If you’re wondering why your story isn’t working, you may be closer to the answer than you think.
Have you ever gotten to that horrible point with a book where you look at the whole thing and think, “I’ve spent years on this and it’s still not working.”
Yeah, that happened to me early on in my career, too, and it’s kind of devastating. This is a tough place to be because it doesn’t just feel like you’re struggling with one story anymore. It feels bigger than that. Like all this time you spend on it has been completely for nothing.
After 25 years as a full-time professional writer and writing and publishing 10 books, I’m here to tell you, you have not wasted that time. But there probably is something that you’re missing that if you found it would help you to fix this story.
In this post, I’m going to give you five possibilities (I call them support beams) of what that might be just in case one of them fits you and your situation. Because if you can find out what’s missing in this story, you can probably take it, fix it up, and make it actually good enough to publish.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working 1. Your Antagonist May Be Too Absent
The first e support beam you really need is this: The antagonist.
The antagonist may be too absent from the story or they may be applying the wrong kind of pressure. I see this a lot in stories. Now, when I say antagonist, that doesn’t always mean the villain or the bad guy. You may have a villain as your antagonist, but the antagonist can also be a boss or a spouse or a colleague or an authority figure. The antagonist is just the one who’s putting pressure on your hero. Most of the time, it’s a person.
Sometimes it may be more than one, like a group or a system or possibly something like a dystopian society. So, for example, let’s say the antagonist shows up at the beginning, but then they disappear for long stretches of the book. That’s one surefire way to slow down the middle of your book or to make it stretch on and on into boring territory. That may be what you’re feeling.
Or on the other hand, the antagonist may be technically present, but the pressure they create is not the kind of pressure that the story needs. So because of that, the middle of the book feels like not enough is happening or like there’s just not enough at stake.
Let’s look at some examples.
Example 1: Gladiator Makes the Pressure Personal
So think about the movie Gladiator. Maximus is a respected Roman general who wants to go home to his wife and son after years of war. Commodus is the emperor’s jealous son. And when he realizes his father trusts Maximus more than him, he turns on Maximus completely.
In a very short span of time, Commodus takes Maximus’ whole life apart. Maximus loses his family, his rank, his freedom, and even his name. He goes from this honored, revered general to an enslaved gladiator. So that’s why Commodus works so well as an antagonist. He’s not sitting somewhere far away while Maximus has these random arena adventures.
The world Maximus is trapped inside, which is the gladiator world, now belongs to Commodus. Maximus has to survive under the rule of the man who destroyed him. I mean, that pressure is personal and it’s aimed right at the center of Maximus’ story and his inner wound.
Gladiator’s Heart Hook
If you’ve seen my other post about the emotional wound, the heart hook, and the lie that the character believes because of it, you know that your main character in many stories has gone through trauma and ends up believing a lie. In this case, Maximus certainly went through a lot of trauma all because of Commodus. And then he’s forced to live in this world that Commodus controls. I mean, you can’t get more perfect than that.
It’s one of the reasons why Gladiator is such a classic movie because it puts these two men right at odds with each other with a lot of big things at stake and high emotions and anger and rage and all these things. So, you get this really crackling interaction on the screen because of what the antagonist is doing to our main character. That shows you how important your antagonist is.
Example 2: The Little Mermaid Twists Ariel’s Dream
Consider The Little Mermaid. Even though it’s a completely different kind of story, it’s a great example of how a good antagonist is used.
So, in this story, if you remember, Ariel is a princess who’s fascinated by the human world. She wants to leave the ocean and become human and have a chance to meet Prince Eric. Ursula is the sea witch who sees that longing and knows exactly how to use it for her purposes. She offers Ariel the thing she most wants, legs and a human life, and a chance to be with Eric. But then she takes Ariel’s voice in exchange for this gift.
So that’s the perfect kind of pressure for this story because Ariel’s voice is not some random object that Ursula takes for fun. Ariel wants to be part of the human world. She wants to be known and loved there. And then Ursula removes the very thing that Ariel needs in order to express herself and try to become part of that world.
