This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 611th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

Your story isn't working here or six problems to troubleshoot.

So if you're here because you feel your story isn't working, you're not alone.

Most writers feel that way about most of the stories they write. The good news is you can probably salvage your current story

by troubleshooting a few key areas. And one way to learn how to accomplish this is to learn

what didn't work in certain stories.

Today I am offering myself up as a guinea pig.

A few years ago I shared an episode called Lessons from a Lost Novel, in which I talked about a story that hadn't

worked out for me and what I was later able to realize were its stumbling blocks.

Today it's time for round two. If you're a regular listener, you know I recently moved on from a novel I struggled with for years before admitting it just didn't work.

Today I want to analyze some of the missteps I made early on in writing this story and what the advantage of time now tells me I could have done to avoid all its problems. Almost all these mistakes could happen in any type of novel.

My hope is that, with the benefit of my experiences with this story, you may be able to catch some of these problems much earlier on in

your own manuscripts.

So first a little background.

The story I was working on was intended to transform my already

published standalone portal fantasy Dreamlander into a trilogy. This story is about a man

from our world who is the only person in his generation with the ability to wake up in his dreams in a fantasy-ask world parallel to our own.

Without spoiling the ending too much, I will say I tied off the loose

ends in a way that made a sequel difficult. But then, one night, while daydreaming

at a campfire, I came up with an idea that would allow my

hero to return to his lost love in the land of dreams for another apocalyptic adventure.

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