Twenty Solutions to Common Story Problems

MCSWEENEY'S QUARTERLY SUBSCRIPTIONS

1.

Problem: The story you are writing has plot holes.

Solution: Unreliable narrator.

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2.

Problem: The story you are writing has severe, glaring plot holes.

Solution: Unreliable narrator with amnesia.

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3.

Problem: Even an unreliable narrator with amnesia can’t explain the plot hole typhoon raging across this entire godforsaken story.

Solution: Time travel.

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4.

Problem: You are not a very good writer.

Solution: Your narrator is not a very good writer.

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5.

Problem: You are bad at dialogue.

Solution Your main characters are robots. (Advanced: Any character with a speaking role is a robot.) Welcome to the avant-garde.

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6.

Problem: Even a world populated exclusively by robots can’t explain the wooden manner in which your characters talk.

Solution: Eliminate dialogue. (May require: narrator with logorrhea).

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7.

Problem: Inconsistent tonal shifts across different sections of your story.

Solution: Multiple narrators.

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8.

Problem: Inconsistent tonal shifts across every section and subsection of your story.

Solution Multiple narrators with multiple personalities.

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9.

Problem: Catastrophic tonal shifts across every section and subsection of a story you hauled off and started writing as if you’re the kind of person who successfully does things like that.

Solution: Multiple narrators inside every paragraph. (Advanced: every sentence). Welcome to the avant-garde.

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10.

Problem: Your story lacks tension.

Solution: Ticking time bomb.

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11.

Problem: Your story lacks so much tension your ticking time bomb sounds like a soothing metronome.

Solution: Your story is ASMR.

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12.

Problem: The ASMR community doesn’t appreciate you using their genre category to reframe what is clearly a “you” problem.

Solution: Cut every other sentence. (May require: deranged narrator.) Welcome to the avant-garde.

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13.

Problem: You can’t get your characters out of a particular room or location.

Solution: Urgent telegram.

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14

Problem: Your characters are still in the room or location.

Solution: Swarm of bees.

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15.

Problem: Your characters burn the telegram, kill the bees, eat the bees, and say they would sooner die than leave the room or location.

Solution: The room or location has magical properties / they are trapped. (See: Luis Buñuel, The Exterminating Angel.) Welcome to the avant-garde, obviously.

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16.

Problem: One of your characters has become tired and unlikable, but killing them takes up too much narrative bandwidth.

Solution: Character is possessed by a fresh, relatively likable demon.

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17.

Problem: Most of your characters have already been possessed by a demon, some even twice.

Solution: Gather any remaining semi-likable characters and ensnare them in a cult.

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18.

Problem: While researching cults for your semi-likable characters to be ensnared by, you accidentally get ensnared by an actual cult.

Solution: Honestly, it’s not that different.

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19.

Problem: You love your semi-likable characters so much you are incapable of inflicting trials and tribulations on them.

Solution: Set your story in a dystopia where everything is eerily perfect.

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20.

Problem: You hate your semi-likable characters so much that you relentlessly inflict unspeakable trials and tribulations on them.

Solution: Nice work.

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