The Diagram Gallery

Cybersecurity

• Three days down, itemizedAt the top, a log filename reads name dot date dot type, with the second dot circled in red: dots the operating system allows, one; dots in the new name, two.In Three Days Down Over a Filename
• What technical understanding changes in a ghostwritten bookA ghostwriter who understands technical material does not need it explained three times, which speeds up the interviews: instead of spending hours teaching a writer what a SCADA system does or how SAP integrates...In Technical Ghostwriting: When Your Book Needs a Writer Who Understands the Technology
• Why a security ghostwriter needs security knowledgeA ghostwriter without security experience can transcribe expertise, but transcription is not the job.In What Executives Get Wrong About Cybersecurity Books
• Why a security standard is worth passing even when it does not applyPass whatever standards apply, and pass the ones that do not apply too, whenever that is reasonable.In Most Security Tools Are Theater
• Why a writer phone holds more risk than they thinkWriters store more sensitive material on their phones than most people realise: notes, outlines, drafts, client communications, interview recordings, manuscript files, contract details.In Phone Security for Writers: 8 Ways to Protect Your Work
• Why cloud security writing needs an operatorCloud security is where abstract best practices meet the mess of real systems, and only somebody who has lived in that mess writes about it convincingly.In Ghostwriting a Cloud Security Book in the Zero Trust Era
• Why in-person social engineering still worksDecades of firewalls have not retired the man in the work shirt, and the economics explain why.In The Fake Printer Guy: Social Engineering in Person
• Why malware keeps coming back, and the ordering that stops itContainment precedes eradication.In The Infection That Kept Coming Back
• Why most security writing misses the people who need itWriters describe their own working world.In The People Getting Attacked Are the Ones Nobody Writes For
• Why patching matters, and why auto-patching is the wrong answerUnpatched systems are how a large share of attacks succeed, because the hole was known, the fix existed, and nobody applied it.In The Boring Security Work That Actually Keeps You Safe
• Why software gets written without recovery in mindNo programmer decides to make an unrecoverable application.In The Applications Were Never Designed to Come Back
• Why you never hear insider threat storiesThe silence around insider incidents is structural.In The Consultant We Fired for Cracking Our Passwords

FAQs

• How a book coaching engagement runs week to weekCoaching starts with the concept and the goals, and from those a plan for the book gets built.In Book Coaching FAQ

Fiction

• A conversation with no conflictA joke conversation flow where every line is agreement: we should go, I agree, good idea, I agree, it's settled, I agree, and the reader falling asleep at the end.In Your Dialogue Sounds Fake Because Everyone Agrees
• Accident report: mixed metaphor pileupIn the middle of the intersection, a car carrying ducks in a row has collided with a boat labeled before this ship sails.In Metaphors in Writing: When They Work and When They Fail
• Bad fiction habit bingoA joke bingo card of bad fiction habits: a dark and stormy night opening, the word suddenly, eyes that darken, a sigh on every page, characters who nod constantly, a mirror description, a dream opening and a villain who explains the plan.In Bad Writing Habits Worth Breaking: A Working Checklist
• Chekhov's general ledgerColumns list the item planted, when it was planted, when it was paid off, and the balance.In Foreshadowing: 24 Iconic Uses in Books and Movies
• Danger vs damage in a plot-armored novelThe danger to the hero climbs chapter after chapter: stabbed, thrown off a cliff, three days without water, a seventeenth lucky break.In Plot Armor: Signs Your Hero Is Too Safe, and How to Fix It
• Deus ex machina: parts diagram1, in service since ancient Greek theater, still squeaks.In Deus Ex Machina: The Unexpected Savior in Storytelling
• Everybody wants the briefcaseA briefcase flies through the air at the front of the pack, and its luggage tag reads: Contents: doesn't matter, possibly a lion trap.In MacGuffins: What They Are and How to Use Them
• Flowchart for fixing a stuck plotIt starts at a box reading: your plot is stuck at 30,000 words, which points to a big red box in the middle with the one question: what does your protagonist want badly enough to suffer for?In The One Question That Fixes 90% of Stuck Plots
• How fake-out deaths destroy stakes across a storyThe hero falls, the music swells, the other characters weep, the audience grieves.In Writing Character Deaths That Matter: A Craft Guide for Fiction Writers
• How hard it hits vs how hurt the character isEnergy of a hit runs along a log scale and injury runs up the side.In Writing Military Fiction: Research That Matters
• How hard things hitA paint fleck at orbital speed carries about 5 joules, a baseball fastball about 130, a rifle bullet about 3,500, a 1 centimeter debris fragment at 10 kilometers per second about 70,000, a car...In Kessler Syndrome: How Space Debris Could Close Earth's Orbit
• How hot the universe wasThe end of the Planck era sits near 10 to the 32 kelvin, the electroweak split near 10 to the 15, the first nuclei forming at three minutes near a billion, the fog clearing at 380,000 years near 3,000, and today 2.7 kelvin.In What Was the Big Bang, the First Nanosecond, and What Came Before

