This skater didn't win an Olympic medal, and I'm obsessed with him. I watched Cha Jun-Hwan’s figure skating routine last week in the Olympic men’s short program competition. I never finished watching that competition—I was busy rewinding Jun-Hwan’s routine to watch him over and over again. I filmed my TV screen on my phone and watched it again while I sat in the courthouse on jury duty. I gushed about it to friends and family. I’ve been listening to the song he skated to on loop for a week. J...
Feb 19
25 min
When will you be truly satisfied with your novel? How will you know when you’ve succeeded? How will you know when you’re done? Will it be when you LOVE your book? When you stop cringing as you read it? When you can’t think of a single change left to make? When beta readers rave about it? When they tell you the romantic scenes made them swoon and the funny scenes made them laugh, the scary scenes gave them nightmares and the sad scenes made them cry? When a reader tells you your book impacted ...
Feb 3
21 min
What if editing isn’t drudgery, but the most delightful part of your writing process? So you’re revising yet another draft. You’re hoping against hope that this draft will be your final draft. Which, coincidentally, is also what you hoped for the last draft, and the one before that. Editing is a slog you’re trudging through. You dream of the day when you can escape this drudgery and return to the free-flowing fun of writing the first draft of your next book. But what if editing isn’t an obsta...
Jan 13
29 min
Is story excellence something you "know when you see it"—or can it actually be measured? Is excellence defined by hitting bestseller lists? Filling seats at every book tour stop? Being selected for “Best Books of 2025” lists? Is excellence defined by getting gatekeeper approval? Getting agent representation? Landing a book deal? Winning awards? Is excellence defined by earning money? Getting a big advance? Earning out the advance and bringing in royalties? Or is it something else? How can we ...
Dec 9, 2025
19 min
If you get feedback that grinds you to a halt, there's a problem. But YOU are not the problem—the feedback is. Recently, a writer came to me with feedback she was struggling to implement. She’d written a draft of her story, but she knew it needed revision. So she’d gotten a manuscript evaluation from another editor. And the feedback she got in that evaluation really threw her off. When this writer and I talked, she was so confused. She knew what her vision was for her story, and why she’d mad...
Nov 25, 2025
14 min
If the line writing is lovely, but the story still falls flat, check for these surprisingly hard-to-spot problems. You’ve written a draft of your novel. It’s a pretty good draft, actually. Maybe you’ve revised it—once, or twice, or five times. The line-by-line writing is evocative, and a lot of the scenes are exciting and fun. But. Come on, you knew there was a “but” coming. You can feel it in your gut. Your story is just not doing everything you want it to do. There’s something missing. Some...
Nov 11, 2025
21 min
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, it’s like your story is secretly three genres in a trenchc...
Oct 28, 2025
21 min
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 wide brim.) (this is also called, tell me you’re a 90s bab...
Oct 14, 2025
16 min
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 weren’t the turning point. I found inciting incidents, and midpoin...
Sep 30, 2025
26 min
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 somehow, they’re not working together the way they should. The turning point doesn’t pa...
Sep 16, 2025
19 min
Load more