Author: Judy L Mohr

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The Mohr Story Structure Model

Regular consumers of story, either written or film, learn to recognize the patterns that come with the rise and fall of action. They develop this innate instinct about when things should happen. If something is off with the pacing of a story, the readers know. They can feel it. They may not be able to explain why the pacing is off, but they still know that it's off.

Story structure models help to provide reasoning and some mathematics to what the readers know by instinct. This is why story structure is more important than what some writers give it credit for.

However, in all my years of studying story structure, I've also noticed that emphasis is often given to the protagonist of the story, focusing on their actions and decisions. The antagonist is often treated as an afterthought or ignored completely. As such, the dynamic interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist is not leveraged to its full potential.

When I noticed this pattern, I started to develop my own story structure model that leans into the interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist. As I write this blog post, I'm currently writing a full book about the topic, defining the antagonist and looking at story structure in detail, incorporating the antagonist into the model. That book is slated for publication come February 2026, but it's time to start sharing with the world the base structure that I'm calling the Mohr Story Structure model.

The Mohr Story Structure model is an amalgamation of a lot of different models, but adds the antagonistic beats that are commonly missed or misunderstood. I employ a four-act structure.

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I’ve never read ‘The Lord of the Rings’

I'm a fan of fantasy and science fiction. I adore sinking myself into a good, thick tome. Sword and Sorcery novels can easily get me hooked so I read the full series. But there is one series that I have never read, and I never will.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

And the reasons have nothing to do with its contents or historical origins. It's 100% my husband's fault.

Sit back and let me tell you about what married life can be like at times.

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Should fiction writers use an NDA?

Recently, a topic came up in one of my many discussion forums about whether a writer should insist on using a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) when working with editors. It's not the first time that I've encountered the question.

I understand the rationale behind it, but I also feel that it comes from a place of fear and the lack of understanding of how copyright law works.

In today's post, I want to address this idea of using NDAs when working with editors, and I want to explain why I advise against them for fiction novelists.

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If you don’t want people to talk about it, STAY SILENT

I've always been of the belief that if you want an idea to die, then you need to stay silent. I'm not talking about the situations where one needs to take a stand against political injustices. No, I'm talking about the book that you want to see removed from the shelves… or the bit of misinformation that needs to be buried… or the embarrassing events that happened the other night.

The fastest way to ensure that anyone knows about whatever it is that you wish would disappear and never resurface is to tell others about it. And if you share it on social media, it spreads even faster.

In today's post, I want to talk about some of the instances that I've encountered over the years where people just didn't know how to keep their mouths shut, spreading that tidbit of information that they wanted to hide because of it.

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The Real Costs of Editing… Again

Every so often, I find myself in a situation where I have a discussion about the real costs of editing. In the past, when I have had this conversation on my blog, it has been about the time it takes to read a document and the effective editing time as a consequence. However, recently I have found myself in a situation where perspective clients have been assuming that my rates for larger projects are based on my sample contract rate.

Whenever I have an inquiry from a perspective client, in the initial response that I send back, there is often the offer of a sample contract. I do not offer free sample edits—I never have and I never will—but I do offer a smaller substantive editing contract that does not need to go through my full onboarding vetting process. Any prospective client who wants to see what I could do with their work on a smaller scale are given the opportunity to employ my services through this smaller contract. I also point out that should a larger contract come from this, containing the same words that were found in the sample contract (with some editing expected), the sample contract can be used to offset the cost associated for the larger contract.

But here is where assumptions were made.

There have been some prospective clients that have taken the fee associated with the sample contract and have extrapolated the cost associated for their manuscripts based on a linear scale. As such, they assumed that I would be charging in the order of US$6000 for an edit on 100,000 words. This is certainly not the case.

My father is often fond of saying that when you "assume" things that you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me". And this particular assumption is no exception.

In today's post, I want to highlight why this assumption is a bad assumption, and I want to bring to your attention some of the facts associated with the real costs of editing.

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