Fiction

• How overthinking the idea kills the writingThe worst thing a writer can do starting a new project is put too much pressure on themselves to generate the perfect idea.In Good Writing Comes From the Heart, Not the Outline | A Ghostwriter's Perspective
• Map of all the plot holes in my manuscriptBlue lakes and seas cover most of the continent, and the legend says the plot holes are in blue.In How to Find Plot Holes in Your Novel (Most Are Character Holes)
• One evening, two mapsThe left map, what the narrator told you, shows a neat green line from the office straight home at 6 PM, sober, nothing happened.In The Unreliable Narrator: How It Works and When to Use It
• Police lineup: the cast of your novelFive suspects stand against a height chart marked from 3 to 7 feet, each holding a numbered placard.In Your Characters All Sound Like You (And Readers Notice)
• Reader attention on page oneA joke line chart of reader attention across the first pages of a novel that opens with the hero waking up.In Why Your Opening Pages Aren't Hooking Anyone
• Tell vs. show, a field guideIn the TELL panel, a stick figure stands calmly by her desk in an office, and a narration box says: She was angry.In Show Versus Tell: What It Actually Means and How to Do It
• Telling vs showingA joke comparison of telling and showing.In "Show Don't Tell" Is Garbage Advice (Here's What They Actually Mean)
• The anti-hero moral compassA joke ladder of moral positions from hero to villain, with the anti-hero in the middle labelled it's complicated: the pure hero, the hero with a temper, the anti-hero, the villain with good reasons, and the villain with good publicity.In 10 Excellent Reasons the Anti-Hero Captures Our Hearts
• The backstory icebergAbove the waterline is a tiny tip labeled in the book: one line, she had a hard childhood.In Backstory Is a Lie (What Actually Makes Characters Come Alive)
• The chapter three funnelA joke funnel of readers: everyone who bought the book, those who read chapter one, those who survived the reaction scene where the hero thinks about chapter one, those who survived the flashback inside...In The Real Reason Readers Put Books Down at Chapter Three
• The convenience-o-meterA joke ladder of plot conveniences from earned to unforgivable: a device set up in chapter two, a lucky break early in the story, a lucky break at the climax, a long-lost twin, and at the top, a wizard did it.In Plot Devices: Those That Work and Those That Wreck the Story
• The dialogue tag ladderA joke ladder of dialogue tags from invisible to absurd: said at the bottom, then asked, then whispered, then exclaimed, then hissed on a line with no s in it, and at the top a character who ejaculated a line of dialogue.In Should You Only Use "Said" in Dialogue Tags? My Rules for Tags and Adverbs
• The five revision passes in orderRevision runs in five passes, from the largest problems to the smallest: structure, character, scene, dialogue and prose.In Revising Your Novel: From First Draft to Final Manuscript
• The four layers of a believable characterA believable character is built in layers, and each layer adds depth the reader can connect to.In Character Development: An 8-Step Guide
• The genre contractClause 1, Thriller: momentum is promised, and a meditative middle voids the warranty.In Genre Contracts: The Unwritten Rules You're Probably Breaking
• The second act hammockA joke tension chart across a story.In Why Your Second Act Keeps Dying (A Structural Fix)
• The three mistakes memoir writers make with the hero journeyMost people writing their life story make one of three mistakes.In Monomyth 101: Crafting Stories with the Hero's Journey
• The three ways a food scene fails in fictionFood in fiction fails when it does not connect to anything.In Food in Fiction | Using Meals to Build Worlds and Reveal Character
• The trope flipper: six ways to turn a trope inside outEach row shows the original trope on the left, the move in the middle and the flipped premise on the right.In Reverse Tropes: Six Ways to Turn a Tired Trope Inside Out
• The wound, adaptation, pattern framework for building a characterThe most important decision in a novel is building the psychological architecture of the characters before writing any scenes.In How to Write a Novel: From Concept to Finished Manuscript
• What emotion actually does in a storyEmotions are the heartbeat of a story: they breathe life into characters, add depth to plot and bind readers to the narrative.In Emotional Writing: 8 Inspiring Techniques for Deeper Connections
• What happens when you write without an outlineSitting down to write without knowing what happens in the scene asks the brain to do two jobs at once: work out what to say and work out how to say it.In Plotter vs. Pantser: Why I'm Neither and What I Do Instead
• Where the pages wentA joke bar chart of a first draft's page count by scene: the car chase gets two pages, the climax three, while describing a teacup gets four pages and the character's commute gets nine.In Pacing Problems Nobody Talks About
• Where to put the cameraThree panels show the same scene, a character facing a couch with a villain crouching behind it, filmed from three camera positions.In First Person vs. Third Person: The POV Decision That Shapes Everything
• Who does things in this story?A joke bar chart of decisions made by each character in a story with a passive hero: the villain makes the most, then the sidekick, then the weather, while the hero mostly stood there.In The Passive Protagonist Problem (Why Your Hero Feels Flat)

