how to write stories storybook

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• Why Storybook?

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• What's a story?
• Browse stories
• Play function
• Naming components and hierarchy
• Build pages and screens
• Stories for multiple components
• Writing stories in TypeScript
• Preview and build docs
• Test runner
• Visual tests
• Accessibility tests
• Interaction tests
• Test coverage

Snapshot testing

Import stories in tests.

• Design integrations
• Composition
• Package Composition
• Essential addons
• Backgrounds
• Interactions
• Measure & Outline
• Toolbars & globals
• Configure addons
• Write a preset
• Add to catalog
• Types of addons
• Knowledge base
• Migrate addons to 8.0
• Styling and CSS

Integration

• Story rendering
• Story Layout

User interface

• Environment variables

main.js|ts configuration

• Component Story Format (CSF)
• CLI options
• RFC Process

Documentation

• Migrate to 8.0
• Migrate from 6.x to 8.0

How to write stories

A story captures the rendered state of a UI component. It's an object with annotations that describe the component's behavior and appearance given a set of arguments.

Storybook uses the generic term arguments (args for short) when talking about React’s props , Vue’s props , Angular’s @Input , and other similar concepts.

Where to put stories

A component’s stories are defined in a story file that lives alongside the component file. The story file is for development-only, and it won't be included in your production bundle.

Component Story Format

We define stories according to the Component Story Format (CSF), an ES6 module-based standard that is easy to write and portable between tools.

The key ingredients are the default export that describes the component, and named exports that describe the stories.

Default export

The default export metadata controls how Storybook lists your stories and provides information used by addons. For example, here’s the default export for a story file Button.stories.js|ts :

Starting with Storybook version 7.0, story titles are analyzed statically as part of the build process. The default export must contain a title property that can be read statically or a component property from which an automatic title can be computed. Using the id property to customize your story URL must also be statically readable.

Defining stories

Use the named exports of a CSF file to define your component’s stories. We recommend you use UpperCamelCase for your story exports. Here’s how to render Button in the “primary” state and export a story called Primary .

Working with React Hooks

React Hooks are convenient helper methods to create components using a more streamlined approach. You can use them while creating your component's stories if you need them, although you should treat them as an advanced use case. We recommend args as much as possible when writing your own stories. As an example, here’s a story that uses React Hooks to change the button's state:

The recommendation mentioned above also applies to other frameworks, not only React.

Working with Solid Signals

Solid Signals are convenient helper methods to create components using a more streamlined approach. You can use them while creating your component's stories if you need them, although you should treat them as an advanced use case. We recommend args as much as possible when writing your own stories. As an example, here’s a story that uses Solid Signals to change the button's state:

The recommendation mentioned above also applies to other frameworks, not only Solid.

Rename stories

You can rename any particular story you need. For instance, to give it a more accurate name. Here's how you can change the name of the Primary story:

Your story will now be shown in the sidebar with the given text.

A story is an object that describes how to render a component. You can have multiple stories per component, and the simplest way to create stories is to render a component with different arguments multiple times.

It's straightforward for components with few stories but can be repetitive with many stories.

Refine this pattern by introducing args for your component's stories. It reduces the boilerplate code you'll need to write and maintain for each story.

By introducing args into your component's stories, you're not only reducing the amount of code you need to write, but you're also decreasing data duplication, as shown by spreading the Primary story's args into the other stories.

What’s more, you can import args to reuse when writing stories for other components, and it's helpful when you’re building composite components. For example, if we make a ButtonGroup story, we might remix two stories from its child component Button .

When Button’s signature changes, you only need to change Button’s stories to reflect the new schema, and ButtonGroup’s stories will automatically be updated. This pattern allows you to reuse your data definitions across the component hierarchy, making your stories more maintainable.

That’s not all! Each of the args from the story function are live editable using Storybook’s controls panel. It means your team can dynamically change components in Storybook to stress test and find edge cases.

Addons can enhance args. For instance, Actions auto-detects which args are callbacks and appends a logging function to them. That way, interactions (like clicks) get logged in the actions panel.

Using the play function

Storybook's play function and the @storybook/addon-interactions are convenient helper methods to test component scenarios that otherwise require user intervention. They're small code snippets that execute once your story renders. For example, suppose you wanted to validate a form component, you could write the following story using the play function to check how the component responds when filling in the inputs with information:

Without the help of the play function and the @storybook/addon-interactions , you had to write your own stories and manually interact with the component to test out each use case scenario possible.

Using parameters

Parameters are Storybook’s method of defining static metadata for stories. A story’s parameters can be used to provide configuration to various addons at the level of a story or group of stories.

For instance, suppose you wanted to test your Button component against a different set of backgrounds than the other components in your app. You might add a component-level backgrounds parameter:

This parameter would instruct the backgrounds addon to reconfigure itself whenever a Button story is selected. Most addons are configured via a parameter-based API and can be influenced at a global , component and story level.

Using decorators

Decorators are a mechanism to wrap a component in arbitrary markup when rendering a story. Components are often created with assumptions about ‘where’ they render. Your styles might expect a theme or layout wrapper, or your UI might expect specific context or data providers.

A simple example is adding padding to a component’s stories. Accomplish this using a decorator that wraps the stories in a div with padding, like so:

Decorators can be more complex and are often provided by addons . You can also configure decorators at the story , component and global level.

Stories for two or more components

When building design systems or component libraries, you may have two or more components created to work together. For instance, if you have a parent List component, it may require child ListItem components.

In such cases, it makes sense to render a different function for each story:

You can also reuse stories from the child ListItem in your List component. That’s easier to maintain because you don’t have to keep the identical story definitions updated in multiple places.

Note that there are disadvantages in writing stories like this as you cannot take full advantage of the args mechanism and composing args as you build even more complex composite components. For more discussion, see the multi component stories workflow documentation.

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8 Best Online Storybook Makers to Create Your Own Interactive Story Book

• September 4, 2023
• Post Views: 987

In this age of creativity and imagination, we bring you the eight best online storybook makers that promise to transform your tales into captivating interactive adventures. These versatile storybook makers open the door to a realm where your narratives come to life through a seamless blend of words and visuals. Whether you’re a budding author or a parent seeking to craft a personalized story for your child, these digital storytellers offer the perfect canvas to shape your ideas into engaging and interactive storybooks. Join us as we explore the magic of storytelling through these exceptional online tools.

1. Flip PDF Plus Pro

Flip PDF Plus Pro is a remarkable and versatile software that is a dynamic story book maker in the digital landscape. This innovative tool redefines the art of storytelling, allowing authors, educators, and creative minds to transform their narratives into interactive and visually stunning storybooks effortlessly. With its intuitive interface and myriad features, Flip PDF Plus Pro enables the seamless integration of text, multimedia elements, and captivating visuals, making your stories come alive on the digital page. Whether crafting gorgeous children’s tales, educational materials, or immersive novels, Flip PDF Plus Pro empowers you to elevate your storytelling to new heights, captivating readers with an immersive blend of text and imagery.

Blurb, a renowned platform for self-publishing, opens the doors to a world of creative expression and storytelling. With Blurb, individuals, authors, photographers, and artists can bring their visions to life, transforming their ideas into professionally crafted books and publications. Whether you’re seeking to publish a novel, a photography portfolio, or a personalized storybook, Blurb offers an array of intuitive tools and versatile templates that cater to your unique project. Its commitment to quality and customization ensures that every creation truly reflects its creator’s vision. For those looking to share their stories with the world, Blurb is a trusted companion on the self-publishing journey, making the process accessible, rewarding, and artistically fulfilling.

3. StoryJumper

StoryJumper is an innovative online storybook creator designed to empower storytellers of all ages to create and share their personalized children’s books. With StoryJumper, the creative process comes to life through an easy-to-use interface that allows users to write, illustrate, and design their stories. It’s an ideal space for aspiring authors, parents, and educators looking to craft custom tales that capture young imaginations. The platform offers an extensive library of images and tools to help bring stories to life visually. Whether writing a bedtime story for your child or fostering literacy in the classroom, StoryJumper provides a delightful canvas where storytelling flourishes, fostering a love for reading and creativity in readers and authors alike.

Lulu, well-known for its versatile self-publishing capabilities, extends its expertise to storybook creation with finesse. As an online storybook creator, Lulu offers an exceptional platform for authors, illustrators, parents, and educators to craft captivating narratives that resonate with young minds. With Lulu’s intuitive tools and customizable templates, you can effortlessly bring your stories to life, blending words and imagery to create engaging and beautifully designed storybooks. Whether you’re nurturing the imagination of young readers or want to share your tales with the world, Lulu’s commitment to quality and creativity ensures that your storybooks become cherished keepsakes for generations to come.

5. FlipHTML5

FlipHTML5 is a versatile online storybook maker that reimagines the art of storytelling. This platform empowers authors, educators, and creative minds to craft captivating digital storybooks easily. FlipHTML5’s intuitive interface seamlessly integrates text, images, and multimedia elements, making your stories come to life on the digital page. Whether you’re a seasoned writer, a teacher looking to engage students, or a parent creating personalized stories, FlipHTML5 offers a canvas where your narratives become immersive, interactive adventures. Embark on a journey of creativity and captivate your audience with the magic of digital storytelling through FlipHTML5.

6. Scrivener

Scrivener, renowned as a powerful writing and organization tool, also shines as an exceptional storybook creator. This software caters to authors, whether penning novels, children’s tales, or educational materials. With Scrivener’s user-friendly interface and versatile features, you can effortlessly structure and craft your stories with precision. It provides a digital canvas where you can compose, edit, and organize your narratives while facilitating the seamless integration of multimedia elements. Whether you’re weaving intricate plotlines or creating illustrated children’s books, Scrivener empowers you to bring your stories to life, offering an ideal storytelling platform for creativity and organization.

7. Shutterfly

Shutterfly, celebrated for its personalized photo products, steps into the realm of storybook creation with equal flair. As an online storybook maker, Shutterfly offers a creative haven where cherished memories and imaginative tales unite. With a user-friendly interface and a wealth of customizable templates, it’s the perfect platform for turning your photos and stories into beautifully designed, professionally printed storybooks. Whether commemorating a special family event or crafting a unique children’s story, Shutterfly’s commitment to quality and personalization ensures that each page of your storybook becomes a treasured keepsake. Dive into the world of storytelling with Shutterfly, where your memories and narratives become artful tales for all to enjoy.

8. Bookemon

Bookemon is a remarkable online platform that takes storytelling to a new level. As a versatile storybook creator, Bookemon empowers authors, educators, parents, and creative minds to craft personalized and engaging storybooks. With its intuitive interface and an array of design tools, you can effortlessly bring your stories to life, blending text and images to create captivating narratives. Whether you’re making children’s books, family memoirs, or educational materials, Bookemon offers a creative canvas where your imagination knows no bounds. Dive into the world of digital storytelling with Bookemon and transform your ideas into beautifully designed, professionally printed storybooks that captivate and inspire readers of all ages.

In the digital age, the power of storytelling has never been more accessible, thanks to these eight exceptional online storybook makers. From Flip PDF Plus Pro’s immersive tales to Blurb’s professional polish, each platform offers unique tools and capabilities to cater to various creative projects. Whether you’re crafting stories for children or adults, for pleasure or learning, these online storybook creators serve as bridges between your imagination and the reader’s heart. So, let your creativity flourish, embark on a journey of literary expression, and inspire readers with your stories as these remarkable tools transform your narratives into interactive and unforgettable adventures. Happy storytelling!

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Storybook React: a beginner’s guide

The tools we use in web app development significantly impact the effectiveness of our projects. 

Among them, Storybook is a remarkable tool that transforms how we develop and visualize user interfaces across various JavaScript frameworks. 

This blog is intended for developers and teams who want to optimize their UI component development, regardless of the specific framework they use. 

We’ll explore the essence of Storybook, a tool that goes beyond framework boundaries and redefines UI component development.

Let’s get into it! 

Table of Contents

What is Storybook?

Storybook is a front-end workshop environment that helps devs create, organize, and test UI components in JavaScript applications. 

Initially developed for React, Storybook now supports a variety of JavaScript frameworks, including Angular, Vue, and even HTML. 

The most significant advantage of Storybook is that it enables developers to isolate components , letting them build and refine UI elements in a standalone environment without requiring a parent application or framework.

The Storybook’s isolation is not just a visual representation of components.

Still, it creates a dedicated space where minor UI parts, such as buttons, modals, inputs, and others, can be developed, tested, and fine-tuned in detail. 

Need a web app? We have a dedicated team just for you.

You’ll be talking with our technology experts.

Storybook focuses on components individually, ensuring each element can withstand various states and scenarios, thus creating robust and reusable code.

It acts as a living library for components, serving as a single source of truth where developers can view the latest version of each component, interact with them, and view their different states and variations. 

This environment is crucial for maintaining consistency across large teams and projects as it provides a unified view of the components in use, fostering better communication and consistency.

All of this means Storybook is more than just a tool; it is a game-changer for UI development.

