You Might Be Solving the Wrong Problem
Often the issue isn't the one a writer can see
Writers come to me all the time with a diagnosis already in hand.
“My pacing is too slow.”
“I think I need to restructure the whole book.”
I’m not sure where my inciting incident is.”
“I’m worried I’m boring my reader.”
They’ve been thinking about this for weeks, sometimes months. They’ve read craft books. They’ve gotten feedback from writing groups. They’ve identified what they believe is the problem, and now they want help fixing it.
And most of the time, they’re wrong.
Not about the symptom — the symptom is real. Their writing does feel flat in places, or their readers do lose interest, or the structure does seem wobbly. But the cause isn’t what they think it is.
Here’s what I mean. A writer tells me she’s worried about boring her reader. She’s been working on pacing — cutting scenes, trimming transitions, keeping chapters short, moving fast. She’s done everything she can think of to keep things moving. But something still isn’t working. The writing feels rushed and thin, and she can’t figure out why.
When I look at her pages, the problem isn’t pacing at all. It’s at the sentence level. Her strongest verbs are buried in dependent clauses. Her character hasn’t physically done anything in two pages — she’s only perceived and thought. The grounding details that would put the reader inside the scene are missing from the top of the chapter. And every time something important happens, the writer races through it in a single sentence instead of letting it land.
She thought she needed to go faster. She actually needed to slow down.
The Misdiagnosis Pattern
This pattern shows up constantly, and it usually follows the same path.
The writer senses that something isn’t working. That instinct is correct — something genuinely isn’t landing. But because they can’t see the sentence-level issue (it’s very hard to see in your own work), they reach for the explanation that’s most visible to them: structure, pacing, plot.
So they reorganize chapters. They cut scenes. They add a subplot to “keep things interesting.” They worry about whether the inciting incident is in the right place. They spend weeks on structural questions that may not be the issue at all.
Meanwhile, the real problem — the thing that’s actually making the reader disengage — is happening at the level of individual sentences. And it’s invisible to the writer because they’re looking at the blueprint when the issue is in the bricks.
What Sentence-Level Problems Actually Feel Like to Readers
Here’s why this misdiagnosis happens so easily. Sentence-level problems don’t announce themselves. A reader who encounters a paragraph of weak verbs, buried action, and missing physical detail doesn’t think, “These sentences are structurally flawed.” They think, “I’m bored” or “I can’t connect with this character” or “I keep losing track of what’s happening.”
Those responses sound like pacing problems. They sound like character problems. They sound like structure problems. And so the writer goes to work on pacing, character, and structure — while the actual cause sits untouched at the sentence level, continuing to produce the same symptoms in every chapter.
A character who only perceives and thinks for two pages without doing anything physical feels distant — but the writer hears “I can’t connect with your character” and thinks it’s a character development issue.
A scene where the strong verbs are all stuffed into participial phrases and dependent clauses feels flat — but the writer hears “the pacing drags” and tries to cut the scene shorter.
An opening chapter that jumps between three timelines in four pages feels disorienting — but the writer hears “I got confused” and thinks she needs to restructure the whole book.
In each case, the feedback is accurate. The diagnosis is wrong.
Why You Can’t See It in Your Own Work
This isn’t a failure of intelligence or craft knowledge. It’s a problem of proximity.
When you’ve been living inside your manuscript for months, you can’t experience it the way a reader does. You know what every sentence means. You know where every scene is going. You know what your character looks like, what the room looks like, what happened before this chapter and what happens after. All of that context is in your head, filling in gaps that exist on the page.
So when a sentence buries its strongest verb in a dependent clause, you don’t notice — because you already know what the sentence is trying to say. When your character hasn’t physically acted in two pages, you don’t feel the absence — because you can see her so clearly in your mind that you forget she’s invisible on the page.
This is why so many writers can identify problems in other people’s work that they can’t see in their own. It’s not a skill gap. It’s a perspective gap. And it’s the single best argument for having someone else look at your pages.
What Actually Helps
The writers I work with are almost always surprised by what we find when we look at their sentences together. Not because the issues are obscure or technical — but because they’re simple, specific, and fixable in ways the writer didn’t expect.
Instead of months of structural revision, the fix might be: move your character’s first physical action to page one instead of page three.
Instead of reorganizing your timeline, the fix might be: stop jumping every two pages and let your scenes breathe.
Instead of cutting your chapter in half to improve pacing, the fix might be: break one long sentence into three short ones so your strongest verbs can land.
These aren’t the dramatic interventions writers expect when they come in. They’re small, concrete adjustments that change how the writing feels on the page. And they compound — once you start seeing the patterns, you start writing differently in your first drafts, not just in revision.
What a Strategy Session Looks Like
If any of this sounds familiar — if you’ve been revising the same chapters for months without feeling like you’re making progress, or if the feedback you’re getting doesn’t quite match what you think the problem is — it might be worth having someone look at your pages who isn’t inside your head.
When I do a strategy session, I don’t start with your structure or your plot or your outline. I start with your sentences. I read your pages and tell you what I see happening at the level where readers actually experience your writing. Usually within the first few minutes, a pattern shows up — something concrete and specific that’s producing the symptoms you’ve been chasing.
We don’t try to solve everything. We identify the one or two things that will make the biggest difference right now, and I send you off with a clear sense of what to work on next. That’s it.
This isn’t a sales conversation. If after the call you want to talk about what ongoing coaching would look like, we can set up a separate time for that. But the strategy session is just about your writing and what I find in it.
I’m doing ten of these calls this month. If you’ve been stuck and you’re not sure why, this is a good way to find out.
Happy writing,
Seth Harwood
P.S. These sessions book up quickly, so please check back in 24 hours if there aren’t any times available.