Forging your story's chain of progressively escalating complications

Make your character happen to the story by giving them the agency to respond, choose, and act in some minute way in every scene.

Most manuscripts I coach or edit struggle with the same issue: Writers know their characters need more problems, but they can't connect those problems into something that feels inevitable. They craft brilliant scenes—a tense confrontation here, a shocking revelation there—but then wonder why readers call the story "episodic."

The missing ingredient isn'…