1.
Problem: The story you are writing has plot holes.
Solution: Unreliable narrator.
2.
Problem: The story you are writing has severe, glaring plot holes.
Solution: Unreliable narrator with amnesia.
3.
Problem: Even an unreliable narrator with amnesia can’t explain the plot hole typhoon raging across this entire godforsaken story.
Solution: Time travel.
4.
Problem: You are not a very good writer.
Solution: Your narrator is not a very good writer.
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.
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).
7.
Problem: Inconsistent tonal shifts across different sections of your story.
Solution: Multiple narrators.
8.
Problem: Inconsistent tonal shifts across every section and subsection of your story.
Solution Multiple narrators with multiple personalities.
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.
10.
Problem: Your story lacks tension.
Solution: Ticking time bomb.
11.
Problem: Your story lacks so much tension your ticking time bomb sounds like a soothing metronome.
Solution: Your story is ASMR.
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.
13.
Problem: You can’t get your characters out of a particular room or location.
Solution: Urgent telegram.
14
Problem: Your characters are still in the room or location.
Solution: Swarm of bees.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
20.
Problem: You hate your semi-likable characters so much that you relentlessly inflict unspeakable trials and tribulations on them.
Solution: Nice work.