So now Ariel has the chance that she’s always wanted, but the chance comes with a trap inside of it. That is a strong antagonist pressure and it grows out of Ariel’s own desire. Ursula is not just creating generic trouble around the sea. She’s twisting Ariel’s dream into the thing that makes her vulnerable.
Example 3: Notting Hill Makes Fame the Antagonist
Let’s look at one more example. Notting Hill with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts gives us another version of this. And this one is good to look at because the pressure is not coming from some obvious villain like in the other two.
William, who’s played by Hugh Grant, is a quiet London bookstore owner. Anna Scott, who’s played by Julia Roberts, is one of the most famous actresses in the world. And they meet and they like each other. And there’s a real connection between them. But what’s the antagonist? Anna’s public life. It keeps getting in the way. Her fame and the press and her movie career.
And this huge gap between her world and William’s world keeps putting pressure on the relationship. So in this story, the antagonist force is not one person trying to destroy the other. It’s Anna’s celebrity life and everything that comes with it.
Notting Hill’s Heart Hook
And that pressure is perfect because it hits the heart of the story. William wants something real with Anna, but her public world keeps making this private relationship almost impossible. And that public world is ever present in the story. It doesn’t just go away because it becomes inconvenient for our characters.
It’s also perfect for William, who is our main character in this story, because he’s a very private, introverted person. He’s the last person who wants to deal with all this public brouhaha. It’s even better because of who he is and what he would prefer. He doesn’t want to be the center of all this attention. So that makes this whole thing so much more difficult for him, which is why it works so well. A strong antagonist forces our hero into harder and harder situations and harder choices, and that keeps the middle from going soft.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working: Check Whether the Antagonist Stays Present
So when you look at your own draft, ask yourself this: “Who or what is putting pressure on your hero? And is that pressure present for most of the story? And is it aimed at the thing your hero cares about the most?”
If the antagonist disappears for long stretches, your story may start to sag. The only exception to this is if you have representations of the antagonist that are also working against your hero. It doesn’t have to always be the antagonist itself. If you have some evil ruler, every scene doesn’t have to be with the actual ruler.
It could be with the ruler’s minions or the ruler’s guards and army, or it could be with the ruler’s messengers or whatever. As long as we feel the hand of the antagonist present throughout the story, that’s going to keep your story from sagging, and it’s going to make your middle more and more interesting.
If the antagonist is present, but is not forcing your hero into harder and harder choices, then the pressure may be aimed at the wrong thing.
So, you can have an antagonist going around and blowing up buildings and generally causing havoc, but if none of this hits the core of your hero, it doesn’t really matter. So, check your story and see if your antagonist is doing their job or if you need to put them back to work.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working 2. Your Hero’s Emotional Wound May Be Unclear
The second missing support beam that I often see is this: It may not be clear what your hero’s emotional wound is.
The emotional wound is critical to your story. And if you’re missing it, that may be why your story is floundering.
So, you might say, “Well, my hero has a goal.” They may want to win the contest, save the kingdom, find the missing child, get the promotion, stop the killer, earn the money, or make the relationship work. All of that may be very clear.
The problem is that a goal by itself, an outside goal, is not enough to carry the whole story. We also need to understand why this goal matters so much to this particular person. So there has to be something deeper under that goal.
An emotional wound or the heart hook I call it is the sore spot inside your character. It’s usually some old hurt, fear, loss, shame or belief that they’ve been carrying around for a while. It affects the way they see themselves and the world. And it also affects the choices that they’re going to make under pressure.
If you don’t have that sore spot in your main character, the hero’s goal is going to feel a little bit “meh.” It’s not really going to matter to us as readers. This is where a lot of stories start to tip over. So, the hero’s chasing the goal, but we as readers are kind of watching from a distance. We’re not pulled into it because we can’t feel the emotional cost here. We don’t know what this character is trying to prove or heal from or avoid or finally face.
Example 1: Gladiator Connects the Goal to Grief
Let’s look again at Gladiator. At the beginning of the movie, Maximus is a Roman general who wants to go home. That’s already a clear goal. He wants to go home. He wants to reunite with his family. He has served Rome and now he wants to go back to his wife and son. That’s very clear.
Then Commodus destroys that life by having Maximus’ family murdered and trying to have Maximus killed. Maximus is forced into slavery and thrown into the arena and that changes his goal into one of revenge.
