How to Fix a Boring Story

Suspense is the key.

Boring stories aren’t always bad stories.

I should know too. I’ve told way too many boring stories over the years.

You can tell when someone’s bored of the words coming out your mouth. It starts in the eyes, and slowly makes its way down the face before ending in the neck, turning them into a confused bobble-head that just mutters to itself…

“Yeah, yeah… uh-huh, uh-huh… yup…”

It’s painful. The best you can do is rush through it and say something witty at the end.

They laugh. You laugh. But you both die a little inside.

The story isn’t the problem. Told right, vacuuming is interesting.

Instead, it’s probably a lack of suspense. And the easiest way to fix that is by adding urgency, stakes, and promises to your story.

“The King died and then the Queen died is a story. The King died and then the Queen died of grief is a plot.” - E.M. Forster

Every single word, sentence and paragraph in a thriller needs to be there. There’s no fluff or whimsical prose — only substance.

The hero is relatable, and the villains are memorable.

The pacing is fast and the stakes are high.

The plot has twists, cliffhangers, and is layered with conflict and deception, with an ending that leaves you both exhausted and satisfied.

Thrillers get you where you need to go, but they don’t waste time doing it. They’re punctual, concise, and built to keep the reader asking, “and then what happens?”

Stories aren’t just novels.

They’re songs, businesses, sports performances and home design. They’re how we teach our children right from wrong, and how we dress for a job interview.

Learn the art of suspense, and it could very well change your life.

This is how you do it.

Dan Brown, the author of “The DaVinci Code”, “Angels and Demons”, and “Origin”, famously talks about the three C’s of suspense — the Clock, Crucible, and Contract.

The Clock

We’ve all been part of a never ending story…

You know the one… you’re at a dinner party, talking with a friend of a friend, and just when you think it’s over, it blows past the finish line and takes a turn into the weeds…

Without urgency, there’s no tension. Without tension, there’s no investment. Without investment, you officially have a boring story.

In a thriller, “The Clock” is a mechanism for urgency. Oftentimes it’s literal, but it can also be figurative.

Maybe the hero has 24 hours before something terrible happens. Or, maybe the hero’s been poisoned, with their health steadily declining.

Either way, the story must be resolved before time runs out.

This doesn’t mean you need to tell the story quickly. Instead, it just needs to feel like it’s progressing towards something at a reasonable rate.

Maybe it’s a specific note in a song. Maybe it’s the reason you’re upset.

In the end, that’s the gig. Get them where they want to go without wasting their time. If you can do that, your story could be hours long and no one would care.

If you can’t, it doesn’t matter if your story is only 30 seconds long — it’s still boring.

The Crucible

Sometimes, you have to go through with it, no matter the outcome. The only question is how you go about doing it.

This is “The Crucible”. It’s a forcing move that both removes and provides choices.

Essentially you’re saying, “okay, I can’t get out of this. So, do I go this way or that way?”

In a thriller, the hero has no choice but to see things through. How they choose to do that is what makes it interesting.

If your story doesn’t have a crucible, it’s not a story — it’s just details. And that’s okay. Not everything needs to be a story.

But if you’re actually trying to tell a story, there needs to be a crucible, otherwise there’s too many choices available to make it interesting.

Bring things to a fork in the road, and you’ll have people on the edge of their seats. Bring them to an open field, and you’ll lose them in the grass.

The Contract

When you’re telling a story, you’re just promising to answer a question.

“Will the hero get there in time?”

“Where did they find it?”

“Who ate the last cookie?”

“What is that smell?”

“The Contract” is a promise. You’re saying, “if you give me a bit of your time, I’ll let you know what happens.”

There can even be multiple promises.

Start with one question, and lead them to a second. Fulfill one promise, and make them two more.

When done right, you have a satisfying story on your hands. When done poorly, it’ll just piss people off.

Promises create investment in the story. People want to know what happens. If you fail to answer those promises, you have plot holes, and it ruins the story.

This is how you create suspense.

You propose a problem or ask a question, and then with a sense of urgency lead them to choice that had to be made. From there you explain the fallout of the choice and answer all the questions you asked along the way.

Your story doesn’t need to be a thriller, but it needs to have some suspense.

Romance has suspense. Driving to work has suspense. Grandpa putting on his socks is the height of suspenseful storytelling.

If your story doesn’t have suspense, it might not be a bad story, but it’s definitely a boring one.