Why choose Storybook?

Storybook has become a vital tool for UI developers, offering a range of benefits that make the development process smoother and improve the quality of the end product.

source: CleanCommit

Here are the key benefits of using Storybook:

Component isolation: Storybook excels in isolating components. It means developers can build and test UI components separately from the main application. This isolation is advantageous in larger projects where components must be reusable and consistent.

Enhanced collaboration: Storybook bridges the gap between designers and developers by providing a shared space for components. This shared space allows for real-time collaboration and immediate feedback, which enhances the overall design and development process.

Interactive documentation: Storybook generates interactive and up-to-date documentation from your components. This documentation makes it easier for new team members to understand existing UI components and for designers to visualize the implementation of their designs. Integration with testing tools: Storybook integrates various testing tools, allowing developers to perform visual, snapshot, and interaction testing on components. This integration helps identify and fix UI issues early in the development process.

Pros and cons

• Streamlines the UI development process
• Facilitates the creation of consistent UI across large applications
• Reduces the time and effort required for testing UI components
• Improves team communication and collaboration
• Steep learning curve
• Specific adaptations are needed for different frameworks, which require additional configuration and understanding

How to install Storybook 

Installing and setting up Storybook for UI development is a straightforward process, but it requires attention to detail, especially regarding your technology stack and project setup.

Please ensure you’ve set up your project with a JavaScript framework like React, Vue, Angular, or others before installing Storybook. 

Remember that Storybook is not intended for empty projects.

So here are the steps for installing Storybook:

Step 1 Use the Storybook CLI by running npx storybook init in your project’s root directory. This command will install the necessary dependencies, set up scripts to run and build Storybook, add a default Storybook configuration, and some boilerplate stories to get you started.

Step 2 After installation, a setup wizard will guide you through Storybook’s main concepts and features, such as organizing the UI, writing your first story, and testing components.

Step 3 To form a Storybook, run the storybook command. It will launch a development server and open Storybook in your browser, typically showing a welcome screen.

smanjit Your project may have specific requirements that require further configuration of the Storybook. 

For instance, you might need to adjust Storybook’s build configuration , especially if you see errors in the CLI. It could involve setting up presets for technologies like Create React App, customizing the Babel configuration, or tweaking the Webpack configuration.

If Storybook builds but errors appear in the browser, check if your component code compiles/transpiles correctly for the browser.

If a story fails to render, it might be because the component expects certain conditions or context. You can use decorators in the .storybook/preview.js file to wrap stories in the necessary context providers.

If your project uses static files or resources, configure Storybook to serve these files by specifying a static folder to serve from when starting up.

If the CLI doesn’t detect your framework, or if you have a custom environment setup, you can manually specify the framework using the –type flag.

For projects using Webpack 4, upgrading to Webpack 5 is recommended, as Storybook now uses Webpack 5 by default.

Remember to regularly update Storybook to use new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

Following these steps, you can install and configure Storybook for your UI development project. 

However, each project has unique requirements, so you should customize the setup to fit your specific needs. 

For detailed guides and troubleshooting tips, refer to the official Storybook documentation ( Storybook Docs ) and their setup guide ( Setup Storybook ).

Storybook core features 

Storybook offers a comprehensive suite of features that greatly enhance developing and testing UI components. Here are some of its core features:

Component Story Format (CSF)

CSF is a straightforward way to write component stories in Storybook. Here’s a basic example for a Button component:

In this example, Primary and Secondary are different stories for the Button component.

MDX support

MDX allows you to write long-form documentation and embed live components. 

MDX document combines documentation written in Markdown with embedded live examples of the Button component. More on this later.

Accessibility testing

To integrate accessibility checks, you must first install and register the @storybook/addon-a11y addon. Here’s a brief setup example:

With this setup, Storybook will automatically run accessibility checks on your components.

Story source addon

 This addon lets you view the source code for your stories. Install and register it as follows: 

After this setup, a new tab will appear in your Storybook interface, showing the source code for each story.

Mocked API responses

To mock API responses, integrate with tools like Mock Service Worker (MSW). 

First, set up MSW in your Storybook configuration. 

Then, define the reactions you want to mock within your story:

This setup allows you to control the data received by your component in Storybook.

These examples show how to leverage Storybook’s features in your UI development workflow. For more comprehensive guides and advanced usage, refer to the official Storybook documentation: Configure Storybook and Storybook Adoption Guide: LogRocket Blog .

Writing stories in Storybook

In Storybook, ‘stories’ are the fundamental building blocks.

They’re practical examples of your components in specific states. Understanding how to write compelling stories is critical to leveraging the full potential of Storybook. 

This section will guide you through the concept of stories and provide a step-by-step approach to writing them.

What is a story?

A story in Storybook represents a single visual state of a component . Think of it like a snapshot of your component under certain conditions. 

For example, a button component might have different stories for its default state, hover state, disabled state, etc. These stories not only serve as visual test cases but also act as live documentation for your components.

Writing your first story

You typically create a new file (e.g., Button.stories.tsx) in your project’s stories directory to write a story. This file will contain the story definitions for a specific component. Here’s a simple example to illustrate:

In this example, we have created two stories for Button: a primary and a secondary button. Each story uses a “template” that takes arguments (args), allowing you to control the component’s props.

Best practices for writing stories

• Clarity in naming : Name your stories in a way that makes their purpose immediately clear. Good naming conventions improve readability and make navigating your component library easier.
• Cover key states : Ensure your stories cover all your component’s essential states and variations. This comprehensive approach helps you fully understand your component’s capabilities and limitations.
• Use of args : Utilize args effectively to demonstrate different configurations of your component. It shows the dynamic nature of your element and aids in interactive testing.
• Documentation comments : Adding comments to your stories can provide context and guidance, especially for complex components. It enhances the understanding of other developers and designers using your Storybook.
• Consistency : Keep a consistent structure in your stories across different components. This consistency aids in maintaining a cohesive and understandable component library.

By following these guidelines and practices, you can write compelling and practical stories in Storybook, enhancing your UI components’ development and documentation process.

For more insights and detailed guidance on writing stories in Storybook for your projects, visit the official Storybook website here and here .

Dynamic documentation in Storybook 

Dynamic documentation in Storybook is a powerful feature that can transform your stories into comprehensive and living documentation. 

You can further enhance this feature using MDX (Markdown with embedded JSX) and Doc Blocks, which provide a clear and concise understanding of your components’ functionality.

Setting up Automated Documentation

Storybook Autodocs enables the automatic generation of documentation pages for your UI components. Add a tags configuration property to your story’s default export to set this up. 

Storybook then infers relevant metadata such as args, argTypes, and parameters and generates a documentation page positioned in the root level of your component tree in the sidebar.

Customizing documentation

Storybook offers default support for documentation pages, but you can extend this with additional options in your .storybook/main.js|ts|cjs file.

You can replace the default documentation template with a custom one by opening your .storybook/preview.js|ts file.

This custom template can include metadata headers, interactive tables for args and argTypes, and an overview of other stories.

Using MDX for documentation

MDX is beneficial for non-React projects or when JSX-handling isn’t configured. It allows you to combine Markdown documentation with live, interactive examples of your components. 

You can attach an MDX file to a component and its stories or control the location of the docs entry in the sidebar. MDX allows for more customized documentation. 

Here’s an example of an MDX document that combines Markdown documentation with live components:

In this MDX example, the <Meta> tag sets up the component metadata, and the Markdown headers and text provide thorough documentation. The <Canvas> and <Story> elements then embed a live, interactive example of the Button component.

Doc Blocks defines the page template for automatic docs within MDX and as part of the docs page template. Many of these blocks can be customized via parameters, allowing you to filter out specific props or change the appearance of the documentation. 

These blocks include ArgTypes, Canvas, Controls, and Story. Doc Blocks can be used within MDX to further enhance your documentation. 

Here’s how you might use some common Doc Blocks:

In this MDX example, <Description> provides a detailed description of the Button component, <ArgsTable> displays a table of the component’s args, and <Primary> showcases the primary story of the component.

Creating custom Doc Blocks

Storybook allows you to create your Doc Blocks. This is useful if you must document specific aspects of your project not covered by the existing blocks.

By leveraging these features, you can build a sustainable documentation pattern that suits your needs, whether for a component library, a design system, or any other project.

For more detailed information on setting up and customizing dynamic documentation in Storybook, refer to the official Storybook documentation on Automatic Documentation and Storybook and Doc Blocks .

Testing and debugging in Storybook 

Testing and debugging in Storybook involves various methodologies and tools to ensure the robustness and quality of UI components. It is a multifaceted process that includes interaction testing, visual regression testing, and automated testing. 

Interaction testing

Interaction testing validates the functional aspects of UIs, particularly for more complex UIs like pages.

It involves setting up the component’s initial state, simulating user behaviors such as clicks and form entries, and checking if the UI and component state update correctly. 

Storybook facilitates this process in the browser, making it easier to debug failures. You can write these tests using a play function connected to a story, which simulates user behavior and verifies the underlying logic. 

Storybook’s interaction add-on mirrors the Testing Library’s API, so if you are familiar with Testing Library, you should find Storybook’s interaction tests approachable.

Here’s an example of how you might set up an interaction test for a button component: 

In this example, the play function simulates a user clicking the button, and you can add assertions to check how the UI updates in response.

Visual testing

Visual testing is another crucial aspect of Storybook testing. Integrating visual testing at the component level is imperative to catch UI bugs early in the development process. 

Tools like Percy can be combined with Storybook for visual regression testing. Percy compares images across browsers and is compatible with testing tools like Cypress , TestCafe , WebdriverIO , and Playwright . 

This approach helps validate UI early, eliminating bugs and improving the release cycle.

For visual regression testing with Percy, you would typically set up your tests to capture screenshots of your components in different states. Here’s a basic setup for visual testing:

In this example, withPercySnapshot is a decorator that instructs Percy to take a snapshot of the ‘Primary’ state of the Button component for visual testing.

Automated testing

Automated testing plays a significant role in the Storybook ecosystem. The Storybook test runner allows transforming stories into executable tests powered by Jest and Playwright. 

This can be especially useful as Storybook grows, automating the process of running all tests. Tests can be executed via the command line or in a CI server. 

The test checks that the play function runs without errors for stories with a play function.

For automated testing, you might set up your Storybook stories to be testable with Jest and Playwright. 

Here’s how you might configure your Storybook to enable this:

In this configuration, the @storybook/addon-interactions addon is added for interaction testing. The test runner will execute all interaction tests and catch broken stories.

Building components in isolation

Building components in isolation is another advantage of Storybook.

The environment allows developers to build components in isolation, focusing solely on the element without considering other application parts. 

This isolated development is beneficial for identifying all edge cases and reducing redundant development efforts.

However, there are also challenges in Storybook testing, including:

• Integration issues with existing projects
• Performance impacts from some add-ons
• Duplication of efforts to maintain components in React and Storybook
• Dependency on add-ons and decorators for different data requirements.

In summary, Storybook testing is a comprehensive approach that involves interaction testing, visual regression testing, and automated testing, all contributing to an efficient and robust UI development process. 

For more details, refer to the Storybook Documentation on Interaction Tests and LambdaTest’s comprehensive guide on Storybook Testing .

How to deploy Storybook projects

To deploy Storybook projects, there are several key steps you need to follow, whether you’re working with a simple application or a complex one managed by Nx, an extensible build framework.

The first step involves building Storybook as a static web application, which can be achieved using a built-in command in Storybook that is pre-configured for most supported frameworks. 

The command to build Storybook as a static web app is usually run in your project’s root directory: ` npm run build-storybook ` This command will produce a static version of your Storybook that any web server can serve. To preview this locally, you can use ` npx serve ./.storybook `

Once you have built your Storybook as a static web app, you can deploy it to various hosting services. For instance:

• Chromatic : Chromatic is a service tailored for Storybook that offers straightforward deployment and features like UI review, versioning, and history. After building your Storybook as a static app, you can publish it using the Chromatic CLI tool and automate this process in your CI environment.
• Vercel : Vercel is another free platform where you can deploy your Storybook. It involves setting up your project with specific commands in a `vercel.json` file and then using either the Vercel CLI or Vercel’s Git integrations to deploy your application.
• Nx : If you’re using Nx, it helps set up Storybook for development and publishing. In Nx, you can create one central Storybook container to gather stories from multiple libraries, allowing for a more organized and efficient deployment process.

There are some considerations you need to keep in mind while deploying your Storybook projects:

Customizing build for performance : For larger projects or when reduced build times are essential, you may need to customize the production build of Storybook. This involves adjusting settings in your `main.js|ts` configuration file.

CI/CD integration : Integrating Storybook into your CI/CD pipeline is crucial for automated testing and deployment. This ensures that changes are reviewed and tested before being merged and deployed.

In summary, deploying Storybook involves building it as a static web application and then choosing a suitable platform for hosting, like Chromatic or Vercel.

The process can be automated in a CI/CD pipeline for efficiency.

