How My Best-Selling Book Almost Flopped (And the One Change That Saved It)

There’s a version of Tear Stained Beaches that has never seen the light of day.

Not because the idea was bad.

Not because the characters didn’t work.

But because the way I told the story made it… boring.

I can still see that email I received from my editor. Yes, she used the word boring. My heart sank.

Part of my soul was entwined in Haley’s story.

Hearing that such an emotional, raw, and heart-wrenching story was boring…well, it hurt.

I sat with it for a bit. Then I did something about it.

This is the story of how to add emotional depth in a novel with one simple structure change.

And why I truly feel that Tear Stained Beaches would not consistently be my best-selling book every year if I hadn’t done that.

The Original Version: Technically Fine, Emotionally Flat

In the first draft, I told the story the “right” way.

Beginning.

Middle.

End.

Everything happened in order. On paper, it worked.

Haylie lies in bed awake, waiting for Chase to come home, and when he does, the smell of perfume lingers on him like a cheap cigarette. But then she wakes up the next morning and the story progresses from there. We see everything unfold in real time.

The problem with that was that readers had no investment in Haylie at this point. The emotional stakes hadn’t been established yet. There was no reason to feel sad for her. To root for her. To want what was best for her because they didn’t know the depth of her story or what she had to lose.

And for a story that relied heavily on emotional connection, that was a problem.

The Structural Shift That Changed the Entire Story

There were a lot of late nights that I sat with Haylie’s story, trying to figure out where to go from here. In order to do that, there was one big question I had to answer:

How do I get readers emotionally invested from the start?

Here’s the shift I made that allowed me to start adding emotional depth starting in chapter 2.

I rewrote Haylie’s story by layering in flashbacks. Chapter 2 introduces Haylie and Chase’s “meet cute” moment back at a coffee shop in college. This allowed readers to better understand the relationship, become emotionally invested in it, and realize exactly what was at stake for both of them to lose.

In my original manuscript, readers would’ve been watching  events unfold with no behind the scenes intel of who Haylie and Chase were, both separately and as a couple.

That single change truly transformed the emotional impact and investment of this story.

Why This Worked: Emotional Stakes Keep Pages Turning

The Past/Present storyline built depth and allowed for the following to happen:

• The reader met the character at a pivotal moment (a woman lying alone in bed)

• The emotional weight was immediate (the lingering perfume and a tear falling to the pillow)

• The flashbacks felt purposeful (answering questions and building connection and tension with the reader)

• Haylie started to become a version of the reader they recognized instead of just a character on a page.

  
  

Final Thoughts on The Version I Put to Bed

I’m incredibly grateful for the editor who believed in the story even when it wasn’t quite ready and for not being afraid to say it out loud.

The Tear Stained Beaches that I released is so much better because of it. And it taught me a lesson I still use today:

How you tell the story matters just as much as the story itself.

Sometimes, the smallest structural change makes the biggest emotional difference.