn Flewelling
Lynn Flewelling is both an author and a psychotherapist, and it shows. While trauma is mostly in the background of this series, Seregil is profoundly wounded and his relationship with Alec is complex—sometimes obsessive, sometimes difficult and painful, but always worth every moment.

Valhalla Murders
(TV Series, 2019)
CWs: Religious trauma, CSA, implied homophobia, violence, and alcohol use
I’ve talked about this show before, and for good reason: it’s one of the best examples of writing a traumatised character I’ve ever seen. A masterpiece of showing over telling, by the end we know exactly what Arnar went through in his past, without ever being told a single word.

Jessica Jones
(TV Series, 2015)
CWs: Domestic abuse, coercive control, alcohol abuse, violence
The first season of this show is a masterpiece of writing the traumatic experience. Jessica is a hot mess, the perfect example of a broken and traumatised protagonist, but the story is extremely active, focused, and healing. Jessica is extremely driven and never loses her agency, despite the awful things that happen to her.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

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March Writers’ Room Workshop: Recording, Notes & Resources

Thanks so much for everyone who joined our workshop this month, especially the intrepid souls that got up at 4am to attend. We salute your astonishing commitment to the cause!

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One of the biggest problems my editing clients have is when they can feel something is wrong with their story, but can’t put their finger on exactly what it is. A lot of the time, they’ve received vague, unhelpful feedback from beta readers, and are no closer to fixing things than they were at the start.

I once worked with one writer who said their readers “just don’t feel connected to the main character.”

And while a whole host of issues can cause that, this writer had already done the hard work of creating a compelling protagonist. Their heroine was complex and flawed, and she had a mixture of strengths and weak spots, so what was the problem? And why do readers sometimes feel like a book just isn’t immersive?

This week, we’ll be looking at one possible culprit: the thorny issue of narrative distance.

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The Problem: Watching Through Glass

It’s easy for writers to get into hot water with this, especially because readers often can’t explain exactly what they’re looking for.

That’s why we end up with endless arguments on social media about how “first person is better because I want to be inside a character’s head.”

But in fact, our point of view, and how close we are to the action are completely separate things. First person can absolutely feel distant and detached, as we see here:

I watched the car explode from across the parking lot, the blast knocking me off my feet. I felt a jolt of fear and confusion as the fireball rose into the air. I wondered where the driver was, and if they were still inside. Smoke curled into the sky while people began to scream.

Similarly, third person can be visceral and immersive:

Jane slammed into the tarmac, small black stones tearing through her palms. Heat roared from the skeletal remains of the car, and she screwed her eyes shut. Too fast, too loud. Where was the driver? Someone screamed, ragged and loud. Was it her? The sound was so close. She had to get out of here.

Notice the invisible camera in these examples. In the first, we’re watching everything from very far away. In the second, we’re drawn into the brutal experience of what’s actually happening.

That’s the difference between close and high narrative distance, and where readers often get confused.

Point of View is the Frame, Narrative Distance the Zoom

There are three main points of view:

1. First person: “I walked down the road.”

2. Second person: “You walked down the road.”

3. Third person: “She walked down the road.”

There are also three modes of third person:

• Third person omniscient, where the story is told by a detached, all-knowing narrator, who can see inside the head of every single character.

• Third person limited, where we’re stuck inside the head of a single character in each scene. If there are multiple POV characters, we only shift between them at a scene or chapter break.

• Head-hopping, where the story switches back and forth between the minds of multiple characters without warning. This can be extremely challenging to follow, and is generally discouraged.

Our story’s point of view will generally remain the same throughout. The whole book will be written in first person, or third person limited, even if we shift between different characters. But there are some exceptions. For example, you see some romance novels that use first person for the FMC, and shift into third person for the MMC’s perspective.

Narrative distance is a different beast entirely. It’s the sliding scale of how close we are to the story. We might be right behind a character’s eyeballs, hearing their every single thought, or see everything from miles away.

And while some POVs lend themselves to certain distances (omniscient is almost always quite distant), we can generally combine point of view and narrative distance however we’d like.

Importantly, narrative distance can also change wildly within a single story. We might stay up close and personal throughout a book, or write the whole thing from very far away—for example, if we wanted to create a diffuse, dreamlike, or fairytale feeling.