Nx offers additional tools and methodologies for managing Storybook in larger, more complex projects, facilitating testing, documentation, and deployment.

For more detailed steps and configurations, refer to the official Storybook documentation on publishing Storybook , guidance on deploying Storybook with Vercel , and best practices from Nx for Storybook .

Additional resources 

If you’re looking to improve your knowledge and skills in using Storybook, some great resources are available to help you. Here are some essential resources that offer detailed guides, tutorials, and insights into using Storybook effectively:

Storybook tutorials

Storybook’s official website offers free in-depth guides with code samples.

These tutorials are tailored for professional front-end developers and cover various aspects of using Storybook, including creating UI components, building and maintaining design systems, and different testing techniques. 

You can explore these tutorials on the Storybook website .

LogRocket Blog – Storybook adoption guide

This guide provides a comprehensive overview of Storybook, including practical use cases, examples, and alternatives.

It covers creating MDX documents, using the Story Source add-on for better code visibility, and setting up Mock Service Worker (MSW) for mocking API responses.

Additionally, it provides insights into accessibility checks and a wide range of add-ons to enhance Storybook’s capabilities. 

For more information, visit their website .

Snipcart – Storybook React: A beginner’s tutorial

This tutorial is perfect for beginners and covers the basics of using Storybook with React.

It walks you through creating your first story, viewing it in Storybook, and using the story in a React app.

Additionally, it discusses some of the most popular features of Storybook, such as stories, design systems, add-ons, and testing.

For more details, check out Snipcart’s tutoria l.

Storybook: conclusion 

As we conclude our exploration of Storybook, it is evident why it has become a preferred tool for modern UI development. 

Storybook is a comprehensive platform that enables the development, testing, and documentation of UI components across various JavaScript frameworks. 

It has been adopted by leading companies such as Airbnb , GitHub , and Stripe and offers several benefits that streamline the UI development process and enhance collaboration between designers and developers.

If you’d like to learn more about all things tech, you can check out our blog !

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Storybook understanding and ways writing of Stories for React

Storybook is an open-source UI development tool. It helps developers to create reusable, organized UI components with proper documentation independently. The component we create is called the story in Storybook.

In this article, we will understand the following topics:

• How to write a basic story
• How to group stories together in a folder
• How to embed a story within a story

Prerequisites:

• Storybook Introduction and Installation

Creating React Application and adding Storybook in your project:

Step 1: Create the react project folder, open the terminal, and write the command npm create-react-app folder name, if you have already installed create-react-app globally. If you haven’t then install create-react-app globally by using the command.

Step 2: After creating your project folder(i.e. project), move to it by using the following command.

Step 3: To add storybook in your project, in your terminal write the command

Project Structure: It will look like this. We have deleted the default story folder in the src folder. We have created a Components folder where we have created another two folders for our components Button and WelcomeText each having its own Javascript, CSS, and Stories file. We have also created another folder Page that basically embeds the other two components i.e, the Button and the WelcomeText.

Example 1: In this example, we will see how to write a  basic story. Let’s see the step-by-step implementation.

Step 1: Here, we are creating Component i,e a story Button. In the src folder, we will create a folder named Components within the folder we will create another folder named as Button in the folder again create three files naming Button.js,Button.css, and Button.stories.js and we will write the respective codes. In this file, we are simply creating a button component that takes variants, children as props,

Step 2: Adding a few styling to our component. We have created class btn which adds style to the button element. We also have two other classes sign-in and login with different stylings.

Step 3: In this file, we write the story. We import the Button Component. We are creating two sub-stories for our button component that takes variant login and sign-in respectively. We create put a unique title to the export default and also mention the component’s name here it is Button;

Button.stories.js

Step to Run Application: Run the application using the following command from the root directory of the project.

Example 2 : In this example, we will see how to group stories together. Let’s see the step-by-step implementation.

Step 1: Storybook gives us the feasibility to group stories together according to our convenience. To understand better, let’s create another folder as welcomeText and make files like WelcomeText.js, WelcomeText.css, WelcomeText.stories.js and write the below-mentioned code respectively. In the file, we are creating a component that shows a text. We are using a variant, children as props for this component.

WelcomeText.js

Step 2: Adding classes primary and secondary along with class welcome-text.

WelcomeText.css

Step 3: Like previously, we are creating a story for the component, where we create other sub-stories Primary that lakes the primary and Secondary that take secondary as a variant.

WelcomeText.stories.js

Example 3: In this example, we will see how to do stories within the story. Let’s see the step-by-step implementation.

Step 1: Now to group the stories all together in a folder, we need to just write in the title section of the stories the name of the folder before “/ComponentName”.

Here, both the stories are in the HOME folder.

Step 2: As in React, we can embed one component within another, we can similarly do it in the case of stories. Let’s create a story named Page, for that create a folder named Page and add a file naming Page.stories.js and write the below code where we are adding two of our stories that we created earlier one is the Login from Button.stories.js and another one Primary from WelcomeText.stories.js . Here we are embedding two of our stories Login and Primary within the new story Page.

Page.stories.js

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• Writing Novels

How to Write a Book

Last Updated: September 29, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Grant Faulkner, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Christopher M. Osborne, PhD . Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story, a literary magazine. Grant has published two books on writing and has been published in The New York Times and Writer’s Digest. He co-hosts Write-minded, a weekly podcast on writing and publishing, and has a M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.  There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,814,434 times.

Anyone with a story to tell can write a book, either for their own enjoyment or to publish for all to see. Getting started is often the hardest part, so set up a good workspace, create a regular writing schedule, and stay motivated to keep writing something every day. Focus on developing a “big idea” that drives your narrative, as well as at least one unforgettable character and realistic conflicts. Once you’ve written and revised your manuscript, consider your publishing options to get it into readers’ hands.

Staying Focused and Productive

• Writing a book is both a vocation and an avocation—that is, both a job and a passion. Figure out why you need to write, and why you want to write.
• Keep your goal or goals in mind as motivation. Just remember to keep them realistic. You probably won't become the next J.K. Rowling by your first novel.

• While moving from a cafe to a park bench to the library may work for you, consider setting up a single workspace that you always—and only—use for writing.
• Set up your writing space so you have any supplies or references that you’ll need close at hand. That way, you won’t lose your focus looking for a pen, ink cartridge, or thesaurus.
• Pick a sturdy, supportive chair —it’s easy to lose focus if your back aches!

• The average book writer should probably look to set aside 30 minutes to 2 hours for writing, at least 5 days per week—and ideally every day.
• Block out a time when you tend to be most alert and prolific—for instance, 10:30-11:45 AM every day.
• Scheduling in writing time may mean scheduling out other things in your life. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not.

• For instance, if you’ve given yourself a 1-year deadline for writing a complete first draft of a 100,000-word novel, you’ll need to write about 300 words (about 1 typed page) every day.
• Or, if you are required to turn in a doctoral dissertation draft that’s about 350 pages long in 1 year, you’ll likewise need to write about 1 page per day.

• You’re nearly always going to spend at least as much time editing a book as you will initially writing it, so worry about the editing part later. Just focus on getting something down on paper that will need to be edited. Don’t worry about spelling mistakes!
• If you simply can’t help but edit some as you write, set aside a specific, small amount of time at the end of each writing session for editing. For instance, you might use the last 15 minutes of your daily 90-minute writing time to do some light editing of that day’s work.

• Depending on your circumstances, you might be working with an editor, have committee members you can hand over chapter drafts to, or have a group of fellow writers who share their works-in-progress back and forth. Alternatively, show a friend or family member.
• You’ll go through many rounds of feedback and revisions before your book is published. Don’t get discouraged—it’s all part of the process of writing the best book you can!

Creating a Great Story

• Start with the “big picture” first, and worry about filling in the finer details later on.
• Brainstorm themes, scenarios, or ideas that intrigue you. Write them down, think about them for a while, and figure out which one you’re most passionate about.
• For instance: “What if a man journeyed to a land where the people were tiny and he was a giant, and then to another land where the people were giants and he was tiny?”

• For instance, a sci-fi adventure set in space will be more effective if the technology draws at least a small degree from reality.
• Or, if you’re writing a crime drama, you might do research into how the police typically investigate crimes of the type you’re depicting.

• For instance, instead of waking up thinking “I need to write about the Civil War,” you might tell yourself, “I’m going to write about General Grant’s military strategy today.”
• These “manageable pieces” may end up being your book’s chapters, but not necessarily so.

Lucy V. Hay

Look at breakdowns of movie plots for insights into common successful story structures. There are many good sources, like Script Lab or TV Tropes, to find plot breakdowns of popular movies. Read these summaries and watch the movies, then think about how you can plot your story in a way that is similar to the movies you really like.

• Think about some of your favorite characters from books you love. Write down some of their character traits and use these to help build your own unique characters.
• If you’re writing nonfiction, dig deep into the complexities and all-too-human qualities of the real figures you’re writing about. Bring them to life for your readers.

• The main conflict—for instance, Captain Ahab’s obsession with the white whale in Moby Dick —can be an entry point for a range of other external and internal conflicts.
• Don’t downplay conflicts and tension in nonfiction works—they help to ground your writing in reality.

• Your goal is to never give your readers a reason to lose interest. Keep them engaged and turning those pages!
• This doesn’t mean you can’t use long sentences, descriptive writing, or even asides that deviate from the main storyline. Just make sure that these components serve the larger narrative.

Publishing Your Book

• Seeking publication can feel a bit like losing control over your manuscript, after all the time you’ve spent working and re-working it. Keep reminding yourself that your book deserves to be seen and read!
• If necessary, impose a deadline on yourself: “I’m going to submit this to publishers by January 15, one way or the other!”

• Evaluate potential agents and look for the best fit for you and your manuscript. If you know any published authors, ask them for tips and leads on agents.
• Typically, you’ll submit excerpts or even your entire manuscript to an agent, and they’ll decide whether to take you on as a client. Make sure you’re clear on their submission guidelines before proceeding.

• You can self-publish copies on your own, which may save you money but will take up a lot of time. You’ll be responsible for everything from obtaining a copyright to designing the cover to getting the actual pages printed.
• You can work through self-publishing companies, but you’ll often end up paying more to get your book published than you’ll ever make back from selling it.
• Self-publishing an e-book may be a viable option since the publishing costs are low and your book immediately becomes accessible to a wide audience. Evaluate different e-book publishers carefully before choosing the right one for you.

Sample Book Excerpts

Write Your First Book with this Expert Series

Expert Q&A

• Keep your notebook and pen beside your bed, and keep a journal of your dreams. You never know when a dream of yours could give you inspiration or a story to write about! Thanks Helpful 35 Not Helpful 4
• If you want to add a true fact in your story, do some research on it first. Thanks Helpful 26 Not Helpful 4
• Ask some other authors for some tips and write them down. Thanks Helpful 20 Not Helpful 4

• Avoid plagiarizing (copying another author's work). Even if you do it as artfully as possible, eventually someone will track down and piece together all the copied parts. Thanks Helpful 36 Not Helpful 3

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Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you'd like to learn more about writing a book, check out our in-depth interview with Gerald Posner .

• ↑ https://thewritepractice.com/write-a-book-now/
• ↑ https://jerryjenkins.com/how-to-write-a-book/
• ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/writingprocess/goalsetting/why
• ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/how-to-write-a-book-without-losing-your-mind/566462/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/getting-feedback/
• ↑ https://jerichowriters.com/how-to-write-a-book/
• ↑ https://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-fiction.html
• ↑ https://blog.reedsy.com/how-to-revise-a-novel/
• ↑ https://www.janefriedman.com/find-literary-agent/

About This Article

To write a book, first think of an idea that you’re excited to write about. It could be anything – a memoir about your life, a fantasy tale, or if you're an expert on a topic, a non-fiction book. Once you’ve come up with an idea, you'll want to cultivate good writing habits to bring your book to life. First, make writing into a routine rather than an activity you need to fit into your busy schedule. Try to consistently write at the same time and place every day. Second, set a daily word or page goal so that you know exactly when you are finished writing each day. Last, don’t feel pressured to create a perfect first draft because it's much easier to edit perfectly than it is to write it perfectly the first time around. Focus on producing and writing as much as you can. Then, go back and spend time editing on another day. Once you have written and edited a draft that you like, seek feedback from your family, peers or mentors. If you want to self-publish, research how to do so online. You could also consider hiring an editor to help you through both editing and the publishing process. If you want to know more about how to write a non-fiction book, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Subscriber only, what does it take to write well author steve almond has a few ideas., in this excerpt from his new book on the craft of writing, the author says to embrace doubt.

“We live with mystery,” the poet Mark Strand notes, “but we don’t like the feeling. I think we should get used to it.”

I never met Strand, though I saw him read back in 1999. That was the year I spent making deliriously bad poetry. I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time. I only knew that prose had become an insufficient vehicle for my genius; this was why my short stories kept getting rejected.

