How I do it: identifying story weaknesses

In a previous post, How I do it: keeping revisions organized, I discussed my method for tracing particular revision threads throughout a  novel manuscript, tracking them, developing a running list of changes, and methodically tackling those changes.

One of my young writer friends, after reading the post asked, "but how did you figure out what the problems actually were?"
Image credit: clairer at morguefile.com
I rely a good deal on my intuition when it comes to writing decisions, but I also...