Alternatively, we might vary the narrative distance for each point of view character, or move quickly from close to distant, creating a feeling of shock:

The target’s silhouette was perfectly framed in his scope, a dark cutout against the city’s sodium glare. He eased forward, squeezing the trigger.

Then, the world changed.

A searing line of crimson light connected a rooftop across the street to the centre of his chest. There was no sound. Only a silent, perfect puncture.

He tried to run, but his legs belonged to someone else. His right hand reached towards his chest and came away dripping black blood. He felt shock spread like an ink stain. The city’s lights started to haze, then blur as his body tilted and fell.

Notice how we shift from strong verbs and visceral phrasing (eased, squeezing, searing) to all the hallmarks of high narrative distance: narrating the movements of his body as though we’re seeing them from the outside, filter/padding words (tried, seemed, felt, starting), and telling emotions (“he felt shock”). We’ll be looking into all of these more deeply below.

Different genres also have varying expectations around point of view, and how much narrative distance is acceptable. So it’s worth reading widely in your chosen genre, and learning the rules even if you plan to break them—especially if you plan to break them!

That said, close third (third person with short narrative distance) is highly favoured in most types of speculative fiction today, with readers strongly preferring immersion. First person, told from “close up” is also extremely popular.

Because of that, writing at a short narrative distance is a skill that’s worth learning.

Letting Your Reader Fall Through the Glass

If you want to write in close point of view, the first step is what we did last week: learning who your protagonist is, and speaking with their distinct voice.

Showing emotions (especially through train of thought and the filter of perception) is also key. Ask yourself: How is the character feeling in this moment? And how might those emotions affect everything they see—influencing how they speak, what they think, and what they’re focused on.

For example, we might practice conveying panic through a character’s voice. So, instead of:

She needed somewhere to hide and so she ran into the room. It contained a large wardrobe, a bed, and a window. She was terrified. She had to get away.

We might try something like:

He was right behind her, heavy boots thumping up the stairs. She threw herself into the nearest room. A wardrobe? Too obvious. The bed. No, there wasn’t space. The window. Yes. Perfect. Quickly now.

See how the shorter sentences bring us inside the character’s panic, and how we see what she is seeing. While the first example has a detached, uncaring eye reporting the contents of the room, the second is vibrating with her need to get away, as though the whole story is happening inside her head.

That’s the magic and true power of close third.

Seeing Through Your Character’s Eyes

To achieve this effect, we often have to narrow the “lens” of our story—moving more deeply into the character’s narrow perspective. Then, instead of taking in everything, we only see what the character is focused on in that moment.

Someone who’s hunting their brother’s killer is unlikely to take in the wild starry sky. A protagonist talking to their rival at a party isn’t going to absorb every single detail about the room.

Problems with this can crop up throughout a story, but they’re most common in fight scenes, where the writer feels like they have to describe everything:

Lyra span away from the werewolf, her twin daggers carving shallow wounds through its thick fur. One of the creatures almost had her, at least until Ev’s arrow struck the creature in the shoulder and sent it reeling away.

Across the battlefield, Tristan brought his heavy mace down in a crushing arc, while Elerin backed away from a massive, snarling beast—staff raised in her shaking hands. She swung, but the beast’s jaws locked around her forearm. Her piercing scream cut through the night, but Lyra couldn’t help her right now.

But often, showing less (and narrowing the window of our story) is far more powerful:

The wolf’s yellow eyes burst out of the darkness, and Lyra barely got her dagger up in time. She struck on instinct, slashing its matted chest, the cut too shallow to slow the creature down. It bore down on her like a carthorse, and as she stumbled to get away, the beast’s jaws opened wider and wider, swallowing her world.

A streak of silver light, and the wolf was gone—yelping away with one of Ev’s arrows in its shoulder. Gods bless that man and curse him. She owed him a drink now.

But before Lyra could regain her footing, a scream sliced through the dark. High and sharp, cut off too soon. Elerin? Ice tightened in Lyra’s guts, but she had her own problems. The wolf broke Ev’s arrow off at the shaft and lunged again.

The key, as always, is to narrow the lens—moving more deeply into the character’s subjective experience, and ignoring everything else.

Filter Words & Unclear Prose: Other Ways to Cloud the Glass

Filter words place the character between the reader and what’s happening.

Words like saw, heard, felt, noticed, realised, etc all subtly remind us that there’s someone else there—someone doing the seeing, hearing, and noticing.