I was depressed and lonely, scrambling between adjunct teaching gigs driving a pale green Tercel with a rusted undercarriage that would eventually shed a wheel in traffic. Every Thursday, I drove to a hipster bar and abused the open mic. I haunted local readings, vibrating with angst and stabbing insights onto a napkin because I couldn’t be bothered to buy a notebook.

That was when I was feeling ambitious. Mostly, I got stoned and watched movies at the second-run theater in Davis Square. I’d coat my arteries in Milk Duds, then walk outside into the silence of who I was.

How wretched was my poetry, really?

Owed to Water

It is said the ocean forgets everything

forgets the lash of lightning and the stones

it grinds to sand and the planks it swallows

without joy or renunciation

I wasn’t ready to write about what was actually happening in my life. So I ravaged Roget’s Thesaurus and bound the resulting dreck into a manuscript titled, unpretentiously, “Seven Essential Dreams.”

My dad suggested therapy. I hated him for it, then went to see a psychiatrist who reminded me, a little, of my mother (also a psychiatrist) and who informed me, after our first session, that she didn’t have room for me in her schedule. I staggered onto the sidewalk and burst into tears. As if in a dream, or a bad poem, one of my students appeared. We both had to pretend it wasn’t happening, that she would not now race back to campus to inform the rest of the class.

Around this time, my mother flew to Boston for a series of interviews that represented the final exam of her psychoanalytic training. At dinner one night, I mentioned that I’d been writing poetry. “I once dated a poet,” she murmured. “A million years ago, at Antioch. Do you know Mark Strand?”

“Mark Strand,” I said. “Oh my God! Are you serious? I just saw him read.” And so on.

I had long since renounced the practice of showing her my pain. For years, I’d been playing the role of her charming youngest son, the one trying to be a writer across the country. But having her in town, right across the table, awakened an ancient desperation. I wanted her to comfort me. My brain has spared me a reliable memory of that meal. I remember only that I started to cry.

“I’m sorry you’re struggling, Stevie,” she said. “But I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

I hate telling you this. I hate that it happened. My mother was the person I loved most in the world. She was the person whose devotion to literature had become my own. She was also tired of caring for needy, self-absorbed men. The point isn’t that she was a bad mom. The point is that we had no idea, in that particular moment of torment, how to reach each other. We were lost in private orbits of doubt.

That’s my central feeling when I begin writing: doubt. I haven’t quite worked out what the story is about. I have, at most, a few stray associations, a fragment of dialogue, the faint outlines of a plot.

Even as I learn more about my characters, as their dreams and fears begin to coalesce, I often conceal this data from the reader because I experience this withholding as a form of authority.

A reader mired in doubt, after all, is in no position to judge me.

There are, of course, other reasons that I foist doubt upon the reader. I forget that the reader isn’t me, doesn’t have access to my memories, hasn’t been along for the journey of discovery. I’m wary of the pain I might encounter and concerned about exposing my private tribulations, or those of my beloveds. Whatever the reasons, the result is the same: I mire the reader in my confusion, rather than that of my characters.

I’m not the only one making this category error. As the fiction editor of a literary magazine, I rejected 90 percent of our submissions for the simple reason that they were needlessly confusing.

To be clear: the stories we tell (if they are honest) should be full of doubt. We, as a species, are full of doubt. In fact, our deepest stories arise  from our bewilderment. They represent a productive engagement with that bewilderment — a creative struggle to understand and make meaning from our destructive impulses, our disappointments and delusions, our unresolved traumas, the vaults of mayhem we calmly drag around.

In ninth grade, my English teacher, a brilliant ham by the name of Jim Farrell, read us the first chapter of “The Catcher in the Rye.” I was hypnotized by the voice of Holden Caulfield, at once sly and bereft.

Mostly, I loved how honest Holden was about his own confusion. He wasn’t on some epic quest to process his nervous breakdown. He was simply having it, on the page, hurtling through his lost weekend in New York City, offending the phonies, fretting over the ducks in Central Park, sobbing before his little sister.

To write so openly about doubt struck me as a revolutionary act. I had spent years hiding my own, mistaking uncertainty for weakness.

We’re all the same way. We present to the world a version of ourselves brimming with assurance, free of anguish, in control. We know it’s a lie, but we see everyone else participating in that lie; the result is a vast and insoluble loneliness.

As writers, we have to allow our characters to stumble, to fail, to wander off the trail and into bewilderment. We have to stop regarding our own misspent years as personal failures.

Yes, we were drinking too much, ruining friendships, hurling our bodies before our hearts. Yes, we were unable to get out of bed. Yes, we got fired, got dumped, got arrested, got hospitalized. Yes, we needed help. But we were also, in the midst of all that, deeply alive. Pathetic as we might have seemed from the outside, we were working to change, to grow, to forgive.

I see that now: all the work I was doing during my year of bad poetry. I was sad and isolated and creatively confused. But I wrote every day.

Years later, I would convert some of my bad poems into extremely short stories, which they had been, all along. Hiding behind even the worst of my poems was a true story I wasn’t ready to tell yet, usually a story about how confused I was, how ashamed, how lost.

We always turn away from unbearable feelings. We want to feel sure of ourselves. We want to skip the part of the story where the hero falls apart. But that’s the story the reader wants to hear, the one only another human being in pain can tell them.

Excerpt from “Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories,” by Steve Almond. Copyright @2024 by Steven Almond. Used by permission of Zando, zandoprojects.com. All rights reserved.

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Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

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Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

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Learn how formal your college essay should be and get tips on how to bring out your natural voice.

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Get the perspective of a current college student on how she approached the admissions essay.

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Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

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Author Interviews

Don winslow ends trilogy, and his writing career, with final novel 'city in ruins'.

Scott Simon

NPR's Scott Simon talks to best-selling suspense author Don Winslow about what he says is his final novel, "City in Ruins."

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Danny Ryan, who's been a Rhode Island mobster, dockworker and fugitive from the law, is now a pillar of the community in Las Vegas. He's got a palatial home to which good citizens come to pay homage and enjoy his hospitality, his young son he loves and the companionship - well, three times a week, anyway - of an accomplished and compelling woman he respects. What could possibly go wrong? "City In Ruins" is the third and final novel in the bestselling Danny Ryan trilogy by Don Winslow. It follows "City On Fire" and "City Of Dreams," and Don Winslow says quite explicitly, "City Of Ruins" is my final book - no loopholes I could detect. He joins us now from Julian, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.

DON WINSLOW: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SIMON: The book opens with an implosion, a famous old Las Vegas hotel, now owned by Danny Ryan, being brought down from the inside. Is implosion a kind of theme for Danny Ryan's life, too?

WINSLOW: Yeah, it sure is. Looking over the arc of these three books, I think we're looking at a certain kind of self-destruction with dynamite, if you will, or explosives that were laid many years earlier on a long fuse, to torture the metaphor, and so implosion's definitely a theme.

SIMON: In earlier books, Danny had used what I'll just refer to as ill-gotten gains from a criminal enterprise to buy his way into a respectable hotel and gaming enterprise. He's got a dream. In fact, a hotel - I guess it's called the Dream in Italian.

WINSLOW: It is. Yeah, Il Sogno.

SIMON: Tell us about this place he wants to bring into being.

WINSLOW: Well, he wants to bring into being a new kind of megahotel where people walk in and it's literally a dream with images shifting constantly on the walls of beauty and action and all kinds of things. And I think it's reflective of his own dream of trying to create a new kind of life for himself and for his son.

SIMON: What stands in the way?

WINSLOW: Well, a number of things. For one thing, this valuable piece of real estate that this old hotel sat on is critical to power on the Las Vegas Strip. And he basically undermines a rival in order to acquire it. And then it turns out that both Danny and this rival have mob ties from the past that each of them is trying to escape and trying to leave behind him, and neither one of them can. And so those things really get in the way of Danny's dream.

SIMON: You've written so many other books over the years, including "Savages," "The Force," "The Cartel," bestsellers made into screen properties. What's kept you coming back to Danny Ryan?

WINSLOW: You know, it took me almost 30 years to complete this trilogy. You know, it's funny. You look back on your life. When I started the Danny Ryan books, my now-adult and married son was a toddler. What I was - set out to do was to write a fully contemporary crime epic that took its stories and characters, however, from the Greek and Roman classics, principally the Aeneid, but also the Odyssey and the Iliad and certain Greek tragic dramas. I kept failing at it. I would write some of the book, and some of it worked, and a lot of it didn't. And so at times, I was discouraged, thinking that either, A, it was a bad idea, or, B, it was a good idea and I didn't have the chops to carry it out. But I kept coming back to it 'cause I couldn't leave it behind. And then later on, a couple of decades down the road - you know, I live mostly in California - I started to go back to Rhode Island, where a lot of the first book is set, and I fell in love with the place again, and I felt that I could write it, perhaps in a better and more mature way than I could have done 20 years earlier.

SIMON: Did you feel a kinship with Danny?

WINSLOW: I think so. You know, I grew up with a lot of Danny'. I played pond hockey with them. I went to the beaches with them, you know, to the bars and restaurants and all kinds of things. So it's funny how little self-awareness you can have. The second volume of this book, "City Of Dreams," is basically Danny wandering the country trying to find a place to set his feet. I was deep into writing the third book before I looked back on the second book and realized how connected I was to Danny in that regard. You know, I left Rhode Island when I was 17 and spent decades wandering not only the country but the world, doing various kinds of jobs trying to make a living, trying without a notable degree of success to become a writer and finally kind of made that happen and found a place, if you will, to set my feet.

SIMON: You mentioned all the jobs you had. You were a private eye in Times Square.

WINSLOW: Yes, sir.

SIMON: Is that as exciting as it sounds, or is it a lot of keyhole peeping?

WINSLOW: (Laughter) Not too much keyhole peeping, thank God. You know, I didn't do what they call matrimonial work. But, no, it was not romantic at all. I was basically what is known as a street rat. And so I started that by investigating embezzlement and thefts in cinemas and legit movie theaters on Times Square - there were a few in those days - and then graduated, if you want to call it that, to being a troll. I would walk around Times Square trying to get mugged, and there were big tough guys, which I am not, behind me jumping in like riders at the rodeo and then eventually chasing runaways and trying to get to them before the pimps did.

SIMON: By the way, not that I'm interested in doing this, how do you arrange to get mugged?

WINSLOW: (Laughter) Well, for one thing, you arrange to be 5'6 and 130 pounds. That helps. And then you walk around looking like you don't know where you're going, like you're a tourist, with a wallet prominently in your back pants pocket.

SIMON: Wow. Sounds like it was indispensable to your literature.

WINSLOW: In some ways. You know, I mean, I think that being a PI, and then later I did it out in California, out here, on a much higher kind of level. But it got me in that world. I got to know cops and crooks and street people and lawyers and judges and courtrooms and all of that. But I think the most important influence it had on my work was in terms of investigation itself. I learned how to do research. I learned how to interview people. And the same skills that I would have used as an investigator are the skills that I brought to researching the novels.

SIMON: All of this steers us to asking about your goodbye. The acknowledgments you write include hundreds of people, parents...

WINSLOW: Yes.

SIMON: ...readers, old teachers...

WINSLOW: Sure.

SIMON: ...Even your agent.

WINSLOW: Especially my agent. Yeah.

SIMON: And as you say, goodbyes are hard. So why are you retiring?

WINSLOW: It's the confluence of two streams, if you will. One is that having finished this trilogy felt like an ending to me. It felt like, yeah, kind of my life's work. The second, though, major stream, and probably more important one, is that I just think that we're at a time in this country of crisis and a time where democracy is under a severe threat. And I think that the response to that needs to be more immediate than one can do in a novel, you know? You know, I'm not young. I'm 70. And I think whatever energies and time I have are better spent in that fight.

SIMON: Don Winslow, his new and insists his last novel, "City In Ruins." Thanks so much for being with us, and thanks for everything.

WINSLOW: Thank you very much. That's gracious of you to say.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CASCADE")

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Estelle Erasmus

How to Resist the Temptation of AI When Writing

Whether you're a student, a journalist, or a business professional, knowing how to do high-quality research and writing using trustworthy data and sources, without giving in to the temptation of AI or ChatGPT , is a skill worth developing.

As I detail in my book Writing That Gets Noticed , locating credible databases and sources and accurately vetting information can be the difference between turning a story around quickly or getting stuck with outdated information.

For example, several years ago the editor of Parents.com asked for a hot-take reaction to country singer Carrie Underwood saying that, because she was 35, she had missed her chance at having another baby. Since I had written about getting pregnant in my forties, I knew that as long as I updated my facts and figures, and included supportive and relevant peer-reviewed research, I could pull off this story. And I did.

The story ran later that day , and it led to other assignments. Here are some tips I’ve learned that you should consider mastering before you turn to automated tools like generative AI to handle your writing work for you.

Identify experts, peer-reviewed research study authors, and sources who can speak with authority—and ideally, offer easily understood sound bites or statistics on the topic of your work. Great sources include professors at major universities and media spokespeople at associations and organizations.

