Every writer hits that moment. You're making steady progress. Things are coming together. You're in the last third of writing the book, and then something in the story just doesn’t work.
For me, it happened this past week while writing Rise of the Variel. I was deep into the draft—Chapter 29, to be exact—when I realized I had a problem I couldn’t ignore. A plot hole.
Not a small one, either. The kind that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
The Problem I Couldn’t Ignore
It doesn't involve the dragons. It's a character who needs to get into a temple… unseen.
And no matter how I approached it, something didn’t add up. I could force it, sure—but it would break the logic of the story. And that’s not something I’m willing to do.
So I stepped back and started working through it.
Patching the Story
Fixing it didn’t mean tearing everything apart. Instead, it meant going back and adding what I call patches—small changes in earlier chapters that make everything line up the way it should have all along.
The first patch came easily.
The second one didn’t.
That’s the one that stopped me.
Stuck in the Middle
I tried different angles. Different motivations. Different paths into the scene. Every option felt off. They didn't work to solve the problem because magic has rules, and breaking them creates another problem somewhere else.
It’s that frustrating place where you know the answer is there… you just can’t see it yet.
When the Answer Came
And then, I dreamed it. It was like I was living in the pages of the book. Not in some dramatic, lightning-bolt kind of way. Just a quiet moment where the solution finally made sense.
When I checked my sleep tracker the next morning, I’d had over 4.5 hours of REM sleep. Apparently, my brain decided to keep working long after I’d given up for the night.
And it worked.
The solution didn’t just fix the scene; it made the story stronger. It fit in a way nothing else had.
Getting There
It’s still a first draft, and I know when I go back through it, I’ll find more places that need patches. That’s part of the process.
But there’s something incredibly satisfying about getting close to a complete story—something I can finally step back and shape into what it’s meant to be.
I’m getting there.