Ghostly Grooves

A challenge should help you fall in love with your story, not make you dread opening your laptop.

In a world dominated by stats and targets, it is painfully easy to compare oneself to others. When a fellow writer meets that 50k word goal in two weeks, if you’re running behind, that excitement can feel tainted.

This November, whether you’re trying to complete a novel, write every day, or flesh out your worldbuilding, take a moment to acknowledge that it’s okay if you don’t stay on track. You are allowed to change your goals, choose to not finish it, or start another. Writing is already hard enough without adding extra pressures!

Read More About Writing Goals

Stories, like life, are messy. When we build a fictional world, we often focus on maps, magic, or spaceships. Compelling conflict isn’t restricted to world-ending catastrophes. Sometimes, they come from the places where two normal groups of people want opposite things and cannot both win. For example:

A harsh winter is coming, and the village woodcutters need to chop down the ancient forest so families do not freeze to death. However, the forest rangers know that cutting down those specific trees will wake up sleeping spirits that will attack the village. Do you freeze now, or risk an attack later?

To apply this to your story, find one limited resource in your world (like money, water, magic, or land) and give two different characters a very good reason to need all of it. Then use this to fuel the inciting incident.

For more tips and tricks, see our course on developing your story ideas.

Develop Friction In Your Story

We often think of outlines as tools for organizing plot, but they can also map out how your reader connects to your characters. If the middle of your book feels slow, it might be because your reader isn’t growing closer to your main character!

The Novel Clock divides your story into 12 acts designed to make your reader fall in love with your hero right in the middle of the book. In Act 1 (Welcome), we merely like the hero despite their flaws. However, look at what happens in the middle of the clock:

1. In Act 5 (The Plan), the hero stops running away, teams up with friends, and forms a real goal. Because they have a sense of purpose, we start to invest and care about them.
2. In Act 6 (We Were Wrong) and Act 7 (Try, Try Again), their plans fail, yet they stubbornly refuse to give up. Their persistence makes us root for them even harder!
3. After a brief False Win (Act 8), they hit rock bottom in Act 9 (Pit of Despair). When everything falls apart and all hope is lost, our care for the hero finally turns into love.

Don’t skip the messy middle—it’s where your reader’s heart gets hooked!

Learn More About the Novel Clock