For example, writer and author William Dameron pinned his recent essay in HuffPost Personal around a statistic from the American Heart Association on how LGBTQ people experience higher rates of heart disease based on discrimination. Although he first found the link in a secondary source (an article in The New York Times ), he made sure that he checked the primary source: the original study that the American Heart Association gleaned the statistic from. He verified the information, as should any writer, because anytime a statistic is cited in a secondary source, errors can be introduced.

Jen Malia, author of  The Infinity Rainbow Club  series of children’s books (whom I recently interviewed on my podcast ), recently wrote a piece about dinosaur-bone hunting for Business Insider , which she covers in her book Violet and the Jurassic Land Exhibit.

After a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Malia, whose books are set in Philadelphia, found multiple resources online and on the museum site that gave her the history of the Bone Wars , information on the exhibits she saw, and the scientific names of the dinosaurs she was inspired by. She also used the Library of Congress’ website, which offers digital collections and links to the Library of Congress Newspaper Collection.

Malia is a fan of searching for additional resources and citable documents with Google Scholar . “If I find that a secondary source mentions a newspaper article, I’m going to go to the original newspaper article, instead of just stopping there and quoting,” she says.

Julian Chokkattu

Chris Haslam

Boone Ashworth

Brenda Stolyar

Your local public library is a great source of free information, journals, and databases (even ones that generally require a subscription and include embargoed research). For example, your search should include everything from health databases ( Sage Journals , Scopus , PubMed) to databases for academic sources and journalism ( American Periodical Series Online , Statista , Academic Search Premier ) and databases for news, trends, market research, and polls (t he Harris Poll , Pew Research Center , Newsbank , ProPublica ).

Even if you find a study or paper that you can’t access in one of those databases, consider reaching out to the study’s lead author or researcher. In many cases, they’re happy to discuss their work and may even share the study with you directly and offer to talk about their research.

For journalist Paulette Perhach’s article on ADHD in The New York Times, she used Epic Research to see “dual team studies.” That's when two independent teams address the same topic or question, and ideally come to the same conclusions. She recommends locating research and experts via key associations for your topic. She also likes searching via Google Scholar but advises filtering it for studies and research in recent years to avoid using old data. She suggests keeping your links and research organized. “Always be ready to be peer-reviewed yourself,” Perhach says.

When you are looking for information for a story or project, you might be inclined to start with a regular Google search. But keep in mind that the internet is full of false information, and websites that look trustworthy can sometimes turn out to be businesses or companies with a vested interest in you taking their word as objective fact without additional scrutiny. Regardless of your writing project, unreliable or biased sources are a great way to torpedo your work—and any hope of future work.

Author Bobbi Rebell researched her book Launching Financial Grownups using the IRS’ website . “I might say that you can contribute a certain amount to a 401K, but it might be outdated because those numbers are always changing, and it’s important to be accurate,” she says. “AI and ChatGPT can be great for idea generation,” says Rebell, “but you have to be careful. If you are using an article someone was quoted in, you don’t know if they were misquoted or quoted out of context.”

If you use AI and ChatGPT for sourcing, you not only risk introducing errors, you risk introducing plagiarism—there is a reason OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is being sued for downloading information from all those books.

Audrey Clare Farley, who writes historical nonfiction, has used a plethora of sites for historical research, including Women Also Know History , which allows searches by expertise or area of study, and JSTOR , a digital library database that offers a number of free downloads a month. She also uses Chronicling America , a project from the Library of Congress which gathers old newspapers to show how a historical event was reported, and Newspapers.com (which you can access via free trial but requires a subscription after seven days).

When it comes to finding experts, Farley cautions against choosing the loudest voices on social media platforms. “They might not necessarily be the most authoritative. I vet them by checking if they have a history of publication on the topic, and/or educational credentials.”

When vetting an expert, look for these red flags:

• You can’t find their work published or cited anywhere.
• They were published in an obscure journal.
• Their research is funded by a company, not a university, or they are the spokesperson for the company they are doing research for. (This makes them a public relations vehicle and not an appropriate source for journalism.)

And finally, the best endings for virtually any writing, whether it’s an essay, a research paper, an academic report, or a piece of investigative journalism, circle back to the beginning of the piece, and show your reader the transformation or the journey the piece has presented in perspective.

As always, your goal should be strong writing supported by research that makes an impact without cutting corners. Only then can you explore tools that might make the job a little easier, for instance by generating subheads or discovering a concept you might be missing—because then you'll have the experience and skills to see whether it's harming or helping your work.

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Jun 23, 2023

How to Write a Novel: 13-Steps From a Bestselling Writer [+Templates]

This post is written by author, editor, and ghostwriter Tom Bromley. He is the instructor of Reedsy's 101-day course, How to Write a Novel .

Writing a novel is an exhilarating and daunting process. How do you go about transforming a simple idea into a powerful narrative that grips readers from start to finish? Crafting a long-form narrative can be challenging, and it requires skillfully weaving together various story elements.

In this article, we will break down the major steps of novel writing into manageable pieces, organized into three categories — before, during, and after you write your manuscript.

How to write a novel in 13 steps:

1. Pick a story idea with novel potential

2. develop your main characters, 3. establish a central conflict and stakes, 4. write a logline or synopsis, 5. structure your plot, 6. pick a point of view, 7. choose a setting that benefits your story , 8. establish a writing routine, 9. shut out your inner editor, 10. revise and rewrite your first draft, 11. share it with your first readers, 12. professionally edit your manuscript, 13. publish your novel.

Every story starts with an idea.

You might be lucky, like JRR Tolkien, who was marking exam papers when a thought popped into his head: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ You might be like Jennifer Egan, who saw a wallet left in a public bathroom and imagined the repercussions of a character stealing it, which set the Pulitzer prize-winner A Visit From the Goon Squad in process. Or you might follow Khaled Hosseini, whose The Kite Runner was sparked by watching a news report on TV.

Many novelists I know keep a notebook of ideas both large and small 一 sometimes the idea they pick up on they’ll have had much earlier, but whatever reason, now feels the time to write it. Certainly, the more ideas you have, the more options you’ll have to write. 

✍️ Need a little inspiration? Check our list of 30+ story ideas for fiction writing , our list of 300+ writing prompts , or even our plot generator .

Is your idea novel-worthy?

How do you know if what you’ve got is the inspiration for a novel, rather than a short story or a novella ? There’s no definitive answer here, but there are two things to look out for 

Firstly, a novel allows you the space to show how a character changes over time, whereas a short story is often more about a vignette or an individual moment. Secondly, if an idea is fit for a novel, it’ll nag away at you: a thread asking to be pulled to see where it goes. If you find yourself coming back to an idea, then that’s probably one to explore.

I expand on how to cultivate and nurture your ‘idea seeds’ in my free 10-day course on novel writing. 

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Another starting point (or essential element) for writing a novel will come in the form of the people who will populate your stories: the protagonists. 

My rule of thumb in writing is that a reader will read on for one of two reasons: either they care about the characters , or they want to know what happens next (or, in an ideal world, both). Now different people will tell you that character or plot are the most important element when writing. 

In truth, it’s a bit more complicated than that: in a good novel, the main character or protagonist should shape the plot, and the plot should shape the protagonist. So you need both core elements in there, and those two core elements are entwined rather than being separate entities. 

Characters matter because when written well, readers become invested in what happens to them. You can develop the most brilliant, twisty narrative, but if the reader doesn’t care how the protagonist ends up, you’re in trouble as a writer. 

As we said above, one of the strengths of the novel is that it gives you the space to show how characters change over time. How do characters change? 

Firstly, they do so by being put in a position where they have to make decisions, difficult decisions, and difficult decisions with consequences . That’s how we find out who they really are. 

Secondly, they need to start from somewhere where they need to change: give them flaws, vulnerabilities, and foibles for them to overcome. This is what makes them human — and the reason why readers respond to and care about them.

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🗿 Need more guidance? Look into your character’s past using these character development exercises , or give your character the perfect name using this character name generator .

As said earlier, it’s important to have both a great character and an interesting plot, which you can develop by making your character face some adversities.

That drama in the novel is usually built around some sort of central conflict . This conflict creates a dramatic tension that compels the reader to read on. They want to see the outcome of that conflict resolved: the ultimate resolution of the conflict (hopefully) creates a satisfying ending to the narrative.

A character changes, as we said above, when they are put in a position of making decisions with consequences. Those consequences are important. It isn’t enough for a character to have a goal or a dream or something they need to achieve (to slay the dragon): there also needs to be consequences if they don’t get what they’re after (the dragon burns their house down). Upping the stakes heightens the drama all round.

Now you have enough ingredients to start writing your novel, but before you do that, it can be useful to tighten them all up into a synopsis. 

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So far you’ve got your story idea, your central characters and your sense of conflict and stakes. Now is the time to distill this down into a narrative. Different writers approach this planning stage in different ways, as we’ll come to in a moment, but for anyone starting a novel, having a clear sense of what is at the heart of your story is crucial. 

There are a lot of different terms used here 一 pitch, elevator pitch , logline, shoutline, or the hook of your synopsis 一 but whatever the terminology the idea remains the same. This is to summarize your story in as few words as possible: a couple of dozen words, say, or perhaps a single sentence. 

This exercise will force you to think about what your novel is fundamentally about. What is the conflict at the core of the story? What are the challenges facing your main protagonist? What do they have at stake? 

📚 Check out these 48 irresistible  book hook examples  and get inspired to craft your own.

If you need some help, as you go through the steps in this guide, you can fill in this template:

My story is a [genre] novel. It’s told from [perspective] and is set in [place and time period] . It follows [protagonist] , who wants [goal] because [motivation] . But [conflict] doesn’t make that easy, putting [stake] at risk.

It's not an easy thing to do, to write this summarising sentence or two. In fact, they might be the most difficult sentences to get down in the whole writing process. But it is really useful in helping you to clarify what your book is about before you begin. When you’re stuck in the middle of the writing, it will be there for you to refer back to. And further down the line, when you’ve finished the novel, it will prove invaluable in pitching to agents , publishers, and readers. 

📼 Learn more about the process of writing a logline from professional editor Jeff Lyons. 

Another particularly important step to prepare for the writing part, is to outline your plot into different key story points. 

There’s no right answer here as to how much planning you should do before you write: it very much depends on the sort of writer you are. Some writers find planning out their novel before start gives them confidence and reassurance knowing where their book is going to go. But others find this level of detail restrictive: they’re driven more by the freedom of discovering where the writing might take them. 

This is sometimes described as a debate between ‘planners’ and ‘pantsers’ (those who fly by the seat of their pants). In reality, most writers sit somewhere on a sliding scale between the two extremes. Find your sweet spot and go from there!

If you’re a planning type, there’s plenty of established story structures out there to build your story around. Popular theories include the Save the Cat model and Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey . Then there are books such as Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots , which suggests that all stories are one of, well, you can probably work that out.

Whatever the structure, most stories follow the underlying principle of having a beginning, middle and end (and one that usually results in a process of change). So even if you’re ‘pantsing’ rather than planning, it’s helpful to know your direction of travel, though you might not yet know how your story is going to get there. 

How to Plot a Novel in Three Acts

In 10 days, learn how to plot a novel that keeps readers hooked

Finally, remember what we said earlier about plot and character being entwined: your character’s journey shouldn’t be separate to what happens in the story. Indeed, sometimes it can be helpful to work out the character’s journey of change first, and shape the plot around that, rather than the other way round. 

Now, let’s consider which perspective you’re going to write your story from. 

However much plotting you decide to do before you start writing, there are two further elements to think about before you start putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). The first one is to think about which point of view you’re going to tell your story from. It is worth thinking about this before you start writing because deciding to change midway through your story is a horribly thankless task (I speak from bitter personal experience!)

Understanding Point of View

Learn to master different POVs and choose the best for your story.

Although there might seem a large number of viewpoints you could tell your story from, in reality, most fiction is told from two points of view 一 first person (the ‘I’ form) and third person ‘close’ (he/she/they). ‘Close’ third person is when the story is witnessed from one character’s view at a time (as opposed to third person ‘omniscient’ where the story can drop into lots of people’s thoughts).

Both of these viewpoints have advantages and disadvantages. First person is usually better for intimacy and getting into character’s thoughts: the flip side is that its voice can feel a bit claustrophobic and restrictive in the storytelling. Third person close offers you more options and more space to tell your story: but can feel less intimate as a result. 

There’s no right and wrong here in terms of which is the ‘best’ viewpoint. It depends on the particular demands of the story that you are wanting to write. And it also depends on what you most feel comfortable writing in. It can be a useful exercise to write a short section in both viewpoints to see which feels the best fit for you before starting to write. 

Which POV is right for your book?

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Besides choosing a point of view, consider the setting you’re going to place your story in.

The final element to consider before beginning your story is to think about where your story is going to be located . Settings play a surprisingly important part in bringing a story to life. When done well, they add in mood and atmosphere, and can act almost like an additional character in your novel.

There are many questions to consider here. And again, it depends a bit on the demands of the story that you are writing. 