The emotional wound underneath this story is grief, loss, and the fact that the life he wanted, the goal he had was stolen from him and he wants revenge against the person who did it. That’s why we care when he fights in the arena. I mean, the arena scenes are exciting, sure, but the deeper pull is that Maximus is carrying this enormous grief through every battle, which is fueling his rage, and he’s fighting for justice and to honor his family.
The Little Mermaid Connects Desire to Belonging
The Little Mermaid gives us a different example of this. Ariel wants to become human and to be with Prince Eric. That is her surface goal. But underneath that, she feels trapped in this world that she feels doesn’t really understand her. She doesn’t feel at home with everybody else in the ocean. She’s drawn to the human world because it feels like the place where she might finally be able to belong. Her father sees her longing is dangerous and her world keeps telling her that she needs to stay right where she is and be who she’s expected to be, which of course only makes her want to break out more.
So, her deeper ache is not only about romance or adventure. She wants a life that feels more like hers. That’s why Ursula’s deal is so tempting. She’s offering her a chance to step into the life that she’s been dreaming about all this time. It’s the one that most pulls at her heart or emotions, playing on this wound of feeling like she doesn’t belong in the world that she’s in.
Notting Hill Presses William’s Sore Spot
In Notting Hill, William’s emotional wound is a little more subtle, but it is there. If you look, William is a kind, ordinary, quiet bookstore owner whose life kind of has gotten really small. He’s divorced and a little awkward and he even jokes that his ex saw through him which tells us something important about how he sees himself.
So, he’s not just lonely. He carries this shame. Like maybe if a woman really looks closely at him, she’ll decide that there just isn’t enough there to love. So, he clings to his modest, slightly strange little world where nothing too big is expected from him.
But then Anna Scott walks into a shop and she’s not just any woman. She’s this famous, beautiful, admired, and completely out of William’s league and out of his normal world. So, the romance presses right on William’s sore spot. If his own wife left him after seeing who he really was, what chance does he have with someone like Anna?
So, on the outside, there’s this romance between a normal man and a famous actress. But underneath that, William has to face the question of whether he believes he could really be loved by someone like her. And he also has to decide whether he’s willing to step into a much bigger, messier life than the small one that he’s been hiding inside.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working: Check the Wound Under the Goal
So when you look at your own draft, ask yourself what sore spot your hero is carrying. What hurt, fear, shame, loss, or belief makes this goal matter so much to them? Those two should be connected. The inner wound and the outer goal. And if your hero has a wound, but the story never really presses on it, then that wound may not be doing its job. Or the antagonist may not be pressing in the right place.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working 3. Your hero may not be driving the story
The third missing support beam that I notice in writers’ manuscripts is this. Your hero may not be driving the story.
This is a big one, and I’ve talked about this in a previous post. This is character agency. Basically, agency means that your main character is making choices that affect what happens next in the story. In other words, they can’t just be a perpetual victim here. That doesn’t mean your hero always has to be powerful. They can be scared and they can be trapped and they can feel weak and they can make mistakes. That’s all wonderful.
The problem comes when your hero is mostly just standing around while everybody else does stuff to them or the plot happens to them. This is where a story can start to feel weak, even if the idea itself was exciting. As readers, we want to watch a character deal with pressure. We want to see what they do when they’re cornered and what choices they make when something goes wrong. That’s how we get to know them.
Gladiator Lets Maximus Change What Happens
So, think about Gladiator again. So, at first, a lot does happen to Maximus, but he doesn’t stay a victim by any means.
Once he’s in the arena, his choices start shaping the story. He chooses how to fight. He decides to protect the other gladiators, and he leads them so that they’re working together instead of each man only trying to save himself. He earns the crowd’s respect and it’s his choices and actions that get Commodus’ attention.
When he finally reveals himself to Commodus, that choice changes the whole game. And this is why the story works so well. Maximus is under terrible pressure, but it’s his choices that keep forcing Commodus to engage with him. And his choices that keep moving the story forward.
The Little Mermaid Lets Ariel Make Risky Choices
Let’s look at The Little Mermaid again. Ariel’s father forbids her from going up into the human world. And Ursula sets a trap for her. So Ariel’s definitely under pressure. Things are happening to her. Other people are trying to control what she can and can’t do.
