Actually, the Work-in-Progress has a problem.
Which is that the Characters are cruising competently through all the steps they need to solve the problem, without a setback, a misstep, or a single failure. This is not good.
It is, in fact, a good way to bore the reader.
Drat. Now I have to kill someone. Or at least injure them. Mere inconvenience doesn’t count. My main character has to . . . f . . . f . . . fail!
Not just a little oopsie, he has to fail big. Then get back up and try again. And again.
I’m sure I could make some sort of teaching moment out of this “and the moral of the story is that failure isn’t forever.” Or something like that. Fortunately life is not a narrative. Narrative exists to give us vicarious thrills and victories. In real life we do not have to fail, so that victory feels so much better.
In a story that’s not going to be flat out boring, we have to have the dark to emphasize the bright.
So, having figured out why my Muse was protesting, and refusing to write further . . . and after some minor fixes proved to be insufficient . . . I have to go eviscerate a two-thirds done manuscript.
Bad words are being said!
So here’s the previous story, which I am now afraid to analyze:
Mad Genius Club 
Didn’t some writer have advice to the effect that when you get stuck, have gunmen burst through the door?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. Chandler
It was derisive but then pulp writers seldom smoothed it out with cause and effect.
I know anime/manga artists do fanfic of their own stuff for the same effect.
…. and now I’m wondering if A Piece of the Action may have been written on that advice….
(the gangster planet Star Trek episode)
Good luck. I haven’t had the opportunity to run into that problem yet, but I know I will.
Actually I might have, but I’m still trying to figure out if I accidentally broke the villian early, or just didn’t development the victim enough for the reader to care, but I’m returning to that one after some other stuff.
Wait, where’d you get the good DOOM font??
https://www.dafont.com/amazdoom.font
I use it with Gimp for various lighting and bevel effects.
It’s available on several sites, read the licensing details!
I’ve got a work in progress which was the first one where I had to consciously think that things had to go bad for the heroine.
Especially since she was picking off bad guys. Fortunately they could take her more seriously as she did.
I wonder, could they be solving the wrong problem?
Well, it’s a Murder Mystery in a SF/F world on the brink of a cross dimensional invasion, so the two problems–prepping for the probable invasion and the assassination of a political figure are probably entwined, but neither the prepping nor the investigation ought to be cruising along without a hitch.
Well, you could have Eldon come bopping through. He always puts a different twist on things…
Maybe in a bonus scene, with Eight telling him to bugger off, they have enough trouble already with the other branches and an internal Cyborg rebellion? “We’d be invaded again, and not able to protect the good people, and us Cyborgs are not stupid enough to think those of us who survived an invasion would be better off with the new Masters. So just pop on out of here!”
LOL… okay, if that’s the way you want to play it!
You can even have problems from meeting a good person, offering good opportunities… that happen to conflict with other stuff that needs doing!