Is your setting going to a real place, a fictional one, or a real place with fictional elements? Is it going to be set in the present day, the past, or at an unspecified time? Are you going to set your story in somewhere you know, or need to research to capture properly? Finally, is your setting suited to the story you are telling, and serve to accentuate it, rather than just acting as a backdrop?

If you’re writing a novel in genres such as fantasy or science fiction , then you may well need to go into some additional world-building as well before you start writing. Here, you may have to consider everything from the rules and mores of society to the existence of magical powers, fantastic beasts, extraterrestrials, and futuristic technology. All of these can have a bearing on the story, so it is better to have a clear setup in your head before you start to write.

The Ultimate Worldbuilding Template

130 questions to help create a world readers want to visit again and again.

Whether your story is set in central London or the outer rings of the solar system, some elements of the descriptive detail remain the same. Think about the use of all the different senses — the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of where you’re writing about. Those sorts of small details can help to bring any setting to life, from the familiar to the imaginary. 

Alright, enough brainstorming and planning. It’s time to let the words flow on the page. 

Having done your prep — or as much prep and planning as you feel you need — it’s time to get down to business and write the thing. Getting a full draft of a novel is no easy task, but you can help yourself by setting out some goals before you start writing.

Firstly, think about how you write best. Are you a morning person or an evening person? Would you write better at home or out and about, in a café or a library, say? Do you need silence to write, or musical encouragement to get the juices flowing? Are you a regular writer, chipping away at the novel day by day, or more of a weekend splurger?

How to Build a Solid Writing Routine

In 10 days, learn to change your habits to support your writing.

I’d always be wary of anyone who tells you how you should be writing. Find a routine and a setup that works for you . That might not always be the obvious one: the crime writer Jo Nesbø spent a while creating the perfect writing room but discovered he couldn’t write there and ended up in the café around the corner.

You might not keep the same way of writing throughout the novel: routines can help, but they can also become monotonous. You may need to find a way to shake things up to keep going.

Deadlines help here. If you’re writing a 75,000-word novel, then working at a pace of 5,000 words a week will take you 15 weeks (Monday to Friday, that’s 1000 words a day). Half the pace will take twice as long. Set yourself a realistic deadline to finish the book (and key points along the way). Without a deadline, the writing can end up drifting, but it needs to be realistic to avoid giving yourself a hard time. 

In my experience, writing speeds vary. I tend to start quite slowly on a book, and speed up towards the end. There are times when the tap is open, and the words are pouring out: make the most of those moments. There are times, too, when each extra sentence feels like torture: don’t beat yourself up here. Be kind to yourself: it’s a big, demanding project you’re undertaking.

Speaking of self-compassion, a word on that harsh editor inside your mind…

The other important piece of advice is to continue writing forward. It is very easy, and very tempting, to go back over what you’ve written and give it a quick edit. Once you start down that slippery slope, you end up rewriting and reworking the same scene and never get any further forwards in the text. I know of writers who spent months perfecting their first chapter before writing on, only to delete that beginning as the demands of the story changed.

The first draft of your novel isn’t about perfection; it’s about getting the words down. One writer I work with calls it the ‘vomit draft’ — getting everything out and onto the page. It’s only once you’ve got a full manuscript down that you can see your ideas in context and have the capacity to edit everything properly. So as much as your inner editor might be calling you, resist! They’ll have their moment in the sun later on. For now, it’s about getting a complete version down, that you can go on to work with and shape. 

By now, you’ve reached the end of your first draft (we might be glossing over the hard writing part just a little here: if you want more detail and help on how to get through to the end of your draft, our How to Write A Novel course is warmly recommended). 

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Reaching the end of your first draft is an important milestone in the journey of a book. Sadly for those who feel that this is the end of the story, it’s actually more of a stepping stone than the finish line.

In some ways, now the hard work begins. The difference between wannabe writers and those who get published can often be found in the amount of rewriting done. Professional writers will go back and back over what they’ve written, honing what they’ve created until the text is as tight and taut as it is possible to be.

How do you go about achieving this? The first thing to do upon finishing is to put the manuscript in a drawer. Leave it for a month or six weeks before you come back to it. That way, you’ll return the script with a fresh pair of eyes. Read it back through and be honest about what works and what doesn’t. As you read the script, think in particular about pace: are there sections in the novel that are too fast or too slow? Avoid the trap of the saggy middle . Then consider: is your character arc complete and coherent? Look at the big-picture stuff first before you tackle the smaller details. 

Edit your novel closely

On that note, here are a few things you might want to keep an eye out for:

Show, don’t tell. Sometimes, you just need to state something matter-of-factly in your novel, that’s fine. But, as much as you can, try to illustrate a point instead of just stating it . Keep in mind the words of Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass."

“Said” is your friend. When it comes to dialogue, there can be the temptation to spice things up a bit by using tags like “exclaimed,” “asserted,” or “remarked.” And while there might be a time and place for these, 90% of the time, “said” is the best tag to use. Anything else can feel distracting or forced. 

Stay away from purple prose. Purple prose is overly embellished language that doesn’t add much to the story. It convolutes the intended message and can be a real turn-off for readers.

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Once you feel it’s good enough for other people to lay their eyes on it, it’s time to ask for feedback.

Writing a novel is a two-way process: there’s you, the writer, and there’s the intended audience, the reader. The only way that you can find out if what you’ve written is successful is to ask people to read and get feedback.

Think about when to ask for feedback and who to ask it from. There are moments in the writing when feedback is useful and others where it gets in the way. To save time, I often ask for feedback in those six weeks when the script is in the drawer (though I don’t look at those comments until I’ve read back myself first). The best people to ask for feedback are fellow writers and beta readers : they know what you’re going through and will also be most likely to offer you constructive feedback. 

Also, consider working with sensitivity readers if you are writing about a place or culture outside your own. Friends and family can also be useful but are a riskier proposition: they might be really helpful, but equally, they might just tell you it’s great or terrible, neither of which is overly useful.

Feedbacking works best when you can find at least a few people to read, and you can pool their comments. My rule is that if more than one person is saying the same thing, they are probably right. If only one person is saying something, then you have a judgment call to make as to whether to take those comments further (though usually, you’ll know in your gut whether they are right or not.)

Overall, the best feedback you can receive is that of a professional editor…

Once you’ve completed your rewrites and taken in comments from your chosen feedbackers, it’s time to take a deep breath and seek outside opinions. What happens next here depends on which route you want to take to market:

If you want to go down the traditional publishing route , you’ll probably need to get a literary agent, which we’ll discuss in a moment.

If you’re going down the self-publishing route , you’ll need to do what would be done in a traditional publishing house and take your book through the editing process. This normally happens in three stages. 

Developmental editing. The first of these is to work with a development editor , who will read and critique your work primarily from a structural point of view. 

Copy-editing. Secondly, the book must be copy-edited , where an editor works more closely, line-by-line, on the script. 

Proofreading. Finally, usually once the script has been typeset, then the material should be professionally proofread , to spot any final mistakes or orrors. Sorry, errors!

Finding such people can sound like a daunting task. But fear not! Here at Reedsy, we have a fantastic fleet of editors of all shapes, sizes, and experiences. So whatever your needs or requirements, we should be able to pair you with an editor to suit.

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Now that you’ve ironed out all the wrinkles of your manuscript, it’s time to release it into the wild.

For those thinking about going the traditional publishing route , now’s the time for you to get to work. Most trade publishers will only accept work from a literary agent, so you’ll need to find a suitable literary agent to represent your work. 

The querying process is not always straightforward: it involves research, waiting and often a lot of rejections until you find the right person (I was rejected by 24 agents before I found my first agent). Usually, an agent will ask to see a synopsis and the first three chapters (check their websites for submission details). If they like what they read, they’ll ask to see the whole thing. 

If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to think about getting your finished manuscript to market. You’ll need to get it typeset (laid out in book form) and find a cover designer . Do you want to sell printed copies or just ebooks? You’ll need to work out how to work Amazon , where a lot of your sales will come from, and also how you’ll market your book .

For those picked up by a traditional publisher, all the editing steps discussed will take place in-house. That might sound like a smoother process, but the flip side can be less control over the process: a publisher may have the final say in the cover or the title, and lead times (when the book is published) are usually much longer. So it’s worth thinking about which route to market works best for you.

Finally, you’re a published author! Congratulations. Now all you have to do is think about writing the next one… 

As an editor and publisher, Tom has worked on several hundred titles, again including many prize-winners and international bestsellers. 

8 responses

Sasha Winslow says:

14/05/2019 – 02:56

I started writing in February 2019. It was random, but there was an urge to the story I wanted to write. At first, I was all over the place. I knew the genre I wanted to write was Fantasy ( YA or Adult). That has been my only solid starting point the genre. From February to now, I've changed my story so many times, but I am happy to say by giving my characters names I kept them. I write this all to say is thank you for this comprehensive step by step. Definitely see where my issues are and ways to fix it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Evelyn P. Norris says:

30/10/2019 – 14:18

My number one tip is to write in order. If you have a good idea for a future scene, write down the idea for the scene, but do NOT write it ahead of time. That's a major cause of writer's block that I discovered. Write sequentially. :) If you can't help yourself, make sure you at least write it in a different document, and just ignore that scene until you actually get to that part of the novel

Allen P. Wilkinson says:

28/01/2020 – 04:51

How can we take your advice seriously when you don’t even know the difference between stationary and stationery? Makes me wonder how competent your copy editors are.

↪️ Martin Cavannagh replied:

29/01/2020 – 15:37

Thanks for spotting the typo!

↪️ Chris Waite replied:

14/02/2020 – 13:17

IF you're referring to their use of 'stationery' under the section '1. Nail down the story idea' (it's the only reference on this page) then the fact that YOU don't know the difference between stationery and stationary and then bother to tell the author of this brilliant blog how useless they must be when it's YOU that is the thicko tells me everything I need to know about you and your use of a middle initial. Bellend springs to mind.

Sapei shimrah says:

18/03/2020 – 13:59

Thanks i will start writing now

Jeremy says:

25/03/2020 – 22:41

I’ve run the gamut between plotter and pantser, but lately I’ve settled on in-depth plotting before my novels. It’s hard for me to do focus wise, but I’m finding I’m spending less time in writer’s block. What trips me up more is finding the right voice for my characters. I’m currently working on a sci-fi YA novel and using the Save the Cat beat sheet for structure for the first time. Thank you for the article!

Nick Girdwood says:

29/04/2020 – 10:32

Can you not write a story without some huge theme?

Comments are currently closed.

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Once Upon a Time, the World of Picture Books Came to Life

The tale behind a new museum of children’s literature is equal parts imagination, chutzpah and “The Little Engine That Could.”

By Elisabeth Egan

Photographs and Video by Chase Castor

Elisabeth Egan followed the Rabbit Hole as it was nearing completion. She has written about several of its inhabitants for The Times.

On a crisp Saturday morning that screamed for adventure, a former tin can factory in North Kansas City, Mo., thrummed with the sound of young people climbing, sliding, spinning, jumping, exploring and reading.

Yes, reading.

If you think this is a silent activity, you haven’t spent time in a first grade classroom. And if you think all indoor destinations for young people are sticky, smelly, depressing hellholes, check your assumptions at the unmarked front door.

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole, a brand-new, decade-in-the-making museum of children’s literature founded by the only people with the stamina for such a feat: former bookstore owners. Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid are long-married artists who share the bullish determination of the Little Red Hen. They’ve transformed the hulking old building into a series of settings lifted straight from the pages of beloved picture books.

Before we get into what the Rabbit Hole is, here’s what it isn’t: a place with touch screens, a ball pit, inscrutable plaques, velvet ropes, a cloying soundtrack or adults in costumes. It doesn’t smell like graham crackers, apple juice or worse (yet). At $16 per person over 2 years old, it also isn’t cheap.

During opening weekend on March 16, the museum was a hive of freckles and gap toothed grins, with visitors ranging in age from newborn to well seasoned. Cries of “Look up here!,” “There’s a path we need to take!” and “There’s Good Dog Carl !” created a pleasant pandemonium. For every child galloping into the 30,000 square foot space, there was an adult hellbent on documenting the moment.

Did you ever have to make a shoe box diorama about your favorite book? If so, you might remember classmates who constructed move-in ready mini kingdoms kitted out with gingham curtains, clothespin people and actual pieces of spaghetti.

Cowdin, Pettid and their team are those students, all grown up.

The main floor of the Rabbit Hole consists of 40 book-themed dioramas blown up to life-size and arranged, Ikea showroom-style, in a space the size of two hockey rinks. The one inspired by John Steptoe’s “ Uptown ” features a pressed tin ceiling, a faux stained-glass window and a jukebox. In the great green room from “ Goodnight Moon ,” you can pick up an old-fashioned phone and hear the illustrator’s son reading the story.

