Your Next Draft

What do you do when your genre just refuses to work?

When you’ve tried every content genre you know—Action, Crime, Horror, Thriller, Performance, Love, Society, and more—and every single one just does not fit your story?

Sure, some parts of several of those genres fit your story. Those parts even seem essential.

Some parts feel like a stretch, but you can make them work if you squint.

And some parts don’t fit at all.

If you’re honest, i...

If you’re second-guessing your pacing, give your turning point this two-part check.

Where the heck is the turning point?

If you’ve ever tried to spot the turning point in a story you love, you’ve probably asked some version of this question.

I always feel like I’m playing that old children’s video game: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

(In my imagination, the turning point is captured in shadowy profile, wearing a red hat with a ...

It's the hinge your entire story turns on—and one of the hardest story elements to identify and write.

Can I be honest? I struggled with turning points for years.

I knew they were essential. They’re the moment when everything changes. The moment that forces the character to face a crisis choice. The moment that reveals what the story is really, at its heart, about.

And yet . . . I couldn’t see them.

I found so many things that wer...

If your structure is perfect on paper, but your story still falls flat, this might be what you're missing.

Have you ever structured a story with all the right pieces, but something still feels flat?

You check all the boxes on paper:

✅ Inciting incident
✅ Progressive complications
✅ Turning point
✅ Crisis
✅ Climax
✅ Resolution

And yet it still falls flat. They mostly align, probably, you’re pretty sure. But some...

What if you've already done enough to work with an editor—right now?

You’ve been working on your novel for so long. Not just months—years, maybe even decades.

And yet you have a long way still to go. The day when you have a polished manuscript you’re proud to pitch or publish feels so far away, and you're starting to wonder if you're missing something crucial.

And in the back of your mind, you might be wondering:

When sh...

Here’s what to DO with your genre once you know which one you’re writing.

So you know your story’s genre.

It’s an Action story with a Worldview internal genre. Or it’s a Love story with a Status internal genre. You’re, like, 32% sure of it.

Which is great, because you’ve studied story enough to know genre is important. You’ve heard that it shapes the foundations of your story, that it has conventions and obligatory scenes, reader expe...

Genre isn’t what you think it is. Here’s how to use it better.

Genre. Let me guess:

It’s the bane of your existence. A convoluted soup of arbitrary descriptors that almost but not quite mean the same thing. Sci fi or fantasy? Paranormal or supernatural? Upmarket or book club? Do words even have meaning?

Or, it’s a restrictive box with tropes and conventions you feel like you need to cross off a checklist, until your story is more “pai...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fiction writer in possession of a brilliant story must craft a captivating opening line.

No pressure, right?

Your opening line is your story’s first impression. Agents, editors, and even readers decide fast whether they want to keep reading or drop the book altogether. And yes, they can make that judgment in as little as the very first sentence.

So your opening line is doing some heavy, he...

Are your readers bored? Disappointed? Confused? Here's what that tells you about your story's middle.

You’re stuck in the messy middle. Languishing in the doldrums of your story. The inciting incident is long past, the climax is so far ahead you can’t see it over the horizon, and you’re drifting, lost at sea.

What is actually supposed to happen here?

Where did your plot momentum go?

Why do your pages feel full of stuff, and y...

You don’t need more filler. You need better progressive complications.

Your inciting incident hooks your readers and promises them a story they’ll love.

And then comes the middle.

The messy middle. The quiet doldrums of your story, where plot momentum goes to die.

Where your characters wander, your conflict blurs, and you start to wonder if any of it is working.

So what do you do? Add some “stuff that happens” and hope it holds your rea...

Your first chapter has a monumental task: to make potential readers care about your book right away and hook them to keep reading.

Every sentence is a chance to earn your reader’s attention—or lose their fragile, baby-fresh interest before your story even begins.

And that’s assuming that your book makes it to the bookstore shelves. If you’re traditionally publishing, the first chapter’s burdened with even more responsibility. It’s yo...

Your inciting incident sets the stage for everything that follows. Here's what to revise so it can carry the story.

A great inciting incident does a lot of heavy lifting.

→ It hooks your readers, pulling them into the story.

→ And it sets up everything to come, laying the foundation for a brilliant climax your readers will love.

The beginning matters. Which means there’s a lot of pressure to get it right.

But what does right actual...

“It really broke my heart, actually. . . . For the rest of my life, it will break my heart.” A.S. King gets honest about what happened when the publishing industry failed her book.

What happens after you edit your book?

What happens after you’ve bared the story of your heart, crafted it into an excellent novel, and presented it to the world?

What happens when you get traditionally published, when you receive awards and accolades, and ...

Do you need to hire a line editor? Or should you line edit your manuscript yourself?

After all, you want to write an excellent novel. You know that great writing takes shape in revision, and you don’t want to skimp on any layers of editing.

Nor do you want to overestimate your writing skills and leave your book littered with clunky sentences that a wordsmithing line editor could polish into shining brilliance.

On the other hand, you a...

“Revising is about making sure that you're saying what you want to say in the way you want to say it. . . . To me, revision is the sport. It's the impact. It's the reason we're writers.”

Have you ever read a book and thought, Holy cow, this is amazing. How did this author DO this?

Or, maybe you’ve read a book and thought, Wow, I wish I could write (or in my case, edit) a book like this, but this is incredible and ...

Ever wondered what an editor actually does all day?

What it looks like to spend all day supporting writers in their stories?

Or what your editor’s doing in all that time when they’re not sharing their feedback with you?

If those questions pique your curiosity, you’re in luck. I’m pulling back the curtain to share a week in my life as a developmental editor and book coach.

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at what I do with writers an...

When to use frameworks to solve your story problems—and when to trust yourself and lean on your own story authority. 

You’ve heard of Save the Cat! Story Grid. Blueprint for a Book.

These are all frameworks designed to help you edit a novel. If you don’t know these names, I bet you know others—Hero’s Journey, Freytag’s Pyramid, 7 Point Story Structure, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, there are dozens more.

Each one promises that if you use...

Escape analysis paralysis with one powerful question. It’s deceptively simple—and yet it unlocks everything.

If you’re like most of the writers I work with, you’re pretty savvy about story structure. You know your Story Grid, your Save the Cat!, your Hero’s Journey. You’ve probably analyzed your story six ways to Sunday, and you’ve got the spreadsheets and outlines and diagrams and graphs to prove it.

And all that analysis has levele...

The best novels combine rock-solid story structure with scenes that are unputdownable on every page. Here’s how one writer and two editors polished a story at every level.

If you want to move your reader in every moment, keep them hooked on every page, you need to refine your scenes until each one is unputdownable.

And that refinement? It’s SUCH a joy. It’s my favorite thing to do and it will transform your entire story.

But in order ...