Shows
Your Next DraftWhat Makes a Story Excellent? (And How to Know When You've Reached It)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 measure that a book is good? What is the pinnacle we’re...
2025-12-0919 minYour Next DraftWhat to Do When Feedback Gets You StuckIf 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 made the stor...
2025-11-2514 minYour Next Draft3 Non-Obvious Problems Hiding in Well-Developed DraftsIf 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. Somet...
2025-11-1121 minYour Next DraftWhat Genre REALLY Measures (And Why Every Genre You Try Feels Wrong)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...
2025-10-2821 minYour Next DraftWhere the Turning Point Goes (And How to Know If Yours Is in the Right Place)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 baby w...
2025-10-1416 minYour Next DraftTurning Point: How to Find and Write the Moment That Changes EverythingIt'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 midpoints, and climaxes...
2025-09-3026 minYour Next DraftThe Hidden Half of Your Protagonist's Goal (That Makes Story Structure Work)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✅ ResolutionAnd 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 pack the right punch. The crisis...
2025-09-1619 minYour Next DraftWhen Should You Work With an Editor? (It's Earlier Than You Think)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 should you work with an editor?How much more sho...
2025-09-0217 minYour Next DraftHow to Use Genre as a Revision Tool (with Savannah Gilbo)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 expectations that you’ll need to deliver on.Somehow, though, j...
2025-08-201h 18Your Next DraftThe 12 Core Genres That Power Every Great StoryGenre 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 “paint by numbers” formulaic than an original creation unique to your imagination...
2025-08-0521 minYour Next DraftHow Great First Lines Make Readers Pay Attention (with Abigail K. Perry)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, heavy lifting.But what, exactly, do great first lines do?What sets an unputdownable fi...
2025-07-2247 minYour Next DraftWhere Progressive Complications Go WRONG (and How to Fix Them)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 yet nothing ever happens?The answers to all those questions lie in you...
2025-07-0829 minYour Next DraftMake Sense of Your Messy Middle With the Most Underrated Story ElementYou 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 readers’ interest? Toss in a random subplot? Describe your character’s breakfast in...
2025-06-2427 minYour Next DraftHow Great First Chapters Make Readers Care (with Abigail K. Perry)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 your first impression with agents and editors, who will judge whether to consider the full manuscript based on the first five or ten pages...
2025-06-101h 12Your Next DraftInciting Incident: How to Revise an Unputdownable BeginningYour 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 actually mean? How do you start a story well?That’s what I’m...
2025-05-2725 minYour Next DraftWhat If You Do Everything Right and the Book Launch Still Goes Wrong? with A.S. King“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 when it looks like you’ve won the author career lottery?Last month, I brought author A...
2025-05-1350 minYour Next DraftThink You Need a Line Editor? Try This FirstDo 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 also don’t want to mess up your editing process or your manuscript by getting the...
2025-04-2927 minYour Next DraftHow Surrealist Pantser A.S. King Revises Award-Winning Novels“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 it might be beyond me?Well, that’s how I feel whe...
2025-04-151h 29Your Next DraftThe Editor Life: 5 Days Behind the Scenes with AliceEver 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 and what I’m working on when I’m not on calls...
2025-04-0146 minYour Next DraftHow to Use Revision Tools Like the Story Authority You Already Are with Brannan SirrattWhen 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 it, you’ll be able to craft better stories. And because we want to write...
2025-03-1857 minYour Next DraftAsk This Question When You’re Overwhelmed by Your StoryEscape 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 leveled up your story significantly. You’ve solved major structural problems by applying your extensive knowledge of story theory.Bu...
2025-03-0422 minYour Next DraftHow Multiple Layers of Editing Combine to Perfect Your Story (with Cathryn deVries and Kim Kessler)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 to make every scene matter, you first need to make sure you have a...
2025-02-181h 32Your Next DraftWhat Is a Manuscript Evaluation? (And Do You Need One?)It’s the most common developmental editing service you’ll see. Know what to look for and when (or if) you need one.If you google “developmental editor” and start looking through editors’ websites, you’ll see a common service appear again and again:A manuscript evaluation.(Or assessment, or diagnostic, or critique. A rose by any other name, etc.)Typically, in a manuscript evaluation, an editor will offer to read your manuscript and tell you what’s working and what to focus on next to make it even better.It sounds li...
2025-02-0432 minYour Next DraftScene Workshop: Hook Your Readers in Chapter One with Cathryn deVriesYou get one shot to grab their attention. Don’t waste it with characters staring off into space.You've put all this work into uncovering your character's internal arc. You know them SO WELL.When you step into a scene, you're giving your absolute all to uncovering the deep meaning and purpose behind it, the profound arc of character transformation that's happening in even the smallest moments.Yet in doing all that . . . you've lost the plot. You've crafted complex inner worlds for your characters, but all they're literally doing is staring off into sp...
2025-01-211h 38Your Next DraftThe Unskippable Process to Create Unputdownable BooksIt’s unpopular, but essential if you’re aiming to craft your best work.Picture this: one year from now, you’re holding your book in your hands. You see the gorgeous cover art, feel the slight resistance when you open the cover for the first time, run your hands over the soft, smooth paper, flip the pages and smell that delicious new book smell.Does that sound amazing? Holding your book in your hands just one year from now?Being done soon is so tempting. But just being done soon won’t lead to...
2025-01-0725 minYour Next DraftHow to Edit Your Novel When Disaster StrikesYour book is important. But sometimes, worthy interruptions will delay it for a while.For the last few months, this podcast feed has been quiet. It went dark with no notice in mid-June.I didn’t mean to disappear on you. In fact, I didn’t plan to pause the podcast at all.But a family emergency struck, and all my best-laid plans for summer 2024 changed in a matter of hours.This summer, I learned what it takes to edit when your world is in crisis.Happily, for me and...
2024-08-2717 minYour Next DraftHow Taylor Jenkins Reid Crafts an Exceptional Opening SceneYour reader experiences your story one scene at a time. Make every scene un-put-down-able.Great stories are made of great scenes.Sure, your novel has a clever plot with twists and turns from the first page to the last. But the way your readers will experience that plot is . . .. . . one scene at a time.Which means if you want your readers to fall in love with your novel, you need to captivate them with scenes they can’t put down.How do you do it?I’ll show...
2024-06-1830 minYour Next Draft2 “Showing” and "Telling" Ways to Convey Time Passing in Your NovelShow and tell your readers why time matters to your characters.Time matters.When you look up and it’s dark outside, time matters to you.When your characters look around and summer is turning into fall, time matters to them.When your readers are reading a novel and they can’t figure out how time is passing? Well, time matters to them, too—mostly because they’re confused.In this episode, I’m sharing two ways to make time matter to your readers the way it matters to your chara...
2024-06-0416 minYour Next Draft3 “Telling” Ways to Convey Time Passing in Your NovelDon’t lose your readers. Just tell them what time it is.The passage of time seems intuitive. It just happens, right? (Like, whether you want it to or not. Time and tide wait for no man, etc.)Here’s the thing, though. If you don’t tell your readers that time is passing in your novel . . .. . . they won’t know.It seems wild, I know. It feels like time passing should be obvious. But I promise you, it’s not.Luckily, conveying the passage of time to your readers is...
2024-05-2127 min