Y?

Episodic. That's something you don't want your book to be. It means that scenes are independant of each rather than building off each other. It's the reason I didn't like the movie Four Christmases or Did You Hear About the Morgans? None of the scenes really mattered.

If you are plotting out your book, it all needs to lead to a climax. So what you do is give your characters a lot of Ys in the road. Every situation they find themselves in should be based on a previous decision they made. Like one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure novels.

Sometimes your character will make good decisions and sometimes they won't. But because of each decision they make, they eventually end up at the life-changing Y--the Y where they feel like they really don't have the control and the decision is already made for them or that they are going to lose either way.

This is where they realize that the lie they've believed all along is not true. They embrace the truth and overcome the Y.

Simple? Yes. Easy? No. Realistic? Unfortunately. Y? Because we've all been there ourselves.