Category Archives: Writer Coach

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Nothing Goes Right — Why Every Novelist Needs to Blow Up Their Story

Nothing Goes Right; Now Make It Worse

I have taped a note to my monitor for twenty years that says: When nothing goes right, your story is strong.

I keep taping it there because I keep forgetting it.

You’d think after a lifetime of writing — started in my crib with crayons — and twenty-something books I would have this figured out. You’d think conflict would be burned into my writing DNA — a reflex, a habit, a basic survival instinct like checking both ways before crossing a street, checking my zipper, or checking to make sure I wore pants on my coaching Zoom calls.

But no. Every first draft of anything I write starts exactly the same way. Nice people. Nice conversations. Nice places. Nobody’s house is on fire. Nobody’s marriage is falling apart. Nobody is being chased across a rooftop by a pirate with genuinely alarming dental hygiene.

FIGHT! FIGHT! STEP RIGHT UP!

Here is what none of my English classes ever told me about plot: plot is not “what happens.” Plot is why it matters. It is a series of cleverly arranged miseries designed to tap your reader’s deepest fears and desires — safety, love, the need to survive, the terror of being alone, the hunger to matter.

Nothing Goes RightI know this. I have known this for twenty years. The note is right there on the line above my desk with clipped pictures of my kids, grandkids and Dad.

Steven James said it best: “The core of every story is about a character who wants something but cannot get it.”

That’s it. That’s the whole game. A character wants something. Doesn’t get it. Wants it harder. Things get worse. Repeat until the reader is hooked and you are questioning all of your life choices.

I have written approximately forty first chapters where the biggest conflict is whether the protagonist should have coffee or tea. Coffee, I eventually type. She chose coffee. Scene ends. Nothing explodes. Nobody weeps. The coffee, I am forced to admit, is really quite good.

This is not a story. This is a breakfast menu.

SO HOW DO YOU FIX A PLOT THAT’S GOING NOWHERE?

Ask yourself three questions. Be brutal. I’ll go first.

1. What does your Lead want?

Not “sort of want.” Not “it might be nice if.” A burning, non-negotiable, will-do-anything-to-get-it want. Your Lead’s objective drives every scene. Without it, you have a character standing around waiting for something interesting to happen.

Like I said: I want my first drafts to be conflict-free. What I get is a manuscript that reads like a brochure for a very pleasant town no one has ever visited and no one ever will.

2. What’s stopping her?

Every scene must have a problem. Not a mild inconvenience. A genuine obstacle that makes the situation worse when the scene ends. Worse for your Lead. Better for your reader. These are not the same people. Your reader is enjoying your Lead’s suffering from a safe distance with a cup of coffee that is probably also very nice.

3. Can she just walk away?

If yes, you don’t have a story. You have an anecdote. The difference between a story and an anecdote is whether anyone has to be there. If your character can shrug and leave, she will shrug and leave, and so will your reader.

I have written entire novels where my Lead could have left by page three and saved everyone a lot of trouble. My Lead did not notice this. My readers did.

THE SHORTHAND — AND I DO MEAN SHORT:

Portrait: Show your Lead’s normal life. Crisis: Blow it up. Struggle: Your Lead tries to put the pieces back together. Discovery: She realizes the problem isn’t what she thought. Change: She’s not the same person she was on page one.

Notice what is not on that list: “Nice people have a nice conversation and agree to meet again soon for more of the same.”

I notice this every time. Then I tape the note back to the monitor.

THE WORST THING

Do yourself a favor. Open your manuscript. Find the last scene you wrote. Ask: What is the worst thing that could happen to my character right now?

Then make it happen.

I know. I know. It feels wrong. It feels mean. Your character is a nice person who has done nothing to deserve this, and you are about to drop a metaphorical mobile home on her from a height of sixty thousand feet. This is correct. This is your job. This is the thing that separates a story that keeps readers up past midnight from a document that puts them to sleep by nine.

Your Lead should not have a nice day. Your Lead should have the day. The one everything else hinges on. The one that costs her something she cannot get back.

I believe this with my whole heart.

I am going to go tape the note back to my monitor now.

Want the full breakdown on plot, character, dialogue, and scene structure — in under 60 minutes? Grab A Novel Idea at EddieJones.org. It will not solve the problem of your first drafts. But it will help you understand, in great detail, exactly what is wrong with them.

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Learn How to Plot From the All Time Best Selling Author

Before Save the Cat. Before Story Trumps Structure. Before every MFA program that charged you $60,000 to learn what you could have read for free, there was a guy who stood on a hillside and told stories that people are still talking about 2,000 years later.

His name was Jesus. Let’s look at how He did it.

Act One: Want, Introduction, Inciting Incident

A younger son walks up to his father and essentially says, “I wish you were dead. Give me my inheritance.” That’s your inciting incident. It’s rude, it’s shocking, and it tells you everything about this kid in one sentence. No backstory. No childhood trauma flashbacks. Just want, stated boldly, consequences incoming — and the introduction of the main characters. He lets us learn through action that the father is compassionate, not judgmental or harsh.

