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I’ve always gravitated to unusual, eye-catching furniture and decor in my homes. I’m very deliberate about my choices–I choose items I love to look at, that have something interesting or different about them. I’m not remotely afraid of bold color or textures or shapes.

For example I inherited this cocktail table from my dad, and these fantastic stools that I remember folding my little fingers into all the crevices of their faces when I was no taller than they are.

I found this delightful hutch, made from the side rails of an oxcart, at a Balinese store in St. Pete, Florida, while visiting a friend and fell so wildly in love with it that I couldn’t stop thinking about it and took another trip back to the area just to buy it. And nearly every piece of art I own is something that draws my eye and makes a statement.

Each of these items is distinctive and carefully chosen and gives me great pleasure to engage with.

But I don’t think I was doing them full justice until a decorator our real estate agent hired to stage our first house together complimented the individual pieces, but gently pointed out what I’d overlooked: The eye didn’t know where to look, the pieces felt random and cluttered, and I’d failed to fully consider the most important principle of home decor: how well all the individual choices worked together.

Why Stories Don’t Feel Cohesive

I bring up my design lesson to illustrate an issue I frequently see in stories that aren’t quite working as well as they could: No matter how well thought out or developed the individual elements might be, the overall story may not be as effective and satisfying as it could be because it lacks cohesion.

Here’s what that often looks like:

• The author may have created intriguing characters with interesting histories that set up a compelling character arc, but it’s not clear how it’s intrinsically tied to the events of the plot.
• The character may have a well-thought-out “wound” or misbelief, but readers don’t see on the page how it impacts their choices, actions, and reactions to story developments, or their interactions and relationships with other characters.
• It’s not clear how the characters’ particular knowledge, strengths, abilities, or experience make them uniquely suited to drive the action of the story and face and resolve the challenges of the plot.
• It’s not clear how the character’s specific flaws, limitations, or struggles—what’s holding them back, keeping them stuck, or standing in their way—makes them uniquely vulnerable to the challenges and obstacles they face in the story.
• The consequences for the character (stakes) aren’t directly affected by or germane to the action of the story.
• It’s not clear why this character is essential to driving the action of this story—or whether the character actually does (agency).

Story is a tapestry, and no matter how lovely each thread may be, if they aren’t woven cohesively together you’re just going to wind up with a colorful mishmash. Every element should be deliberately chosen and incorporated to create a nuanced, textured picture and develop and further the story as a whole.

Let’s consider a specific example of what that might look like.

How to Integrate Your Story Elements

Here’s a hypothetical story premise: A perfectionist chef in danger of losing her restaurant because of flagging patronage competes on a cooking show to raise her profile and win the $25K prize she needs to save her business—only to find one of the other contestants is the ex who broke her heart years ago.

This logline has the basic features good story needs: a protagonist with a clear and specific goal, inherent conflict, and a trait that plants the seeds of a character arc: her perfectionism.

But what I often see is that even when authors have laid solid groundwork like this, they may neglect to fully develop and unify these core elements to create the kind of cohesion that leads to compelling, satisfying stories. Readers may see the character’s perfectionistic tendencies but they don’t play a key role in her arc or the plot. Or the career and romance elements don’t feel tied to each other.

How to Fix It

For starters, readers need some idea where her perfectionism came from—which means mining out what core longing or lack the adaptive behavior is trying to fill. That crucial backstory and character development are intrinsic parts of the motivations behind her actions, behaviors, choices, and reactions that must drive the plot.

Read more: “Beyond Character Goal and Motivation: The Longing and the Lack”

Let’s say in the chef’s case, she was the only girl in a family of boys and her father made it clear he didn’t expect much of her compared to her brothers—so she was determined to excel in everything to earn his love and approval (consciously or subconsciously).

We need to also understand how that adaptive trait of perfectionism shaped her into the person she is when we “meet” her at her point A, which will continue to flesh out her character and history. What role did it play in her becoming a chef? Owning her own restaurant? In her standards and goals for her business and herself? These are essential core drivers of her character and her journey in the story as well, which give meaning and weight to what’s at stake and shape and propel the plot.

Consider how the central “flaw” you’re building her arc around may not only be hampering the character, but also how it may be serving her (after all, there’s a reason we cling to these maladaptive behaviors: they offer us something).

Perhaps her perfectionism made her top of her class at culinary school, which garnered her a prime internship or mentorship or job working with a high-profile chef, which set the stage for her to open her own restaurant. Perhaps she truly does create inspired, original dishes, or puts in long hours of hard work that have led to her success thus far.

But the story also needs to show how her perfectionism is holding her back or keeping her stuck or getting in the way of her external goal(s) in the story: saving her restaurant and making it (and herself) a huge success. In other words, it’s also the main reason she hasn’t done or achieved what she wants yet, and the story must be about showing how she finally addresses and deals with whatever that inner challenge is even as she faces the external challenges of the plot itself: winning the show, dealing with her ex and her feelings about him—the latter of which should in turn also tie in somehow to her central character flaw or lack.