Even so, Ariel keeps making choices. She saves Eric from the shipwreck and then she goes to Ursula. She sneaks out, goes to Ursula against her family’s wishes. She takes the deal and then when she’s human, she keeps trying to connect with Eric even though she doesn’t have a voice. It’s her driving the story. And agency doesn’t mean the character makes the best choices.
In fact, they usually don’t. And that’s why the story is interesting. Sometimes if your story is lagging a little bit, you can say, “Well, am I making my main character a little too perfect? Are they making too many good choices here? Would they really make this choice here or might they make a choice that’s a little worse or that would cause them to fail or would get them in trouble?”
That’s usually the better option.
Notting Hill Makes William Choose
What about Notting Hill? William doesn’t control Anna’s fame. He can’t make the press leave them alone. And he can’t shrink her movie star world down to the size of his little bookshop life, even if he might want to.
But he still has choices to make. So, he invites Anna into his real life. He brings her to his sister’s birthday dinner. And later, after being hurt and embarrassed, he has to decide whether he’s willing to risk his heart again.
Check Who is Carrying the Story
So, when you look at your own draft, ask yourself this: “Is your hero making choices that change what happens next?”
If the answer is no, and it’s really more about the other people directing the story, your story is going to start to feel passive. If your hero is mostly being rescued or directed or protected or informed or kidnapped or pushed around by other people, they’re not carrying enough weight.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working 4. The Pressure May Not Rise in the Middle
The fourth missing support beam that I see in writers’ manuscripts is this: The pressure doesn’t ramp up enough in the middle of the story.
So, let’s say you have a good beginning, you have a good setup, your hero knows their outer goal, you’ve got their emotional wound, and the hero’s taking agency. And your antagonist is present and it’s applying the right kind of pressure, but then somewhere in the middle, the story starts to feel boring or stale or like it’s not going anywhere. Usually, this means that the pressure is there, but it’s not building up.
In other words, things are not getting worse for your hero. They have to get worse. A strong middle often works like a punch and counterpunch between the hero and the antagonist or the antagonist’s lackeys or minions or whatever. Your hero tries something, the antagonist pushes back, your hero responds, the antagonist makes things harder. At that point, the hero has to make a riskier choice than they did before. This is how the story starts to get exciting because the point is that the pressure has to grow as the story goes on.
Your hero should not be facing the same level of trouble on page 220 that they were facing on page 70. Something has to be harder now. Their decisions need to cost them more. The stakes have to be higher and more personal.
Example 1: Gladiator Builds Punch and Counterpunch
So let’s look again at Gladiator. At first, Maximus just wants revenge against Commodus, right? But then because of his choices, he starts winning. He becomes a leader among the other gladiators and the crowd notices him and they start to demand to see him. He’s taken to Rome, the biggest arena where Commodus sees that this man he tried to erase is not only still alive but becoming famous. And with every step, Maximus draws a big target on his back. So now he’s not just a man trapped in an arena.
He’s a threat to the emperor, the most powerful man in his land and the leader and protector of all these other gladiators that are now his responsibility. The more the people love him, the more dangerous he becomes to Commodus and the more the other gladiators are at risk.
So you see how the pressure keeps rising. Maximus can’t simply kill Commodus anymore. That’s no longer enough. Commodus controls the arena and the guards and the politics and Maximus’ chances of survival. So that’s punch and counterpunch going on in the middle. Maximus rises. Commodus tightens his grip. Maximus delights the crowd. Commodus feels the threat, decides he’s going to eliminate him.
Maximus gets closer to justice. But then Commodus makes the path more dangerous. Maximus doesn’t just have his own life to worry about now. He’s got to worry about all the other gladiators, too. And deep within him, he wants to make a change in Rome itself. So, as the pressure builds, Maximus’s goal also expands.
The Little Mermaid Raises the Stakes
You can see this in The Little Mermaid, too. Ariel only has a short amount of time to get Eric to kiss her. Then, despite her not being able to speak, Ariel and Eric begin to connect, and it looks like she might actually succeed.