The boy wants independence. The story’s engine: the main character’s motivation. Most want out from under the roof, to make our own way. We call it freedom. We call it ambition. We call it finding ourselves. It’s independence, and we want it young, and we want it now.

The father gives him the money. The boy leaves. End of Act One.

Act Two: Make It Worse

Start with one problem. Then flip your character completely. Then — problems, worse problems, death grip problems — and finally the black moment.

Jesus did exactly this. The boy blows everything. Women, wine, bad decisions — the ancient world’s version of Vegas. Then a famine hits. The boy who had everything is now feeding pigs and eyeing their slop. Rich to broke. Beloved son to hired hand. Status change complete. Jesus flipped the character’s world in about four sentences and never looked back.

That’s your model.

Then the black moment arrives. The boy has nothing. No money, no friends, no dignity, no floor left to fall through. And here is where Jesus plants the story’s theme — the glimmer of hope when all appears lost.

The boy “came to himself.”

Four words. That’s your turning point. Not a new circumstance. Not a lucky break. An internal shift. The hunger didn’t save him. Poverty didn’t save him. The memory of his father did — and who his father is. He came to himself because he remembered who his father was — and suddenly independence didn’t sound like freedom anymore. It sounded like a lie he’d been telling himself in a far country while feeding someone else’s pigs.

Act Three: The Walk Home

He rehearses his speech. He’s going to beg. He’ll offer to work as a servant. He has nothing left but humility, which turns out to be exactly enough.

Jesus doesn’t cut to the reunion. He makes the boy walk. You feel the distance. The dread. The not-knowing. That walk is your transition — your character moving toward the final confrontation with everything that matters on the line.

And then — the father sees him “while he was yet a great way off.”

He runs.

Robe flapping. Sandals slapping. Undignified and not caring one bit. The boy wanted independence. He tested it to destruction. And now here is the answer to the question he’s been asking the whole story without knowing he was asking it: Is he still there? Will he still take me back?

The father was watching the road the whole time.

Robe. Ring. Fatted calf. Party. That’s your win. Not wealth restored — the boy blew that, and it isn’t coming back. What’s restored is the one thing he actually wanted underneath all that grabbing and leaving and striving. The unconditional love of a father who never stopped watching the horizon for a familiar silhouette.

And just when you think the story’s over, the older brother appears outside, furious, refusing to go in. He’s been home the whole time and never understood the father’s love either. Same want. Different prison. Conflict restated. Theme deepened. Sequel implied.

The father goes out to him, too.

Story ends. No resolution for the older brother. That open door isn’t a loose end — it’s intentional. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. They know they’re the older brother. The question hangs in the air like smoke.

That’s not an accident. That’s a master plotter leaving the reader with the one question that matters.

What You Can Steal

State the want immediately — and make it human enough that every reader recognizes it as their own. Flip the character’s world completely. Make them walk to the climax — don’t teleport them. End on the question, not the answer. Trust your reader.

We learn our dependence in foxholes. In hospital gowns while signing surgical consent forms. In far countries, feeding someone else’s pigs. Almost every human learns it. The great ones write it.

Jesus told this story in under 600 words, and it’s been in print for two millennia without a single reprint clause.

This instruction tip is longer than Jesus’ word count. But I’m not Jesus. I only learn from Him.

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Find Your Amazon Reviews in 2026

This Hack Shows All Your Amazon Reviews

Amazon built much of its reputation and success on the foundation of customer reviews — they were a revolutionary feature when Amazon introduced them. Reviews remain one of the main reasons people shop there. Yet finding your own reviews as a customer is now a frustrating maze.

Amazon has shifted its focus toward seller-facing tools and monetization. For this reason, customer-facing profile features like all your reviews on one page have been relegated to lower priority and quietly buried. Reviews still appear on a product’s page.

But finding all your Amazon reviews from within your Amazon account is now almost impossible.

Amazon probably benefits more from you browsing and buying than from you managing old reviews, so there’s not much business incentive to make that easy.

It’s a common complaint.

To find your Amazon reviews, do this:

  1. Search for a product you know you’ve reviewed
  2. Find your review on that product page
  3. Click your name on the review
  4. That takes you to your reviewer profile page
  5. Bookmark that page for future use!
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3 Functions of Dialogue

Reality Coaching for Writers

3 Functions of Dialogue

3 Functions of Dialogue… Dialogue sets the rhythm and pattern of natural speech. If characters talk but say nothing, the story falls flat.

Dialogue defines characters. The way they address one another—answering a question with a question, trading banter, giving guarded answers, or firing off sharp remarks—shows who they are. This builds tension and adds conflict.

Dialogue lets the reader eavesdrop and observe what happens without explanation. It can slow or increase the pace, but it draws the reader closer to the action and places them in the scene.

Dialogue must do three things: advance the plot, change the pace, and define character. It must pull the reader toward the story’s resolution.

Ask these questions of your scene’s dialogue:

  • Does each passage define or strengthen character?
    • Does it energize the scene?
    • Does it add mood and immediacy?
    • Does it shift the pace?
    • Does it move the plot forward?
    • Does it, as John Gardner says, create the fictional dream that lets the reader hear and see what happens without explanation?

If not, tweak until you can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the moment.

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