In other words, what role did her perfectionism play in whatever happened in their relationship? In stories that don’t feel cohesive, readers don’t see that it does—in those cases, for instance, perhaps he dumped her because his career was on the rise and he left her behind, or she thought he was cheating, or he wanted something she didn’t.

Creating cohesive, fully developed stories means connecting all the threads in the tapestry, though—and the character’s arc should be directly germane to every development of the plot.

The character’s arc should be directly germane to every development of the plot.

That means her perfectionism needs to have also played a key role in whatever went wrong between her and her ex too, so we see how this central flaw has been holding the protagonist back in all areas of her life, not just isolated to her career.

And finally dealing with it head-on should also be essential to the development and resolution of her relationship with him now—as well as to what happens in the competition and with her career and business. It’s all one interconnected web, every strand integral and essential to the whole.

So for instance, perhaps her perfectionism—which stems from her core longing for love and approval (most core motivations tend to stem back to Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs)—drove her to believe that those desires were to be achieved by being widely regarded as the best and most successful in her field, which drove her to work impossibly long hours, obsess constantly about new recipes and ideas for the business, focus on external validation from critics and customers.

And those issues, we might discover over the course of the story, were central to what went wrong with her and her ex: He felt sidelined, never important enough or the focus of her attention, and even in the little time she granted to him and their relationship she was never fully “present.”

Or maybe her perfectionism at work carried over into her relationship and she approached it the same way: Always trying to work harder, make it better, win love and approval. Perhaps that made her ex feel as if he wasn’t enough for her because she was always trying to “fix” their relationship; or that he never knew the real her; or maybe because she never felt she was enough for him, she sabotaged or undercut their dynamic.

But that perfectionism also needs to be central to her current situation at her point A independently of him: How has it contributed to her business’s gradual failure? Maybe she gets so involved in creating the newest, most intricate, most exclusive dishes that her costs are wildly out of control and her consumer base dwindles. Or maybe she focuses so much on creating perfect, spectacular food, she’s neglected all the other parts of dining out that draw a loyal customer base: personal relationships, a warm and welcoming environment.

We also need to see what role that perfectionism plays in what happens with the competition, how it creates obstacles for her there, too—which, together with the amplified pressure of facing those same demons with the appearance of her ex, builds to the point that she is finally—likely for the first time in her life—forced to deal with this core issue.

And even beyond that, to create a fully cohesive story, we want to see how these elements interrelate: How the fallout from what happened with her ex might have factored into the downfall of her business, how being faced with him again contributes to her actions and behaviors in the competition, and how all of that plays into the bigger picture of how her perfectionism has affected her business and her life—and what role it plays in each of these areas.

And we need to see how all of that combines to move her along her arc toward recognizing what’s holding her back in each of these areas, finally dealing with the core lack that sparked her perfectionistic adaptive behavior, and ultimately overcoming it (or failing to, if this is a darker story).

That’s how we see how the character is changed by the events of the plot—which is the soul of story. Every piece is part of the Jenga puzzle: inextricably related, the structure losing its integrity if any of them aren’t fully developed and incorporated into the whole.

And the final piece is the denouement, or resolution: the glimpse readers get at the end of the story after the climax where we get to see the character’s transformed life as a result of finally having dealt with what was keeping her stuck in all these areas of her life—i.e., her perfectionism: She wins the competition but realizes that it’s not the arbiter of her worth, for instance. Or she loses it or even throws it because she’s realized that it doesn’t matter whether she’s perceived as “the best” if she’s loving what she does and sharing and connecting with people over it. Or she learns that her passion for food and her personal relationships are what really matter, etc.

And as a result of that realization, perhaps she’s able to reopen the door with her ex, thanks to her growth in having dealt with the deleterious effects of her perfectionism–or maybe she’s finally able to let go of her heartbreak over him, realizing that their breakup and his opinion of her have nothing to do with her worth.

Those resolutions mark the completion of the character’s journey, the satisfying resolution of both her arc and the plot.

That’s how you create a deeply engaging and impactful journey for readers: by expertly weaving together what may initially seem like disparate elements into a tightly woven, nuanced, textured and cohesive tapestry of story, where each element is essential to the whole.

If you want to dig deeper into how to create cohesive story through intrinsically linking its key elements, join me (with Jane Friedman) for my brand-new class, “The Holy Trinity of Fiction: Connecting Character, Plot, and Stakes.” Weds., Jan 14 at 1pm ET, recording available for registrants; $25/$35.

Over to you, authors: What challenges do you face in developing your stories and ensuring that every strand of the web is essential and woven into the rest?

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