While not strictly filter words, words like causing, making, starting, beginning to, etc all have a similar effect. When we describe every movement a character makes, it also adds subtle distance. Like we’re watching from outside. You can see both of these in this example, where a detective arrives at a crime scene:

He walked into the front room, looking at the blood splattered all over the walls. Walking further down the hall, he found three rooms. These were all splattered with blood too, he noticed.

Our stories are often more effective when we simply show what the character sees, and let the reader infer that they’re moving around:

The front room was a mess. Blood splattered everywhere. The ceiling. The floor. Further in, two bedrooms and a bathroom—all in a similar state. A broken television left a perfect white shadow on the wall of the back bedroom, outlined in arterial spray.

Ensuring our prose is direct and crystal clear is another great way to shorten the narrative distance: using strong verbs like “sprinted” or “charged” instead of the weaker “ran quickly,” as well as eliminating passive voice and forms of the verb “to be.”

There’s no single shortcut.

Our narrative distance is the sum of everything we share and how we share it. And learning to control each of these levers is the best way to make sure we have the right effect on our readers.

How to Zoom In

To shorten your narrative distance, here’s something you can try:

1. Pick a scene from your latest work in progress.

2. Note down the name of your point of view character, who they are, and how they see the world. We went into much more depth on this last time.

3. Write what the character is feeling in this particular moment.

4. How does that feeling come across? Brainstorm some ideas. We might write in long, breathless sentences to convey enthusiasm, fixate on negative details for someone who’s depressed, or flood an angry character’s thoughts with criticisms and fault-picking. The Emotion Thesaurus is a great resource in doing this sort of work.

5. Rewrite a paragraph or two from the scene, using a mixture of the emotion you chose and the character’s unique voice.

6. Look for the camera lens. Are we seeing everything in this scene? Could we remove some details and narrow the focus—fixing the prose on whatever is most important to the point of view character in this moment?

7. Are we describing every movement and gesture? Could we trim those descriptions, trusting the reader to picture the action themselves?

8. Put a final polish on the prose. Look for filter words, weak verbs, passive voice, and cloudy, indirect phrasing.

9. Reread both the original paragraph, and the one you’ve rewritten. Think about what’s changed, and the effect that has as you’re reading. With any luck, your rewritten section will feel much more powerful, visceral, and like we’re “inside of the story.”

How Close is Close Enough?

Close third (and short narrative distance generally) isn’t for every story.

For example, there’s still a strong market for indie sci-fi novels written in a “Golden Age” style, where omniscient point of view, with high narrative distance, is king.

But short narrative distance (either in first person or close third) is by far the most popular with modern-day readers. It’s also the most immersive, so it’s a great tool to have in your toolbox. Perhaps most importantly, when we really understand narrative distance, we can vary it to suit our whims.

As with all things, the key is knowing what your readers expect, and how to meet those expectations.

Because once we can do that, we can follow or break the rules with abandon—controlling the reader’s experience and keeping them right in the palm of our hand.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now

I recently read two novels from traditional publishers that had a lot in common. They were in the same genre, with similar settings and writing styles. But one of them grabbed me and refused to let me go, while the other was lukewarm.

Since stories are basically my job now, I spent a long time thinking about why. Eventually the penny dropped: the lukewarm book had a flat and forgettable protagonist, while the hero of the other one leapt off the page.

In the current market, character is king. And that can make all the difference. It’s the difference between an incredible book and a dull one.

But as writers, what can we do about this?

How can we make sure our protagonist is compelling enough to sustain the reader through the whole story?

Well, reader, I’ve spent the last week pulling together my ideas on that very subject, so it’s weird that you ask...

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The Problem with Clockwork Dolls

It’s by far the most common problem I see with the protagonists in my clients’ novels—they have no defining traits, no real personality...in short, they could be anyone.

And it’s dire news for a story. That was hammered into me at Clarion West: before the reader can care about what’s happening, they must first care about who it’s happening to.

That’s never been more true than right now. We’re in a renaissance of character-driven fiction. In short, if your protagonist doesn’t click, then it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your book is. Your readers won’t stick around to find out.

This can be extremely demoralising for a writer. After all, they love their main character (and know them inside out), so why can’t their readers connect? Why can’t they see the same thing the writer sees?

It’s enough to drive anyone insane. But the writer isn’t crazy, and it’s almost never the protagonist themselves.

The problem is how the character comes across on the page.

