If Your Story is Not Compelling

If your story is not compelling to the reader you should delete it and move on to one that is.
Here are five questions I’ve collected that you can ask of your story to determine if it will pull the reader in:

1. What is the big problem?
There must be something your character has to deal with. “One big 300-page problem.”* If your protagonist has several small issues nibbling at her, remove them all and create one big one. Perhaps one that appears insurmountable. A bunch of small to medium annoyances might reflect real life, but does not make good story.
2. What does this main character want?
Luckily you know the answer to this now that you’ve answered #1 above. It should be clear to your reader that they want to solve/avoid/control/eliminate the big problem.
3. How many drafts have you written?
It takes about 10 drafts maybe 11 to get a story down. Then there are more. About two more drafts are needed to tighten the voice (usually) by deleting extra words so that the ones left carry the weight.
4. Are you minding the story over the language?
Do you have beautiful language, charming characters, and settings in terrific detail demonstrating a command of vocabulary and flourish that will make your readers’ heads spin? Beginning writers are really good at creating prose that has no energy. These stories often have no clear answer to questions 1 & 2. These stories are usually a result of #3. If there is any possibility of the reader misunderstanding or misinterpreting the meaning of a sentence, fix it. Simplify the language so that this is not a possibility.
5. Are you at any point informing the reader?
Does your story have flashbacks, summaries of meaning, more than 50-word passages of description or explanation? Root these out. “Flashbacks are always a bad idea. They are fundamentally and inherently a bad idea. They are a dramatic crutch. The way to resolve this perceived need is to move ahead in the story. Flashbacks are for writers who are too lazy to work details into the action. It is never permissible to inform the reader of anything.”^

* To quote Dan Barden. Of course if you’re writing a short-story, one big 10 or 20-page problem.
^ Ibid