We saw this article by Hope at Story Embers, and we wondered–has this ever happened to you?

Have you ever been working on a story that just won’t click?

You write and you write and you poke and you prod and no matter what changes you implement, the story just isn’t…fixing. Something is off and you can’t identify what it is.

Sometimes that’s just writing. Because we all know the writing life isn’t easy. It doesn’t always feel fun. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but enough pounding away and perseverance will pull you through. 

Sometimes, though, our story is actually…wrong. Sometimes, we actually do need to uproot the foundations of our story and rework the whole thing.

It’s happened to me. I rewrote a novella from the wrong character’s point of view. The story wasn’t clicking, until I realized that it was actually the brother’s story, not the sister’s. A shift of pov and all the related changes, and suddenly the story fell in place in ways I hadn’t even imagined.

I’m not the only one. Plenty of us have been there.

Maybe you’re there right now. Trying to figure out if you just need more brainstorming or if you’re actually writing the wrong story?