Of course, Ursula can’t have that. So, she pushes back harder. She turns herself into Vanessa, uses Ariel’s stolen voice, and tricks Eric. And now Ariel is not only racing against time, but she’s watching someone else use her own voice to take the life that she wanted. Stakes increase, pressure increases. The middle works because the problem doesn’t stay the same.
Notting Hill Keeps the Public Pressure Coming
In Notting Hill, there’s a different version of this same idea. William and Anna like each other, but the pressure of Anna’s public life keeps coming back. William is pulled into her world, even though he doesn’t want to be, and then pushed out of it. He sees the movie star side of her life up close. The press crashes into their private moments, and the gap between her world and his keeps getting harder to ignore.
That’s the pressure rising. The press and her life as a famous person cause more and more trouble between them, asking more and more of William. So that’s what you want in the middle of your story. The pressure should keep asking more and more and more from your hero.
Check Whether the Middle is Getting Hfarder
If the middle of your book feels slow, it may be because your hero and your antagonist are not really in a punch-and-counterpunch action yet.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working: 5. Your Climax May Be Too Easy
The fifth missing support beam is this: Your climax may be too easy.
I just finished reading a book where the hero won his battle in the climax way too easily. I was so disappointed. I felt like I just wasted my time reading the entire book. Here’s the thing. Your reader has followed your hero throughout this whole story.
They’ve spent all this time with them and watched them struggle and make mistakes and face rising pressure and suffer the cost of losses and all of this and they still keep going. So by the time we get to the climax, we need to feel that the story has led us to the hardest possible test for the hero. If the hero gets there and then wins without much effort, the reader can feel completely let down.
Possible Easy Climaxes
So maybe the hero finally reaches the big confrontation and then the antagonist suddenly gets less smart or the villain makes a weird mistake or the hero discovers some convenient answer to it all.
Or suddenly the whole thing just kind of dwindles out without a lot of action. Maybe someone else steps in and fixes the problem or the hero actually fights that last battle but he just wins too easily with hardly any cost to him. That kind of ending can make the whole book feel disappointing to your reader.
This is critical because the climax is the place where all the pressure that you’ve been building should come to a head. So the antagonist pressure should be there in a big way and the hero’s emotional wound should also be there. The hero’s agency should be there. The rising pressure from the middle should be there. All the pieces I’ve been talking about that have helped you build the story. If they’re there like they should be, then the climax is going to feel like the moment when your hero finally has to face the thing that they’ve been moving toward all along.
Example 1: Gladiator Makes the Final Fight Unfair
By the time we reach the end, Maximus has already lost almost everything. Commodus has had his family killed and trapped him inside this arena.
But Maximus has grown at that point. He still wants justice, personal justice, and he wants to honor the people he loved. But things are different now because he also wants what’s best for Rome. He wants order restored to the governance of Rome. He has matured enough to want not just the best for himself, but for all of his people. That shows you character growth.
So, the final fight can’t be just about Maximus, and it also can’t be easy, and it isn’t. You remember when Commodus stabs Maximus before the fight? Why do you think the writer had him do that? Because no one in their right mind is going to believe that Commodus can defeat Maximus in the arena. But that’s what Commodus wants to do because he wants a public humiliation, which perfectly fits his character.
So, he has to cheat, and that’s what he does, which makes him harder to defeat. That one choice makes the climax much more interesting right away because Maximus is already wounded. He’s already weak. He’s already close to death before he even steps into the arena.
The Final Fight
And now the final fight is not just about whether Maximus can defeat Commodus and have his personal revenge. Because we already knew he could do that if he could get close to him. But now it’s about whether Maximus can hold on long enough to finish what he came to do, not only for himself, but for Rome.
The climax works because it costs him everything. He wins, but he doesn’t walk away with a few bruises. He gets justice. He exposes Commodus for who he is, and he restores power to the people who can help Rome. But what does he do?
And spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen it, he gives his life to do it. That feels like an earned climax, and it’s why that story is so compelling and remains a favorite to this day.
The Little Mermaid Makes the Consequences Bigger
The Little Mermaid has a very different kind of climax, but the same basic idea applies. Ariel’s story starts with her wanting to become human and live a life that feels like hers. Ursula uses that desire against her. She takes Ariel’s voice, tricks Eric, and eventually steals power from Ariel’s father, King Triton, because what she wants is power.
