Technicalities

I'm a technical writer, plain and simple. I put stuff into boxes and box those boxes in bigger boxes until I know where everything goes and that makes writing simple. I apparently have the talent to make my boxes all sparkly and shit but that doesn't mean that I have a hold of everything, most things...but not everything. One of my friends (deemed magna editor) said that one of my stories didn't have a soul. What annoyed me about this analysis wasn't its inaccuracy, because by all means I got what she meant...but the problem with a story that's soulless, or dry, or something more metaphysically bad, is that you can't simply pin down the issue with a technical fix...Meaning all my sparkly ass boxes are USELESS...and I like my boxes. But when I come to realize that the boxes don't fix everything I'm sort of suck with a dumb expression, the kind that means I'm not really sure what to do or where to go or how to fix the problem. Sadly, the only way to fix a soulless story that I've figure out, is to like it more...which goes into an entirely different set of boxless difficulties that I don't feel like dealing with right now.