Hi Reader,

Last week, I picked up Sudoku again. I love puzzles. But for no particular reason, I haven’t played Sudoku in probably fifteen years.

I started with the straightforward, obvious strategies I remembered from years ago. With those strategies, I could solve easy puzzles in just a few minutes.

I moved up to medium. There, I had to pull out some strategies from the recesses of my memory, more advanced approaches I’d forgotten about. I struggled with my first medium puzzle for over an hour. But eventually, I solved it, too.

And then I tried a hard puzzle.

I’ve never played hard puzzles before. I realized quickly that the strategies that solve easy and medium puzzles are not enough to solve hard puzzles.

Hard puzzles require yet another set of strategies. They require an even deeper understanding of the relationship between each number in the puzzle.

Without those strategies, I hit a wall. I solved about a third of the puzzle, and then I got stuck.

No matter how hard I stared at the numbers, I could not find the next clue.

At that point, the only way forward I could think of was to guess.

My brother tells me that this is “proof by contradiction.” If both 2 and 7 can fit into a square, and I guess that 2 is in the square, and then when I solve the puzzle further 2 does not work, then I know that 7 must be the answer for that square.

This is a strategy, he assures me.

It makes me think of that Thomas Edison quote about inventing the lightbulb that goes something like this: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Also, it sounds like a pretty labor-intensive and miserable way to play Sudoku.

Have you seen the connection yet?

The craft of telling a great story is another kind of puzzle. Just like in Sudoku, there are strategies that will lead you to the exact clues you need in order to shape a compelling story.

The thing is, when writers use “proof by contradiction” to figure out how their stories should go, they’re not just playing out a Sudoku puzzle using 2 instead of 7.

They write an entire manuscript. 80,000+ words.

They see it isn’t working, somehow, somewhere.

So they make a few changes and try again. 80,000+ more words.

Each proof by contradiction trial is enormously long and slow and laborious. And it’s really, really hard to spot the places where things are going right, the things they shouldn’t change.

It sounds like a pretty labor-intensive and miserable way to craft a story.

The good news is, proof by contradiction is not the only strategy to craft a story.

See, when I hit that wall in my Sudoku puzzle, I knew that there must be enough information in the puzzle to lead me to another clue. I just didn't know how to find the clue.

You also have enough information about your story to lead you to your next clue. But if you don't know the “hard mode” strategies, you can have all the information in the world and still be stuck.

As an editor, I’ve spent years studying the “hard mode” storytelling strategies. I’ve learned the ways to find each clue without first writing 10,000 manuscripts that don’t work.

I use the “hard mode” strategies every time I edit a writer’s novel. And I teach those strategies on the Your Next Draft podcast.

If you’d like to learn them, too, I encourage you to check out the podcast. Start here, with one of my absolute favorite strategies.​

And if you’d like to master the “hard mode” strategies alongside me, join me in the next semester of Scene Mastery. Click here to join the waitlist »​

As long as the proof by contradiction method of storytelling works for you, keep at it.

But if you ever get tired, or lost, or hit a wall, know that the “hard mode” storytelling strategies are ready and waiting to lead you to the exact clue you need.

Happy puzzling,

Alice

​
​

​