The middle section of your manuscript isn’t coming together for you. You loved writing the beginning. It’s really strong. But somewhere around page 100, the story tend to lag, slowing down the read. The problem isn’t a lack of creativity. The problem is structure. Most likely, you’re spreading out your strongest stuff over entire novel. […]

Maybe you’ve seen a book’s blurb and thought it was trying too hard. There is a lot of adjectives, and a little too much description for the premise. You’re left unsure what genre it even is. It is more than you might imagine. Weeks go into copy from authors. They bury their hook behind jargon […]

For fiction writers, the backstory ratio calculator also estimates how much backstory they have in their draft and what kind: pages, scenes, chapters, or pacing signals. In other words, it converts vague worries over exposition to concrete things that can be managed throughout revision. Often you discover that half your draft is there because main […]

Most drafts fail at halfway point. Weeks in, you’ve got all of your character built up and all this world stuff, but then, bam! You hit a wall. For like fifty pages, nothing happens. Why? Because stakes haven’t changed enough to make us want to turn the page. And it’s not necessarily a creative problem; […]