One fictional world blends into the next, allowing characters to rub shoulders in real life just as they do on a shelf. Visitors slid down the pole in “The Fire Cat,” slithered into the gullet of the boa constrictor in “ Where the Sidewalk Ends ” and lounged in a faux bubble bath in “ Harry the Dirty Dog .” There are plenty of familiar faces — Madeline , Strega Nona , Babar — but just as many areas dedicated to worthy titles that don’t feature household names, including “ Crow Boy ,” “ Sam and the Tigers ,” “ Gladiola Garden ” and “ The Zabajaba Jungle .”

Emma Miller, a first-grade teacher, said, “So many of these are books I use in my classroom. It’s immersive and beautiful. I’m overwhelmed.”

As her toddler bolted toward “ Frog and Toad ,” Taylar Brown said, “We love opportunities to explore different sensory things for Mason. He has autism so this is a perfect place for him to find little hiding holes.”

A gaggle of boys reclined on a bean bag in “ Caps for Sale ,” passing around a copy of the book. Identical twins sounded out “ Bread and Jam for Frances ” on the pink rug in the badger’s house. A 3-year-old visiting for the second time listened to her grandfather reading “The Tawny Scrawny Lion.”

Tomy Tran, a father of three from Oklahoma, said, “I’ve been to some of these indoor places and it’s more like a jungle gym. Here, my kids will go into the area, pick up the book and actually start reading it as if they’re in the story.”

All the titles scattered around the museum are available for purchase at the Lucky Rabbit, a bookstore arranged around a cozy amphitheater. Pettid and Cowdin estimate that they’ve sold one book per visitor, with around 650 guests per day following the pink bunny tracks from the parking lot.

Once upon a time, Cowdin and Pettid owned the Reading Reptile, a Kansas City institution known not just for its children’s books but also for its literary installations. When Dav Pilkey came to town, Pettid and Cowdin welcomed him by making a three-and-a-half foot papier-mâché Captain Underpants. Young customers pitched in to build Tooth-Gnasher Superflash or the bread airplane from “In the Night Kitchen.”

One of the store’s devotees was Meg McMath, who continued to visit through college, long after she’d outgrown its offerings (and its chairs). Now 36, McMath traveled from Austin, Texas with her husband and six-month-old son to see the Rabbit Hole. “I’ve cried a few times,” she said.

The Reading Reptile weathered Barnes & Noble superstores and Amazon. Then came “the Harry Potter effect,” Pettid said, “where all of a sudden adults wanted kids to go from picture books to thick chapter books. They skipped from here to there; there was so much they were missing.”

As parents fell under the sway of reading lists for “gifted” kids, story time became yet another proving ground.

“It totally deformed the reading experience,” Cowdin said. Not to mention the scourge of every bookstore: surreptitious photo-snappers who later shopped online.

In 2016, Cowdin and Pettid closed the Reptile to focus on the Rabbit Hole, an idea they’d been percolating for years. They hoped it would be a way to spread the organic bookworm spirit they’d instilled in their five children while dialing up representation for readers who had trouble finding characters who looked like them. The museum would celebrate classics, forgotten gems and quality newcomers. How hard could it be?

Cowdin and Pettid had no experience in the nonprofit world. They knew nothing about fund-raising or construction. They’re ideas people, glass half full types, idealists but also stubborn visionaries. They didn’t want to hand their “dream” — a word they say in quotes — to consultants who knew little about children’s books. Along the way, board members resigned. Their kids grew up. Covid descended. A tree fell on their house and they had to live elsewhere for a year. “I literally have told Pete I quit 20 times,” Pettid said.

“It has not always been pleasant,” Cowdin said. “But it was just like, OK, we’re going to do this and then we’re going to figure out how to do it. And then we just kept figuring it out.”

Little by little, chugging along like “ The Little Engine That Could ,” they raised $15 million and assembled a board who embraced their vision and commitment to Kansas City. They made a wish list of books — “Every ethnicity. Every gender. Every publisher,” Pettid said — and met with rights departments and authors’ estates about acquiring permissions. Most were receptive; some weren’t. (They now have rights to more than 70 titles.)

“A lot of people think a children’s bookstore is very cute,” Pettid said. “They have a small mind for children’s culture. That’s why we had to buy this building.”

For $2 million, they bought the factory from Robert Riccardi, an architect whose family operated a beverage distribution business there for two decades. His firm, Multistudio, worked with Cowdin and Pettid to reimagine the space, which sits on an industrial corner bordered by train tracks, highways and skyline views.

Cowdin and Pettid started experimenting with layouts. Eventually they hired 39 staff members, including 21 full-time artists and fabricators who made everything in the museum from some combination of steel, wood, foam, concrete and papier-mâché.

“My parents are movers and shakers,” Gloria Cowdin said. She’s the middle of the five siblings, named after Frances the badger’s sister — and, yes, that’s her voice reading inside the exhibit. “There’s never been something they’ve wanted to achieve that they haven’t made happen, no matter how crazy.”

During a sneak peek in December, it was hard to imagine how this semi-construction zone would coalesce into a museum. The 22,000 square foot fabrication section was abuzz with drills and saws. A whiteboard showed assembly diagrams and punch lists. (Under “Random jobs,” someone had jotted, “Write Christmas songs.”) The entryway and lower level — known as the grotto and the burrow — were warrens of scaffolding and machinery.

But there were pockets of calm. Kelli Harrod worked on a fresco of trees outside the “ Blueberries for Sal ” kitchen, unfazed by the hubbub. In two years as lead painter, she’d witnessed the Rabbit Hole’s steady growth.

“I remember painting the ‘ Pérez and Martina ’ house before there was insulation,” Harrod said. “I was bundled up in hats, gloves and coats, making sure my hands didn’t shake.”

Leigh Rosser was similarly nonplused while describing his biggest challenge as design fabrication lead. Problem: How to get a dragon and a cloud to fly above a grand staircase in “ My Father’s Dragon .” Solution: “It’s really simple, conceptually” — it didn’t sound simple — “but we’re dealing with weight in the thousands of pounds, mounted up high. We make up things that haven’t been done before, or at least that I’m not aware of.”

Attention to detail extends to floor-bound exhibits. The utensil drawer in “Blueberries for Sal” holds Pete Cowdin’s mother’s egg whisk alongside a jar containing a baby tooth that belonged to Cowdin and Pettid’s oldest daughter, Sally. The tooth is a wink at “ One Morning in Maine ,” an earlier Robert McCloskey book involving a wiggly bicuspid — or was it a molar? If dental records are available, Cowdin and Pettid have consulted them for accuracy.

“With Pete and Deb, it’s about trying to picture what they’re seeing in their minds,” said Brian Selznick , a longtime friend who helped stock the shelves in the Lucky Rabbit. He’s the author of “ The Invention of Hugo Cabret ,” among many other books.

Three months ago, the grotto looked like a desert rock formation studded with pink Chiclets. The burrow, home of Fox Rabbit, the museum’s eponymous mascot, was dark except for sparks blasting from a soldering iron. The floor was covered with tiny metal letters reclaimed from a newly-renovated donor wall at a local museum.

Cowdin and Pettid proudly explained their works-in-progress; these were the parts of the museum that blossomed from seed in their imaginations. But to the naked eye, they had the charm of a bulkhead door leading to a scary basement.

When the museum opened to the public, the grotto and the burrow suddenly made sense. The pink Chiclets are books, more than 3000 of them — molded in silicone, cast in resin — incorporated into the walls, the stairs and the floor. They vary from an inch-and-a-half to three inches thick. As visitors descend into the Rabbit Hole, they can run their fingers over the edges of petrified volumes. They can clamber over rock formations that include layers of books. Or they can curl up and read.

Dennis Butt, another longtime Rabbit Hole employee, molded 92 donated books into the mix, including his own copies of “ The Hobbit ” and “ The Lord of the Rings .” He said, “They’re a little piece of me.”

As for the metal letters, they’re pressed into the walls of a blue-lit tunnel leading up a ramp to the first floor. They spell the first lines of 141 books, including “ Charlotte’s Web ,” “Devil in the Drain” and “ Martha Speaks .” Some were easier to decipher than others, but “Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough” jumped out. It called to mind another line from “A Hole is to Dig,” Ruth Krauss’s book of first definitions (illustrated by a young Maurice Sendak ): “The world is so you have something to stand on.”

At the Rabbit Hole, books are so you have something to stand on. They’re the bedrock and the foundation; they’re the solid ground.

Cowdin and Pettid have plans to expand into three more floors, adding exhibit space, a print shop, a story lab, a resource library and discovery galleries. An Automat-style cafeteria and George and Martha -themed party and craft room will open soon. A rooftop bar is also in the works.

Of course, museum life isn’t all happily ever after. Certain visitors whined, whinged and wept, especially as they approached the exit. One weary adult said, “Charlie, we did it all.”

Then, “Charlie, it’s time to go.”

And finally, “Fine, Charlie, we’re leaving you here.” Cue hysteria.

But the moral of this story — and the point of the museum, and maybe the point of reading, depending on who you share books with — crystallized in a quiet moment in the great green room. A boy in a Chiefs Super Bowl T-shirt pretended to fall asleep beneath a fleecy blanket. Before closing his eyes, he said, “Goodnight, Grandma. Love you to the moon.”

Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years. More about Elisabeth Egan

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The Psychic Peril of Mars: NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a human mission to the red planet: the trauma of isolation .

Saved by a Rescue Dog: He spent 13 years addicted to cocaine. Running a shelter for abused and neglected dogs in New York has kept him sober, but it hasn’t been easy .

An Art Mogul's Fall: After a dramatic rise in business and society, Louise Blouin finds herself unloading a Hamptons dream home in bankruptcy court .

Three stories that illustrate Guardians manager Stephen Vogt’s storybook baseball life

OAKLAND, Calif. — This is where a backup became a legend, where an overachiever became a folk hero and the everyman had tens of thousands of diehards chanting his name.

This is where Guardians manager Stephen Vogt blossomed as a catcher, a clubhouse leader, a fan favorite. It’s where he rescued his career before it ever truly launched, where he sprouted into an All-Star and where he and his family scripted an emotional final chapter to a career no one could have envisioned. This is where he coined the phrase, on behalf of fans watching him: “If that guy can do it, I can do it.” This is where he developed into, as he describes, “a regular guy with a cool job.”

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It all started for Vogt in Oakland. It ended in Oakland, too, with one last euphoric trip around the bases. And now Vogt’s managerial career, a role he has built toward for 15 years, will begin in Oakland.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” he said.

It’s fitting. It’s perfect. It’s another example of his career coming full circle.

Here are three tales that highlight Vogt’s storybook life in baseball.

The Vogts’ seats in the second deck, halfway between third base and the left-field corner, shielded them from McCovey Cove, so a 15-year-old Stephen didn’t see the bruised baseball cannonball into the chilly water on March 31, 2000.

But when Jorge Posada’s home run disappeared into the bay during that final tuneup before Pac Bell Park’s grand opening, Stephen had a revelation.

It’s an enduring image for Stephen, him in his cream Marvin Benard jersey, polishing off a French dip sandwich and a soda and declaring to his dad, Randy, that he would launch a baseball into that water one day. Of course, Randy has no recollection of his son saying that, even though he remembers everything about that night, the first tour of one of baseball’s most scenic venues.

The wild highs and lows that prepared Stephen Vogt to be the Cleveland Guardians' manager

They were in attendance for J.T. Snow’s game-tying homer in the ninth inning of Game 2 in the 2000 NLDS, and Barry Bonds’ 69th homer in 2001, off Chuck McElroy of the Padres at the end of September as he chased down Mark McGwire’s single-season record.

Randy would study the scoreboard to see when Bonds was scheduled to hit next so if anyone needed a trip to the bathroom or concession stand, they could plan it around his visit to the batter’s box.

Baseball is in the family’s blood. Stephen’s son, Clark, is named after Will Clark, Stephen’s favorite player.

The Vogt brothers spent summer afternoons in their rectangular front yard on their cul-de-sac in Visalia, Calif. A drive off the roof across the street was a homer, but a rope to right field was off-limits and required a stealth mission to retrieve the tennis ball without the grouchy neighbor noticing. Thus, Stephen, a lefty hitter, was forced from kindergarten to learn to direct the ball to the opposite field.

The Giants fandom dates back a quarter-century before Stephen was born. Randy’s dad grew up in Oklahoma and rooted for the New York Giants because he loathed the Dodgers and Yankees . The Giants relocated to San Francisco in 1958, a couple of years after the Vogts moved to central California.

Randy attended his first MLB game at Seals Stadium, the minor-league facility that briefly hosted the Giants until Candlestick Park opened. Willie Mays was Randy’s hero.

Stephen signed with the Giants in 2019. His brother reminded him they had dreamed of that moment since they were kids with Bonds Fever. That spring, Stephen posed for a photo with Mays. The framed picture sits on Randy’s desk.

Later that season, 7,070 days after his alleged promise to his dad, Stephen hit a splash shot into the bay.

Anytime Vogt called his wife from the ballpark, she assumed the worst: another injury, another surgery, another painful road toward the unknown. That’s what she figured when his name popped up on her phone the day before the 2012 season opener.

