There is a book out there called "Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass. The book was a tremendously help for me in deconstructing my plot and characters. I rewrote and even rearranged entire chapters. I had subplots that had no closure that I rewrote to provide an ending.

I invite you to check out my novel's Amazon page and read some of the reviews. Even the negative reviews praise the story itself, while slamming my writing style :)