Inventing Emeric

A strong protagonist truly is a force of nature.

I’m sure you know what I mean. We’ve all read books where the main character takes our hand and drags us straight through the page. It’s wild magic. Those are the characters that stay with us for years. Maybe even the rest of our lives.

So, how do we achieve that in our own writing?

To explore that question, we’ll be building a sample character today, piece by piece.

His name is Emeric, he’s an inventor of clockwork creatures in a steampunk story, and he’s in dire need of a personality.

Our starting point: flaws and strengths

Even if we have a strong idea of who our protagonist is, it’s never a bad idea to give them defined traits. In fact, it’s the first step to making them feel unique, memorable, and engaging for our readers.

I usually recommend 3-4 positive traits for a story’s protagonist, along with 1-2 flaws.

Don’t be tempted to skip that second part. Our protagonist’s flaws are every bit as important as their strengths. It’s what makes them real, human, and relatable. Readers will follow a hot mess as they blunder through the story over the perfect person every time.

Let’s start with something like this:

Emeric’s positive traits:

Charming

Compassionate

Inquisitive

Emeric’s flaw:

Selfishness

A list like this makes sure the character has unique, clearly defined traits, but it’s also much more. It’s the “true north” of our compass, and something we’ll be returning to while crafting the rest of the story.

A goal brings movement

Our protagonist’s goal is the single most important force in our story. It’s how we give a book forward momentum, and how we keep everything on track—a single red thread, guiding us through a labyrinth of events.

After editing dozens of novels, I can tell you with absolute certainty: if your story is stuck, it’s almost always because of the protagonist’s goal (or more often, the lack of it).

Almost every scene of your book should be about the hero’s goal, and the only real way to end a story is by resolving that goal one way or another. Either the protagonist gets the thing they’ve been fighting for, or else loses it forever.

So, if we’re going to wind Emeric’s mainspring and bring him to life, then he definitely needs one:

Emeric’s Goal: Win the prestigious Medal of Excellence at the Great Exhibition, by exhibiting his clockwork creations.

We might also want to give him a touchstone that encapsulates his character and shows us what he values. Something like: “a name etched in history is worth any cost.”

Are you starting to feel the tension and excitement yet? Emeric is brilliant, but he’s single-minded, ruthless, and will probably do terrible things to get what he wants. Notice the friction that creates. The feeling of anxiety, and anticipation around where his story might lead.

Safe to say we might not like Emeric very much (although that Compassionate trait is going to buy us some leeway), but we’re unlikely to forget him.

He’s that sort of guy.

Breaking things down further

Once we have our protagonist’s goal for the whole novel, we want to break it down into smaller chunks. These will eventually become our scene and chapter goals, ensuring the engine is always running.

Emeric’s goal breakdown might look like this:

Win the prestigious Medal of Excellence at the Great Exhibition

1. Complete the clockwork angel I’ve been working on for years, before the exhibition deadline.

2. Stop the newly animated angel from destroying my workshop.

3. Recapture the escaped clockwork angel.

4. Abandon the hunt, create another clockwork creature before the deadline.

5. Convince the exhibition’s council to give me an extension.

6. Bribe, blackmail, or steal myself a place at the Great Exhibition.

7. Undermine my greatest competitor...

And so on.

Also? Yes. That escaped clockwork angel is going to come back to bite him on the ass later. How did you know?

See how we already have a sort of outline—each goal leading naturally to the next, all of it laser-focused on his ultimate goal of winning that precious Medal of Excellence.

Turning personality into problems

Even without trying, we’ve already started creating obstacles that will make Emeric’s life a nightmare: the deadline, the council, the other competitors...not to mention that pesky clockwork angel.

But those problems could happen to anyone in Emeric’s position. Well, maybe not anyone, but we want some obstacles that are unique to him.

This is where our characters’ flaws come into play, especially if we plan to use a character arc—showing the slow change between the (kinda terrible, or at least very flawed) person at the start, and the new and improved person they’ve grown into by the end.

Even without a character arc, it’s fun (both for us, and our readers) to turn a character’s flaws against them. And Emeric’s selfishness presents us with so many tempting possibilities.

What if...

• His selfishness alienates his gifted assistant, so she isn’t there to help recalibrate the angel when it wakes up and goes mad?

• That assistant ends up working for his greatest rival?

• Emeric steals someone else’s pass to exhibit in the main hall, and the council at the Great Exhibition find out and disqualify him?

