Month: January 2026

Where the Story Decides

A story can move without deciding anything.
I’ve been thinking about the moment when that changes.
New blog post: Where the Story Decides

Wendy G. MorrisLeave a comment

In mystery, movement is easy to mistake for progress. Questions are asked, information surfaces, and scenes accumulate. But none of that commits the story to anything. A mystery decides only when inquiry gives way to choice—when a character acts in a way that closes off alternatives and invites consequences. Until then, the story is still gathering itself.

Lately, the difference between movement and commitment has become harder to ignore. As I’ve been revisiting my own work, I’ve noticed how easily a chapter can feel active without actually committing the story to a direction. Information appears as conversations unfold. Yet nothing has been decided. The scene ends much as it began, and the story waits—intact, but unchanged.

When a decision is finally made, the story tightens. Possibility narrows, and what was once optional becomes necessary. I have found that choice doesn’t resolve uncertainty—it concentrates it. From that point on, the story is no longer describing what might happen, but begins responding to what has happened. Consequences begin to accumulate, not as spectacle, but as pressure. The narrative gains weight because it can no longer move in every direction at once.

There is a risk on both sides of that moment. Decide too soon, and the story settles before it has earned its shape; the choice feels random, the consequences shallow. Decide too late, and the story drifts, accumulating motion without commitment. In mystery, timing matters as much as choice itself. A decision has to arrive when the pressure is real—when enough is known to make action meaningful, but not so much that the outcome feels predictable.

Working through my novel right now, I’m aware of how often this balance asserts itself. Some chapters reveal their decision quickly; others resist it. The work becomes one built on judgment—recognizing when the story is ready to commit and when it still needs room to breathe. Editing, in this sense, isn’t about imposing decisions, but about noticing when the story has quietly made one and trusting it enough to let the outcomes stand.

Mystery depends on this moment of commitment. Not the reveal, but the decision that makes the reveal unavoidable. I have discovered that a story decides when it accepts the cost of moving forward—when it allows uncertainty to narrow and consequence to take hold. That is where mystery stops spinning and begins to matter.

What Structure Makes Visible

Lately, my writing has shifted from attention to structure.
A short reflection on what editing reveals when you slow a story down and ask who is really acting.
New post: What Structure Makes Visible

Wendy G. MorrisLeave a comment

Attention can take you far.
But I have found that attention alone is not enough.

After spending time reflecting on how stories stay with me—how tone, voice, and small moments linger—I’ve moved into a different phase of the work. Editing at this stage has required more than just attentiveness. It has necessary structure.

Structure has a reputation for being restrictive. Mechanical. Scientific. But what I’ve discovered is that structure does not limit meaning—it reveals it. When a story is placed under even a simple framework, patterns emerge. Not imposed patterns, but existing ones that were easy to overlook while drafting.

Over the past week, I’ve been working chapter by chapter with a logic worksheet designed to track agency, decision-making, and consequence. It doesn’t ask how well a scene is written. It asks a more fundamental question: What actually happens here, and who makes it happen?

LOGIC WORKSHEET

LOGIC WORKSHEETDownload

This shift in focus has been instructive for me.

I have found that when you slow a story down to its essential actions—what a character wants, what they do, what choice they make, and what follows—you begin to see where momentum is real and where it is assumed. You see where a character is acting, and where events are simply occurring around them. You see where information is earned, and where it appears too conveniently.

None of this is about finding fault. It’s about clarity.

What structure makes visible is responsibility. Not moral responsibility, but narrative responsibility. Who carries the weight of the story forward? Who decides? Who pays the cost of those decisions? These questions are easy to answer intuitively while drafting. They are harder—and more honest—when written down.

What has surprised me most is how often the worksheet confirms my instincts rather than contradicts them. The chapters that felt solid tend to hold up under scrutiny. The ones that felt uneasy usually reveal why. Structure doesn’t argue with intuition; it gives it language.

There is also a humbleness in this process. A worksheet does not care about intention. It cares about the outcome. It doesn’t ask what I meant in a scene to do. It asks what the scene actually does. That distinction matters.

In many ways, this feels like the natural continuation of the attention I’ve always valued. First, you notice what stays. Then, you ask why it remains. Structure is simply the next level of noticing—one that replaces assumption with evidence.

I don’t experience this phase as narrowing the story. I experience it as sharpening it. The goal isn’t to make every chapter efficient or symmetrical. It’s to ensure that when something stays in the story, it does so for a reason.

Stories don’t persist because they are loose. They persist because they can withstand examination.

This week’s work has reminded me that meaning is not diminished by being tested. It’s clarified. And clarity, like attention, is something a story has to earn.