Book manuscript

Long manuscripts break on the days you do not write, not the days you do. That is why polishing sentences from chapter one usually stalls around chapter three. This frame splits the manuscript into chapters and each chapter into scenes. A scene should be small enough to finish in one sitting. Knowing what you finished today is what brings you back tomorrow.

The planning block at the top is scaffolding you will delete later. A one line summary, what the character wants, and where you decided it ends give you somewhere to return to when the middle loses you. Break scenes with a divider rather than a blank line; dividers make it easy to move a whole chunk when you reorder later.