• He uses his charm to seduce the son of one of the council members, getting himself reinstated. But he abandons the relationship immediately, and his scorned lover decides to bring about Emeric’s downfall?

• Our protagonist lies about being responsible for the angel, and tries to conceal his involvement—leading to his arrest when it starts to run amok?

• His selfish (and frankly asshole-like) behaviour alienates his only real friend?

Hitting our protagonist with the full consequences of his actions not only creates lots of delicious tension, it also shows who Emeric is through action, rather than flatly telling the reader about it.

Turning solutions into strengths

Just as our protagonist’s flaws create problems that derail them, we can also show them overcoming the story’s obstacles using their strengths.

What if...

• Emeric overcomes the clockwork angel at the end, but only by swallowing his pride—seeking out his former apprentice and admitting (with genuine, charming vulnerability) that he was a fool, and he can’t stop the angel without her?

• They discover that the angel isn’t mindlessly destructive. It’s disoriented, scared, and confused. Emeric’s compassion ultimately allows him to see this. He stops fighting, and sits down beside it. Listening and soothing the creature.

• Emeric ultimately defeats his rival by investigating her creations. His inquisitive nature uncovers a fatal flaw in her machines that could have cost a lot of innocent people’s lives.

We’re now on the verge of something really special. We don’t just have a defined character with clear strengths and flaws, we’re making those things real through what Emeric does. Every victory he’s able to win, and every defeat he suffers, it’s all the direct result of who he is.

This is precisely the raw material we need to build our scenes, following the natural flow through goal > action > obstacle > try/fail/try again > outcome > complication > new goal that will keep our reader riveted (pun very much intended) and desperate to find out what happens next.

A voice to speak aloud

The final piece of the puzzle is Emeric’s voice: the unique way that he speaks both in dialogue, and through the prose of the story itself.

It’s a unique mixture of three things:

1. Who a character is.

2. What’s important to them (and what they focus on).

3. Their word choice and speaking style.

Our protagonist’s voice is absolutely vital if we’re writing in first person or close third—the two most popular points of view at the moment.

It’s easiest to see this in action. Take this paragraph, for example:

Emeric entered the Grand Hall. It was an enormous structure of iron and glass. The central nave stretched the length of the building, letting in the sunlight outside. Wide aisles were separated by ornate screens, draped in flags, with ferns and other plants growing all over them. The air smelled of oil and polished wood, and hummed with the whirring of engines.

Now let’s try that again, this time dripping with Emeric’s voice:

It was less of a hall, and more of a menagerie of light. Yes, this is where he belonged. It was a grand place, built for men who were meant for greater things. Sunlight poured through a thousand panes of glass, the iron frame of the building arching high against the summer sky. It smelled of industry: rock oil and coal gas, and the faint, sharp edge of ozone. Was the whole place lit by arc lamps? Oh, but at night, it would shine like a jewel!

See how this second example is deeply rooted inside our protagonist, and how it shows us a glimpse of who Emeric is: florid and a little dramatic, inquisitive and curious, a scientist with a far-too-high opinion of himself. He smells the ozone, and immediately guesses that it comes from arc lighting—filtering everything through his unique worldview and skills.

Of course, we might not always want to write at a tight narrative distance like this (there’ll be more on this in our next post), but it is extremely attractive to readers, and gives us one more opportunity to do great things: letting our protagonist shine through every word.

The Heart Beats, a Story Begins

Once you’ve done all of that, there’s no way your main character will sound boring or flat. Instead, the moment someone opens your book, the protagonist will leap right out and drag the reader off on some grand adventure.

They’ll draw your audience in, and infuse the story with movement and life.

And that’s most of the hard work done.

Because once the reader cares deeply about the person at the centre of our story, they’ll follow the protagonist to hell.

The Dollmaker’s Blueprints: Building Your Own Hero

If you’re eager to apply this to your own work, here’s how to get started:

1. Open a blank document, and write your protagonist’s name at the top.

2. Decide on 3-4 strengths for them. The Positive Trait Thesaurus can help!

3. Note down 1-2 weaknesses they have. If you’re stuck, try The Negative Trait Thesaurus.

4. Write down their goal for the whole novel.

5. Break this down into 4-8 sub-goals—ensuring each one leads into the next, and all of them are vital to the character’s goal for the whole book.

