What to do when your story is falling apart

Don’t give up and take that L too soon. A lot of the time your story is salvageable if you go about it the right way.

Hello friends, and happy (belated) start to spring! I hope you’ve all been eagerly coming out of your winter cocoons and enjoying a little more sun and nicer weather (if that’s the case where you live, anyway).

Today we’re going to talk about how to proceed when your story just ... isn’t working. Stories fall apart for a million reasons, but that doesn’t always mean the story is dead. A lot of the time, they’re totally salvageable with a little extra effort!

Pretty early on after I became an editor, I was working with a freelancer on a story about disintegrating familial relationships. We had a general perspective and outline, a plan of action, and a pretty direct route forward. We were both pumped about it!

A few weeks later, the freelancer emailed me: sources were disappearing, the background reporting wasn’t aligning with what we thought the story was, and the writer felt that our plan was caving in. We talked about a few ways to dig ourselves out, but, eventually, the writer just stopped responding.

This, of course, is an example of what not to do when your story is falling apart. What could have eventually become a helpful, relatable story about family and relationships turned into ... nothing. This freelancer had called the game too early and ghosted.

Don’t do that! Believe me when I say that editors genuinely want to work with you through the entire process, even when it gets ugly, and it’s quite literally their job to do so. (In this editor’s opinion, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences for an editor.)

Stories fall apart. It happens to freelancers fresh to the industry and to veteran staff reporters who have been on a beat for 15 years. It’s not unique, it didn’t just happen to you, it doesn’t reflect on your skills or temperament as a journalist, and it most certainly doesn’t mean it’s automatically time to throw in the towel. Sources disappear, the reporting is completely counter to what you thought the story was (literally happened to me this week on a story I’m writing for next month), you get into the weeds and realize there just isn’t anything there, the moment passes ... these things happen, and a lot of the time it’s simply out of your hands. It sucks, it’s stressful, it can feel like failure, but this is the life we signed up for as journalists. Your editor understands this, and you won’t be the first freelancer whose story fell out from under them.

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Upcoming Zoom workshop, please join me!

• April 23 @ 4:30 p.m. Eastern: How to write story pitches editors will actually read — and commission. Join me for an in-depth examination of what goes into a fantastic story pitch. How do you structure it? What must be in it, and what should you leave out? How much pre-reporting should you do? How can you head off the follow-up questions an editor will inevitably ask? How do you even find editors to pitch or know what publication to shoot for? We’ll cover all that and much, much more in this workshop. (All registrants will receive a playback of the full session, whether they attend live or not, and paid Substack subscribers get 50% off admission.)

P.S. — I know a few folks had trouble accessing a previous one of these; if that’s you, email me directly and I’ll comp you into this one.

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But! With some redirection, refocusing, and reframing — sometimes a little, often a lot — even the most hopeless of stories can turn into something beautiful. *insert awful, tired cliché about how pressure makes diamonds*

So we know what not to do — give up, ghost, abandon the idea, generally just write off the story — but what can you do to pull a story back from the brink?

Here are a few simple Dos and Don’ts to pull the body out of the trainwreck.

Do: Communicate

This is by far the most important part. Again, editors have been to this rodeo before. To a certain degree, it’s expected! But the moment you realize things aren’t shaping up as you thought they would, just reach out. A super simple email laying out exactly what’s going on is the best move here, and it doesn’t have to be complicated:

“Hey, can we hop on the phone when you have a minute? It’s starting to look like our story isn’t panning out how we thought it might. [X source pulled out, Y research showed something totally opposite, Z time peg has passed unexpectedly soon], so I’d love to chat through some ideas with you.”

That’s it! When things look shaky, communication is your ladder out of the hole. It might seem like an insurmountably uncomfortable conversation, but truly, honestly, it’s not.

Don’t: Keep the problems to yourself

The worst thing you can do here is never mention the problems and then file a story completely different from the version you talked about with your editor. No editor in the world will be upset when a writer tells them things aren’t looking great at the moment, but editors will be miffed if you file a 900-word explainer when the agreed-upon idea was a 2,000-word narrative feature. It’s perfectly fine that every single thing isn’t working out! They rarely do. But resist the impulse to try to fix everything on your own. You’re not on your own here.

Do: Bring ideas

I know, I know, we’ve all heard it before: Don’t bring problems without bringing solutions. That worn-out axiom certainly applies here. Even if you don’t have a fully formed idea, at least try to have a few rough thoughts about potential paths forward. It’s the editor’s job to work with you and help shape those thoughts into ways forward.

Similarly, it’s important to have some specifics about what’s not working with the story. The editor won’t have any clues on how to fix it if you don’t tell them what’s wrong, so be forthright (however awkward that might feel in the moment) about exactly what is falling apart.

Don’t: Expect your editor to completely fix everything

This is still your story, and as much as your editor can help you with it, they can do only so much; you still have to report and write it. A good editor will be there every step of the way, but at the end of the day, they can’t report your story for you. I know this seems self-evident and obvious, but you would be astounded how many times a writer will file what is essentially an outline and expect the editor to do the rest. (Like, for real, it happens way more than you think.) Your editor can, and should, help devise solutions, but the writer is still the one who has to execute.

Do: Establish a realistic revised timeline

If you bring up the issues early enough, an extended timeline will almost literally never be a problem. (But, of course, nothing is ever guaranteed in life, sigh.) If you think you’ll need an extra two weeks to iron things out, just ask for the full two weeks. If you realize — and communicate — the problems as soon as you encounter them, reworking a pub sked is generally not a major problem. (Bringing these up a week before your pub date, on the other hand ...)

Don’t: Force it if it’s not there

We’ve all had to deal with it, probably many times: The story just isn’t meant to be. It happens. Take the loss — and if you’re lucky, the kill fee! — and start on your next story. A few years ago I was unbelievably excited about a story idea I loved and successfully sold to GQ, but for a multitude of reasons it utterly unraveled and there just wasn’t a way to bring it back to life. This sucks in the moment, so give yourself a beat to be bummed, but don’t linger. It comes with the territory.

Do: Forget it and move on

Fail, recover, retry. That’s all we can do. (And if you’re doing things right, you should be failing a whoooole lot.)

Good luck out there!

Oh, a few other things …

• How much were you paid for your last assignment? Feel free to contribute to our ongoing freelance rate database here. And if you’d just like to see the regularly updated database, check it out here.

• Sell a pitch recently? I want to see it! If you had a story picked up not long ago, I’d love to feature you and your story in our ongoing series highlighting pitches that sold. Email me at tim@freelancingwithtim.com and put “Pitches that sold” in the subject line. Can’t wait to see ’em!

• I offer one-on-one coaching! Is your story falling apart and you need a second pair of eyes on it? Want a seasoned perspective on a pitch you’re kicking around? Interested in talking about careers and building your freelance business? Maybe just want an edit on a story draft? I’ve got you covered! Click below to book a one-on-one coaching session to talk about pitches, story ideas and development, editing, careers, or anything else you might need help with!