Diagnoses why your story, post or talk falls flat — missing stakes, buried conflict, weak turn — and prescribes the structural fix.
Diagnose my story's structure. It's a {PERSONAL ESSAY / TALK / BLOG NARRATIVE / SHORT STORY / CASE STUDY} and it feels {FLAT / SLOW / POINTLESS / RUSHED — my own diagnosis if I have one}.
Examine against the load-bearing elements:
1. STAKES: what does the protagonist stand to lose? If nothing, that's the flatness. Where can
stakes be raised or revealed earlier?
2. DESIRE vs. OBSTACLE: what do they want, what's in the way? Is the obstacle worthy (external AND internal)?
3. THE TURN: the moment something changes irreversibly. Does mine have one? Is it buried, or does it arrive too easily?
4. SCENE vs. SUMMARY: mark where I'm summarizing ("things got harder") where I should be in-scene (dialogue, sensory detail, real time). The most important beat must be a scene.
5. OPENING/ENDING PAIR: does the ending answer something the opening raised? The best endings are surprising-yet-inevitable.
Deliver: the ONE structural problem hurting it most → the specific fix → rewrite my weakest
section to demonstrate → then a beat-sheet of my story as it SHOULD flow.
MY DRAFT: {PASTE}