Stuck in Your Novel? Use This Simple Story Analysis Method

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck mid-writing—not sure how to develop an idea into a narrative, or not sure where to take your characters next—the problem isn’t with inspiration, but lack of analysis.

We like to think of writing as a creative art, ruled by elusive powers such as the muse and inspiration. We wait for stories to unfold on their own and characters to mystically write themselves as they go through the plot. But if you’ve ever had a staring contest with a blank page, you’ll know that that’s not always the case.

The good news is that there’s a solution to this problem, and this solution is called book-analysis.

Book analysis is a process of high-level planning for the plot and the main characters, and it can help you:

• Understand how to write characters

• Define which events and scenes fit the story

• Set the tone for the book

Whether you’re plotting or pantsing, know what happens in the last chapter or don’t, book analysis can help you get a clear sense of direction, without forcing you to figure things out to the last detail.

Let’s see how.

Understanding How to Write Your Characters

Understanding your characters, their goals, and motivations does two things:

1. It helps you determine what makes sense for the character to do and what doesn’t

2. It adds depth to their quest through external and internal stakes

What you’re basically trying to figure out is who’s doing the thing, what’s the thing they’re doing , and why they’re doing the thing in the first place.

A great way of doing so is asking yourself the following questions about each one of your main characters:

1. What are your character’s strengths?

2. What are their weaknesses?

3. What do they want?

4. What would achieving their goal mean to them?

5. How far are they willing to go to achieve it?

Having this sort of profile for each character makes it clear if any action, response, or feeling of theirs is in alignment. More than that, when you get stuck and don’t know what your character should do next, refer to this cheat sheet, and the answer will become clear.

If, for instance, you’re writing a character whose goal is to become the greatest mage in the world and whose moral compass is low, you’ll know what they’re likely to do if they are faced with a situation in which they have an option to betray a friend for a chance to rise in rank.

You can also use this knowledge to create more obstacles for your characters, raising the stakes of the story. For instance, gifting your protagonist with the rare fear of strawberries, then making them fall in love with a strawberry farmer, to make things more interesting.

Setting the Tone for Your Plot

Characters are the heart of your story, and identifying them, as well as getting to know them better, is the most important part of working on your book (aside from writing it). But what sets a book apart from a random flow of events is plot.

Plot is the next thing you’ll have to identify: the main events and the order in which they take place. Luckily, you don’t need to have everything figured out before you start writing, but you can get an idea of which scenes fit in and which don’t. And you can figure this out by answering the following questions:

1. Where does the story take place?

2. What’s the hidden theme of the story? (Is it about love? Vengeance? Hope? How goblins aren’t actually bad?)

3. What is the story’s tone? Light? Emotional? Dark?

4. What are the main conflicts your heroes will face?

5. How do these conflicts get resolved?

Even without knowing how the story will end, answering these questions helps you ensure there are no loose ends flapping in the wind, that the scenes and events you’re writing fit into the narrative, and match the story’s message and tone.

Say, for instance, you’re writing a story about a brave goblin princess who’s on a quest to save her drunk half-brother from the clutches of a giant hedgehog that’s terrorizing the forest, but secretly wants everyone to like him (and all of this takes place in a dark and dystopian world). Let’s also say that you find yourself writing a scene in which this goblin heroine encounters a unicorn and they sing a duet about daffodils.

Knowing the answers to the above questions can help you figure out if this scene moves the plot along and if it fits in, which, in this case, it doesn’t. Unless the song is dark, the scene clearly doesn’t fit the tone of the story. And unless the song is also the means to cast a spell to defeat the hedgehog, it doesn’t really move the plot along.

The decision then might be that the scene, while wonderful and whimsical, just doesn’t belong here and should probably go.

Final Thoughts

Inspiration is a great thing, but sometimes, it can only carry you so far. And when inspiration runs out, it’s analysis that can get you unstuck and give you a clear path forward.

You don’t need to know what happens in your book down to the last detail, but as long as you understand:

• Your characters, their goals and motivation

• The tone

• The theme

• The main events of your book

knowing what to write next should become less of an issue.

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