And by the end, Ursula is not just a sneaky sea witch making deals in a cave. She becomes this enormous, powerful, and almost impossible thing to stop. The ocean itself turns dangerous around her, and that ramps up the climax to a whole other level.
This is no longer just about Ariel getting her human life, but now her choice has put her father and Eric and the whole sea kingdom in danger. This has gotten much bigger. You see, this is the pressure increasing. The final fight is bigger because the consequences of Ariel’s deal have become bigger. It has to get bigger.
Notting Hill Makes William Face the Right Fear
Notting Hill gives us a different version of this because no one’s stabbing anyone in an arena or turning into a giant sea witch. But the climax is still hard for the kind of story that it is.
William is a private, ordinary man who has fallen in love with Anna Scott, one of the most famous women in the world. His wound is that he wonders if he could really be enough for someone like her. He runs away from the whole situation, thinking he’s not. So, the end can’t be as simple as Anna saying, “You know what? It’s okay. I love you and this is going to be great.”
And William says, “Cool. Let’s go get a sandwich.”
That’s not enough for this story.
Not Enough for This Story
It’s not enough for Anna to make this easier for him. Even though she does come back and tries to win him back. It’s not enough for the finale. There’s a reason the movie didn’t end there. Because the main character isn’t Anna, it’s William. The story has to make him choose. He has to decide. He has to face the pressure.
And after Anna offers him a real chance, William turns her down because he’s scared. His emotional wound flares up again, which is what I’ve been saying about the emotional wound. It needs to be there for half to two-thirds of the story because so far in your character’s life, it has worked. It has helped protect them. It has helped them stay safe.
And so he refuses her because he’s scared that if he jumps back in again, he’ll have to go through losing her all over again because something will happen because he’s just not really enough. But finally, he realizes that he cares too much for her, not to at least try.
So he has to go after her. But not just, you know, he doesn’t just find her at lunch and have a nice conversation with her. He walks in on her at a press conference, this very public place that would usually scare him and overwhelm him. You want to take note of that. The climax puts him in the most uncomfortable place for someone like him. You can see why that is so perfect. It’s the right kind of difficulty for that story and that’s where he has to make his public declaration of love for her.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working: Check Whether Your Hero Earns the Ending
So, when you look at your own draft, ask yourself this: “Is your climax the hardest meaningful test your hero could possibly face?”
If victory comes too easily to them, the ending’s going to feel weak. And if someone else solves the biggest problem for your hero, the reader’s going to feel cheated. If the antagonist suddenly becomes foolish just so the hero can win, then the whole conflict is going to seem kind of stupid. And if the climax doesn’t press on your hero’s inner wound, it’s not carrying enough weight. It’s not going to have enough emotional impact.
So check your ending and make sure your hero has to earn it.
Why Your Story Isn’t Working: Use the Five Support Beams
If you’d like to check your own story against these five support beams, download the worksheet here and run your story through these five support beams. Then start with just one thing.
So, for example, if you find that your antagonist shows up at the beginning, but then kind of vanishes for half the book, that may be where you want to focus for the next week. Or maybe your antagonist is doing their work, but the trouble isn’t hitting your hero where it hurts. The pressure may be just too generic. So, you want to work on that.
Go through the free worksheet and then work on just one support beam because once you can see where the support for your story is missing, the book stops feeling like this giant mess and starts looking like something you can actually fix.
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If you happen to go through the worksheet and you’re still not really sure where you need to fix things in your story, check out my Story Structure Diagnostic here because I can probably help you.
And if you’d like ongoing help with this kind of thing, this is exactly what we’re working on inside Writer’s Brain Studio. This month in particular in August 2026, we’re working with some really fun maps for how to map out your story so that you know exactly what you need to do to finish it.
It’s not an outline. We’re not doing every single detail. We’re mapping out the main points in the story. And I’ve done this in what I feel is a really fun way. It’s kind of like a game. And so if you join us in August, you’ll have access to that and be able to work with that as well.
Featured image by azerbaijan_stockers on Magnific.