Plot is what happens. Structure is the order you find it out in.…

Plot is what happens. Structure is the order you find it out in. Almost every story problem I have had was the second one wearing the first one as a costume.

The tell is when a scene is fine and boring. Nothing wrong with it; nothing happening either. Nine times out of ten that scene is fine and boring because the reader already knows what it contains. It is delivering information that arrived two chapters ago, and moving it earlier or later fixes it without changing a word.