6. Brainstorm a few obstacles and setbacks that might arise directly because of the character’s flaw(s).

7. Jot down how they might overcome problems (both the obstacles you’ve just created, and others that arise naturally from their goals) using their strengths and positive personality traits.

8. How will this character speak? What is their unique voice—both out loud, and when writing from their point of view?

   1. Are they more outgoing or taciturn? Do they use a lot of words, or a few?

   2. Are they formal or more casual? Do they swear? Use slang? Or technical jargon?

   3. Do they focus on the facts, or get more caught up in feelings?

   4. Do they speak in a coherent and considered way? Or are they more disordered and prone to stream of consciousness?

   5. What do they like to talk (and think) about? What are their goals, values, and ambitions? What do they notice, and what do they overlook? Are they tuned into the emotions of others? Do they always spot the small details?

   6. Are they an optimist or a pessimist? How does that filter everything they see?

   7. Is the character very earnest, or do they use humour?

   8. Do they mislead or lie, even to themselves? Are they an unreliable narrator?

9. Once you’ve settled on a voice, take one of the scene goals you created above and write a few paragraphs of it. Show the character overcoming problems using their strengths, and/or getting into hot water because of their flaws.

10. Play and experiment. Make use of the voice you’ve created for this character. The more you practice (and have fun) the better you’ll get!

Finally, if you’re looking for examples of the difference voice, personality, and point of view can make, here’s a scene written entirely from the perspective of one of my characters: a sharp-tongued, sharp-minded ghost detective, and all-around pain in the ass.

And here’s exactly the same scene told from the perspective of his more sensory (and psychically sensitive) partner in crime.

These characters were designed to be complete polar opposites, and their night-and-day points of view are a lot of fun (and a lot of hard work!) to write.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

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Our First Writers’ Room Workshop: Recording, Notes & Resources

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The worst thing about my job is sending a writer their feedback, and then watching them deflate.

No matter how much I believe in the author, or praise their novel’s strengths, some people find it hard.

And I get it. I’m one of those people.

As a developmental editor, my job is to crawl inside of a story and find its shine—the reason why the author cared enough to bring it into this world. But I’m also often the first person (beyond the writer’s friends and family) to read their book, and that means I’m the first reality check a lot of stories get.

I’m fiercely protective of the novels I edit, and I wouldn’t take on a book if I wasn’t prepared to fight for it. But I’m not just here to cheerlead. Writers pay me to make their book stronger, and give it the best possible chance of success.

Quite often, that means making big changes, and there’s no nice way to deliver that news.

Especially when I know exactly how it feels to be on the receiving end.

The Cost of Carrying the Ring

I’ve always struggled with rejection.

It’s the one thing that’s wrecked my writing career more than anything else.

I stopped submitting short stories a few years ago because I couldn’t stand it anymore. The drop in my stomach every time an email landed in my inbox.

But the lessons we need to learn have a funny way of haunting us, and that’s definitely been my experience. That’s how I found myself struggling with the same issues, over and over again.

It all started when I accepted a commission to write an interactive novel. Sounds fun, right? Only every time I finished a chapter, I’d send it off to my editor, and a few days later I’d get a quick “thanks” attached to a massive list of revisions I needed to make. And those emails kicked the stuffing out of me every time.

The problem is, stories aren’t just something we do—they’re a vital piece of our being.

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We pour hundreds of hours into them, fill them with our most desperate dreams and fears, and when we’re told they aren’t good enough it feels like being told we aren’t good enough.

In a way, it’s a beautiful thing. A sign that we’re doing things right. It only hurts because we care. But when we suddenly realise that we have to go back and do it all over again, the mountain ahead feels impassible.

Whispers in the dark

We get this idea that “real writers” don’t have these problems. If we were meant to write, then we wouldn’t have made such a mess of things in the first place.

Those thoughts turn every setback into evidence we don’t belong here.

That we don’t have what it takes.

Writing is unusual in that way. We wouldn’t expect to get a job in a Michelin-starred kitchen without learning how to cook, or become a carpenter without learning the basics of woodwork. But because we’re taught how to write words and build sentences at a young age, it feels like we should be able to write stories.

The Romantic idea of the solitary genius doesn’t help.

We look back at the writers of the past, and assume they never failed like this. Society peddles the idea that great stories come fully-formed out of nowhere—ignoring the fact that almost all great writers spent years learning their craft, quietly failing, despairing, and trying again.