Instead, Vogt had learned he was headed to the big leagues. He was ready to start the season with Triple-A Durham. All was quiet at the ballpark. Durham manager Charlie Montoyo went for a jog. The team’s hitting coach, Dave Myers, surprised Vogt with the news of his promotion.

The Rays needed a last-minute injury replacement for B.J. Upton and Vogt, a catcher by trade, also moonlighted as a corner outfielder. He rushed home, Alyssa packed his suitcase and they headed to the Raleigh-Durham airport with their six-month-old daughter.

On the drive there, they laughed. They had just spent every cent they had at Costco on the essentials needed for surviving another minor-league season. That eventually became their gimmick: Anytime they filled their shopping cart at Costco, it seemed, they wound up not needing any of the purchases because they were headed elsewhere, either via call-up or trade. On a few occasions, they trekked to Costco looking to spark some good fortune.

Vogt remembers sitting in the passenger seat of their white Chevy Tahoe, feeling like it was stuck in neutral on Route 885 as his legs shook, his heart conducted a furious drum solo and his fingers failed to keep pace with his frantic mind as he delivered one text after another to share the news with friends and family.

Those 60 minutes from ballpark office to airport seat felt more like four hours, time standing still as he itched to get to Tampa to put on a big-league uniform for the first time.

As Alyssa pulled to the curb of the departures level ahead of his 6:30 p.m. flight, Stephen told Payton, six months old at the time, that she had no idea what that day meant, but her life would be changed forever. The same decree applied to himself. He apologizes to Payton as he tears up while retelling the story 12 years later. She smiles.

Vogt debuted in the eighth inning against the Yankees on Opening Day, pinch-hitting for Elliot Johnson with runners on the corners and no outs and Tampa trailing by one. He always told himself he had to swing at the first pitch, location and velocity be damned. You can’t record a hit or a home run on the first pitch you ever see if your bat doesn’t escape your shoulder, he contends. He fouled back a David Robertson fastball. Three pitches later, he returned to the dugout, unsuccessful yet thrilled.

“Punched out. It was awesome,” he says, before noting the Rays did walk off Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera that afternoon. “I got to high-five the guy who scored.”

Two familiar voices guided Vogt from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box for the first at-bat of his final game.

Now batting, our dad, No. 21, Stephen Vogt!

Payton and Clark, the two oldest Vogt children, introduced their dad on the ballpark PA system as their younger brother, Bennett, mouthed the words in the booth. Vogt, fighting back tears, took a deep breath. He then dug in against Shohei Ohtani .

“It just meant everything,” he says.

And it almost didn’t happen.

Vogt considered calling it a career after the 2021 season, which culminated in a Braves championship, even though he was sidelined by an injury. His last two at-bats that year? Home runs.

He was 2-for-2 on Sept. 9, with a couple solo shots off Erick Fedde . In the sixth inning, Vogt blocked a ball in the dirt, changed directions and attempted an off-balance throw to third to nab Juan Soto . During his throwing motion, he felt a pop in his hip. He couldn’t squat. Two muscles had ripped away from his pelvis. He had a sports hernia. He exited the game. He required season-ending surgery.

The league initiated a lockout that winter, which bought him time on his retirement decision. He rehabbed as if he were going to keep playing; that way, even if he ultimately retired, he’d return to full strength before he replaced catching and swinging a bat with coaching or swinging a golf club. Since the lockout forced a transaction freeze, Vogt didn’t have to watch free agents find new homes as he anxiously awaited a call.

The lockout ended in March, the Oakland Athletics called and Vogt couldn’t resist the homecoming, the chance to script a storybook ending sweeter than the one that ended with a couple of homers, a couple of torn muscles and a title. He could finish his career where he earned his big-league break. That July, following a conversation with his wife on an off-day date night in Chicago, Vogt decided that the 2022 season would be his last.

In the seventh inning of his final game, knowing it was likely the last at-bat of his career, Vogt socked a first-pitch fastball over the right-field fence. The baseball landed in a stairwell, one section from Payton and a handful of other family members. He high-stepped around the bases before reaching home plate and hugging Ernie Clement , the on-deck hitter. A few moments later, Vogt took a curtain call.

His first major-league hit was a homer to right field in Oakland. His last major-league hit was a homer to right field in Oakland. It was the perfect final entry, a crazy cap to a wild playing career, one he couldn’t have imagined while toiling away in the minors or while marveling at Barry Bonds and Will Clark as a kid in the stands across the San Francisco Bay.

(Top photo: Lindsey Wasson / AP Photo)

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Zack Meisel is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Cleveland Guardians. Zack was named the 2021 Ohio Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association and won first place for best sports coverage from the Society of Professional Journalists. He has been on the beat since 2011 and is the author of four books, including "Cleveland Rocked," the tale of the 1995 team. Follow Zack on Twitter @ ZackMeisel

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Research on hyenas shows how social ranks can leave marks on dna.

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Here’s how complex social dynamics in pack animals like hyenas may shed light on the deep-seated ... [+] biological impact of rank and community in the animal kingdom.

The evolution of pack behavior is a fascinating story of survival. It’s a testament to the adaptability and complexity of animal life, reflecting a balance between competition and cooperation in the natural world. For species like hyenas, the intricacies of their social structures not only dictate their daily interactions and survival strategies but, as recent research published in Communications Biology shows, also imprint themselves onto their very genes.

Within packs, there exists what scientists call “dominance hierarchies,” which offers high-ranking individuals preferential access to essential resources like food and mates. This privilege can significantly affect an individual’s chance of survival and reproductive success, marking a clear divide in the quality of life between those at the top and bottom of the social ladder.

Hyenas are a prime example of this social structure in action. Within their clans, a strict pecking order dictates everything from feeding rights to nursing habits. High-ranking hyenas, often females, enjoy the benefits of staying closer to the communal den, allowing them more opportunities to nurse their cubs. This direct care gives their young a head start, called the “silver spoon effect,” leading to faster growth and a better chance of reaching adulthood.

But, as the article suggests, beyond the environmental advantages conferred by higher social status, these “privileges” seem to be deeply encoded within the very DNA of these animals.

‘DNA Methylation’ Is The Key To Understanding Hyena Social Inequalities

Picture your body’s genome as an enormous library full of books, which are your genes. Each book contains instructions for making everything your body needs to function. But not every book needs to be open at the same time—some should be read only when needed.

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This is where DNA methylation comes into play. It’s like having librarians (methyl groups) that can mark certain books to keep them closed until they’re needed. When a gene is marked this way, the cell knows not to “read” it or use its instructions at that moment. This process helps your body respond to environmental changes and ensures that the right genes are active at the right times. This can also lead to a sort of cascading effect, where initial biological differences influence an individual’s social status, which in turn, impacts their biology in a reinforcing cycle.

In other mammals, there’s some evidence for a relationship between social status and gene regulation in the scientific literature. For instance, how wild baboons get their social rank—females through family ties and males through fighting—changes their body’s immune system. High-ranking males had more active immune-related genes than lower-ranking ones, which is different from what’s seen when rank isn’t won through strength, according to a 2018 article published in PNAS . This suggests that males who climb to the top might already have stronger immune systems.

Male baboons clash in a display of dominance, a battle not just for status but also superior DNA.

What Makes This Hyena Study So Special?

This discovery about hyenas is particularly remarkable for a few reasons that make it stand out in the world of wildlife research.

First, it’s one of the first times scientists have been able to peek into the lives of these enigmatic creatures without disrupting their natural behavior, thanks to the non-invasive methods used to collect DNA. This approach builds on decades of detailed observation and data accumulation from the Serengeti Hyena Project, which began in 1987. Instead of relying on blood samples (like was the case in the wild baboon study), the researchers collected DNA from gut epithelium cells found in fresh hyena droppings.

This sets a new standard for ethical wildlife research. By gathering genetic material in such a non-disruptive way, scientists ensure the most natural observations of animal behavior and social structure.

Second, the researchers found 149 regions in the DNA of hyenas where there were noticeable differences in DNA methylation between those at the top of the social ladder and those at the bottom. These regions encode genes that are important for how the body converts food into energy, fights off sickness, communicates signals in the brain and moves substances around in cells.

In simpler terms, the study shows that the experiences hyenas have because of their social status—like getting more or less food or facing different levels of stress—leave an indelible mark on their DNA.

Moreover, the data shows that this happens in both the young cubs and the adults, proving that the social world they live in is literally part of their biology at the molecular level. It’s like finding out that the schoolyard dynamics don’t just affect a child’s feelings or friendships but can actually change something deep inside them, at the level of their genes.

The findings from the hyena study can revolutionize our understanding of social mammals at large, suggesting that the biological impacts of social hierarchies are a common thread in the animal kingdom. This opens new avenues for exploring the genetic underpinnings of social behavior in other species, including humans.

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Eclipse tourists should plan for overloaded cell networks

Tips to prepare in case a surge of visitors bogs down mobile service.

If you witness nature’s majesty and can’t live-stream it on TikTok or post in your group chat, did it even happen?

In places around the United States where people will flock to see next week’s solar eclipse , some local officials have warned that mobile service could temporarily flake out .

Cellular networks sometimes bog down when people in one place all call, text, stream or post at once — like at a packed football game or, in this case, an opportunity to view a potentially once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse.

These congestion hiccups to cellular networks are far less common than they used to be. But just as eclipse tourists might want to prepare for traffic jams and portable toilet shortages , it couldn’t hurt to plan ahead for potential mobile disruptions, too.

Here are some tips:

2024 total solar eclipse

Download, print or write down driving directions ahead of time

In case you don’t have mobile service for turn-by-turn directions, have a hard copy of driving instructions to wherever you’re going before or after your eclipse viewing.

Some apps including Apple Maps and Google Maps also let you download maps before your trip to find your way even without mobile service.

For Google Maps , put in the location where you’re going. Select your profile picture or initials in the upper-right corner of the screen. Pick “Offline maps” and then “Select your own map.”

Zoom in or out until you’ve highlighted the area you want to save. Tap “Download.”

Find that saved map again by following the same instructions. You can access turn-by-turn directions if your destination is in the downloaded map area.

For Apple Maps , search for the area where you’re traveling. Tap “Download” and zoom in or out to highlight the area you want to save.

You can access turn-by-turn directions even when you don’t have cell service. The only feature that won’t work without mobile reception is real-time traffic information.

Waze has more limited directions if you lose an internet connection during your drive.

Have a backup plan for emergency calls

Jacob Saur, administrator of Arlington County Public Safety Communications and Emergency Management in Virginia, suggested texting 911 in areas where that’s an option. He said texts are not typically as affected by wireless phone congestion.

Or if you can, call emergency services from a landline or a VoIP line that carries calls over the internet . If you’re in the range of a WiFi network, you can also route any mobile calls that way.

Lastly, some phone models have built-in options for using satellites to contact emergency services . Find out the options for your device before your eclipse trip.

This might not be necessary, but it doesn’t hurt to plan for emergencies.

Have cash handy

Some payment terminals for swiping your debit or credit card use the same mobile networks as your phone.

It’s possible they could stop working if you’re somewhere with a flock of visitors on their phones. In case that happens, have some cash on you.

Plan ahead to entertain the kids (and yourself)

Some digital entertainment apps let you download videos or music that work fine even when you’re not connected to the internet.

You can find download instructions for Netflix , YouTube , Disney Plus , Spotify and Prime Video . (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

You need to be a paying subscriber to Spotify’s and YouTube’s premium services to use those apps’ download features.

You can also download podcasts, e-books and audiobooks to your phone that will work without mobile service. ( We love Libby for free e-books and audiobooks from some public libraries.)

Or ditch the devices and brush up on rules for the I Spy road trip game .

Why do mobile networks flake during temporary surges in use?

Phone companies have spent a fortune, especially in the past five years , expanding and modernizing mobile networks, including for sudden spikes of mobile use.

Still, in eclipse tourist zones, you might have service, but it could be far slower than you’re used to.

Patrick Halley, president and CEO of the Wireless Infrastructure Association, compared it to a wedding if there are five times the number of expected guests. You might have to slice the cake into tiny pieces that won’t satisfy anyone.

But many local officials have planned for eclipse-related mobile phone surges.

Some areas in the eclipse’s path have brought in scaled-down cellphone towers to handle more network use. (Delightfully, these are referred to by animal shorthand: COWs and COLTs , for cell towers on wheels and cell towers on light trucks.)

Everything could work fine. Officials in Carbondale, Ill., which was in the path of an eclipse in 2017 and again this year , were worried seven years ago about overloaded water and sewage systems, overwhelmed emergency rooms and strained mobile networks, said Steven Mitchell, Carbondale’s economic development director.

But while visitors from Chicago sat in terrible traffic on their way home after the 2017 eclipse, most of the worst case scenarios didn’t happen. “Cell service was not impacted at all,” Mitchell said.

If overloaded networks do stop you from posting your selfies immediately, Halley had some philosophical advice: “Maybe put the phone down and enjoy the eclipse.”

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