The Save the Cat! beat sheet is one of the most popular story-structure frameworks for a reason. Originally created by Blake Snyder, it gives writers fifteen clear landmarks to aim for and makes the enormous task of plotting a novel feel much more manageable. But here’s the tricky part: you...

  You can create an outline, plan every chapter, and still get stuck once you start writing. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's true—and it's exactly what happened to one of my students, Lindsay Sfara. Before drafting her superhero fantasy novel, Lindsay created a full chapter-...

  You’ve told yourself you’ll write the book when things settle down. When the baby sleeps through the night. When the kids are a little older. When they’re finally all in school. When you get a free weekend, a quiet week, or the kind of long, uninterrupted stretch of time that “real writers”...

  If you've been working on the same novel for months—maybe even years—you've probably spent a lot of time wondering why you still haven't finished it. Maybe you've blamed your schedule because life always seems to get in the way. Maybe you've blamed your motivation because you can't maintain...

  Almost every writer who stalls while trying to draft a novel assumes the same thing: that the stall is a verdict on them. That getting stuck means you're not cut out to write a book, you don't have the discipline to finish one, or you're missing some writer gene everyone else got. It's a re...

  You've got a story you want to write. Maybe you've been carrying it around for years—waiting until you had the time, the nerve, or even the faintest idea where to begin. So when you finally decide to go for it, you do what any serious aspiring author would do: you start looking for advice. ...

  There's a belief most writers carry without ever saying it out loud: that writing fast means writing badly. You hear the words "fast drafting" and picture a sloppy, throwaway mess you'll just have to gut and rewrite anyway. So going faster starts to feel like a trade-off—speed or quality, ne...

  You know your main character. You know their backstory, a handful of details about their childhood, and the exact way they take their coffee. You could probably talk about them for an hour. So why do they still feel flat? If you’re writing your first novel, this might be the quiet worry hum...

  If you've been feeling stuck writing your novel—second-guessing every decision, rewriting the same chapters, or quietly wondering whether you're even capable of finishing—I want you to meet five writers who've been exactly where you are. A longtime pantser who kept getting lost in her own m...

  If you're feeling completely lost writing your novel—like you don't know what happens next, or why a scene isn't working, or where your story is even going—this blog post is for you.  You see, most writers assume they're stuck because there's something wrong with their story (and that can b...

  Maybe you just typed "The End" for the first time. You survived the blank page, the middle-of-the-book crisis, and approximately forty-seven moments where you were convinced the whole thing was garbage. But you pushed through—and for a minute, it felt amazing. Or maybe you finished your dra...

  If you've ever told yourself you'll get serious about your novel when life calms down, when the kids are older, when work settles, or when you actually have time, this post is for you. Because I recently sat down with Jackie Henley, who writes under the pen name J.J. Henley, and her story c...