But today more than ever before, all forms of publishing will quietly select the people who can tolerate the repeated psychic injury of rejection and find a way to persist.

I still struggle with that every day.

Every time one of my Substack posts performs badly, every time I get another email from my editor with a list of changes and revisions, it hurts.

After a year of working on this interactive novel, it had almost destroyed me. Every fresh set of revisions was hell. I’d procrastinate, spiral into depression, and want to give up so badly. I spent a lot of time feeling very sorry for myself.

But I couldn’t give up. I was locked into a contract, and that was both a curse and a blessing. It meant I’d have to slog through those revisions sooner or later. And, since interactive novels take a huge amount of time, I’d have to do that over and over again.

In the end, that’s how a solution appeared.

The Road Goes Ever On

After the first year of spiralling at every fresh batch of feedback, something shifted.

I’m still not sure how it happened. But slowly, in the darkest part of my brain, I noticed something: I’d been through this before, and although it hurt like hell, it hadn’t killed me.

This wasn’t the first time I’d faced a long list of revisions and felt like I couldn’t do it. And every time in the past, I’d found a way through. More than that, I’d ended up with a story I was proud of.

It’s still something I struggle with. I suspect many of you still struggle with it, too. The crushing feelings of “I can’t do this” haven’t gone anywhere, and they haven’t even gotten any easier. But I have got better at seeing those feelings. Saying “oh, it’s you again,” and getting on with things anyway.

These days, I procrastinate less, and don’t stay trapped in that self-destructive spiral for so long.

And that’s a skill I badly need to develop, especially if I want to put my own stories out there. Because the writing world is tough, and navigating the soul-crushing pain of rejection is perhaps the most important skill any of us can learn.

Even successful writers aren’t immune. I know quite a few writers who’ve “made it,” and many of them still wrestle with the same problems. Whether it’s poor sales, endless rounds of revisions, or getting dropped by their agent, even when a writer is doing well, they have to navigate through pain.

Writing is just like that: we voluntarily expose our souls to judgment, time and time again, and with very little control over the outcome.

Over the course of our writing career, we will accumulate many such rejections.

And almost two decades in the writing world have taught me something important—most writers don’t fail because they’re “not good enough.” They give up because the pain of repeated failure becomes too high.

The only way to keep going is to find some way to metabolise that. Work through the pain, stumble out the other side, and keep moving.

Because you don’t become a writer by avoiding rejection. You only become one by surviving it repeatedly, without annihilating yourself in the process.

That means learning how to keep going, even when we doubt.

What to Do When All Other Lights Go Out

If you’re struggling with this, know that persistence is a muscle. The more you practice it, the stronger it gets.

Writing is hard—it’s hard in the most brutal, unfair, and uncaring ways—but somehow this impossible, soul-crushing thing is still worth it. Sometimes, there’s nothing in the world that matters more.

If you feel that way too, here are four steps you can take:

1. Make space for the overwhelm, pain, and despair. Nothing good comes from pushing it away. So whine about it! Talk to other writers. Fill up a hundred pages of self-pity in your journal. You’re allowed to feel bad, and you’re allowed to find it hard. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they can get straight in the bin.

2. Remind yourself, gently, that you’ve been through hard things before. It didn’t destroy you, and this won’t either. You can get through this, because you’re stronger than you think.

3. Find your Light of Eärendil. This is your light that shines when all others go out—your “why” that makes it all worth it. It could be anything: a folder of compliments on your writing, or a person who loves and believes in you. For me, it’s the stories themselves. I care more about them than my own pride. Reminding myself of that helps.

4. Hold onto it. It’s your everything. Your reason to keep going. Keep it close when doing the hard, painful work of persisting through the darkness. Then take a deep breath and, when you’re ready, get back to the reason you started.

✒️ Want to support Pagewake?

If you’ve found this post useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Pagewake will always be free to everyone, and the support of my community helps make that possible.

I have big plans for my subscription services in 2027, but in the meantime here’s what you get as one of my supporters:

📆 A monthly live workshop, exploring and deconstructing a published story

🔨 Early access to my “Nailing Your First Page” course

✍️ Monthly Writers’ Room emails, with prompts, occasional exercises, and recommendations

🎁 First access to new subscriber-only storycraft resources

Alternatively, if you have a speculative fiction novel and are looking for a developmental editor, you can learn more about my services here.

Subscribe now