Sheltering vocabulary not grammar...

This seems to be a recurring theme for me: the struggle between covering it all and getting my students to acquire the language.  I realized that during my struggle to get myself back on track this semester, I assigned a vocabulary relevant story, but a grammatically irrelevant story (since we have a common assessment coming up).  We're currently reading the story ourselves.  So now I'm stuck in a situation where I have to navigate this mistake.  I need to get my students back to focusing on commands.  Does this mean I totally drop the story to the wayside or is there some other way to get them back on track.  The story follows a similar story line as one from Blaine Ray's LICT muchísimo book - Girl sells love pills, girl accidentally takes love pills, girl immediately falls in love with herself and never leaves the bathroom.  That's where I get into a bind - there aren't any other characters in my story, so it's pretty difficult to incorporate some sort of commands.  Any ideas out there?