Jun 15, 2026 · 12 min · 8 segments
🎙 Lately, I've noticed the same problem arising in novel after novel: nothing happens. Literary or genre, doesn't matter. Too many stories mistake explanation for action, leaving readers trapped in…
Douglas VigliottiHost[gentle music] Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do.
So this week, I am doing another edition of Off Script, and I'm going to share with you the number one problem with so many published novels.
I know that's a big, grandiose statement, and I promise I will deliver on it.
Aside from the fact that nobody cares, [chuckles] which to me is a marketing failure, not a craft one, I'm going to share the number one craft issue, so let me be pretty specific about that.
And before you say this is a novel, and so there's all these variations on how you could write a novel, and I get all that, but let me preface by saying I know that this is a novel and what I am about to comment on, whether it is literary or commercial, I will give you examples of both.
Plenty of pure literary examples don't do the thing that I am about to share with you.
And just to prove it, you can actually go into the back list of this podcast, and most of the books that I've shared with you don't do what I am about to share with you.
Having said that, there are a large number of published books that do violate the number one problem.
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