Most outlines fail because they track time,not tension. If you're stuck in "and then" plotting, you need a new unit of design: the sequence.

If your cast “contrasts” the protagonist but doesn’t change the story, you don’t have a foil or mirror. You have noise. This essay shows you how to fix it.

Most writing guides teach plot or prose—but few teach how time moves. This guide reveals the hidden structure behind real-time storytelling: the neurological chain of cause and effect. Learn to anchor beats in pressure, preserve micro-tension, and write scenes that feel lived, not just read. Once you understand how time flows through the line, your fiction stops floating and starts gripping.

Not every moment has to move. Narrative tableaux are static, emotionally charged beats that don’t progress the plot but deepen everything around it. This essay shows how to use them without stalling the story.

A flashback isn’t a memory dump. It’s a pressure device. It must interrupt the present, reframe the stakes, and end in a turn. This essay shows how to structure flashbacks that change the story not just explain it.

Praxis is a free craft trainer for fiction. It does not write for you. It installs goal, obstacle, escalation, and turn so every scene ends in a real change. Built from the Not MFA system I’ve used with writers for seven years.