The Story Microscope: The Surprising Way a Spreadsheet Can Save Your Manuscript (Beats)

You’re a writer with 1,001 questions about how to fix your manuscript and you want answers.

It’s hard to see your whole story in enough detail to find all the problems, much less craft the best solutions. After months of effort, you’re deep inside the characters and plot so you need a tool that’s objective—something to magnify and explain each scene and show you how they all connect.

The best way to answer the questions that are plaguing you is one you’ve probably never considered—a spreadsheet. In this beginner’s guide, Story Grid Certified Editor Kimberly Kessler shows you how to turn a spreadsheet into a precision story editing tool. Using the Story Grid approach, the spreadsheet becomes a microscope through which you can see scenes, sequences, and your entire story in high resolution.

The Story Grid spreadsheet will save you time by quickly identifying the sources and locations of key problems. What you meant to say won’t cloud your ability to see what’s really on the page. With Kessler’s expert guidance, you’ll add the Story Grid spreadsheet to your writer’s toolkit, you’ll save your current manuscript, and improve all the stories that follow.

“You have nothing to fear,” says Kessler, “simply new connections to make.”