Fiction

• Who's sane?A joke census from the point of view of the last sane person in the world: everyone else counted as mad, one sane person, and one cat who seems to agree with them.In The Last Sane Person: A Love Letter to the Mad
• Why a holiday setting does the writer work for themThe fundamental power of a holiday scene in fiction is containment.In How to Use Holidays in Your Fiction Writing
• Why a magic system needs rules and costsA magic system without rules is a narrative cheat code.In Fantasy World Building: How to Create Worlds That Work
• Why direct dialogue kills a sceneTwo people sit at a dinner table.In Subtext: What Your Characters Don't Say Matters More
• Why hasn't the villain won yet?A joke decision tree for a villain with the hero captured.In Why Villain Motivations Fall Apart (And How to Fix Them)
• Why invincible heroines keep getting writtenThe girl boss problem comes from writers afraid to let female characters be flawed.In The Girl Boss Problem: Why Invincible Characters Are Boring and What Actually Works
• Why magic needs consequences instead of solutionsMagic systems fail when they solve problems without creating new ones.In The Hard Parts of Writing Fantasy Nobody Warns You About
• Why most science fiction fails, and it is not the scienceFaster-than-light travel through quantum tunnelling, a civilisation that uploads consciousness to avoid death, terraforming that transforms dead planets in decades.In Writing Science Fiction That Sells
• Why multiverse stories lose their stakesThe multiverse goes wrong when it eliminates consequences.In The Multiverse in Fiction: Why It Works, Why It Fails, and How to Write It
• Why profile-sheet characters read as flatMost fiction writers build characters the same way: fill out a profile sheet, pick some quirks, give them a goal, and start writing.In How to Create Unforgettable Characters in Fiction
• Why rhythm is what makes prose sound like a personRhythm is how prose gets made to sound like a person, and nowhere is that clearer than in dialogue.In Rhythm in Writing: How to Give Your Prose a Pulse
• Why sensory detail puts a reader inside the sceneSensory details let the reader experience a scene instead of being told about it.In Sensory Details: How to Put a Reader Inside the Scene
• Why subtext works on a readerSubtext works because it mirrors how people actually communicate.In Subtext in Fiction: What Characters Really Mean
• Why the comma deserves more attention than any other markIf a writer learns the rules for one punctuation mark thoroughly, it should be the comma.In Learn the Rules of Punctuation. Stop Guessing
• Why the hero survived: a breakdownA joke chart of why a plot-armored hero survives.In Plot Armor: Signs Your Hero Is Too Safe, and How to Fix It
• Words needed to say itA joke bar chart of how many words it takes to say something.In Strong Verbs Do the Work So Adverbs Don't Have To
• Worldbuilding: notes written vs. what reached the pageGrey bars show pages of notes; thin red bars show what made it into the book.In World Building and Dynamic Settings

Ghostwriting

• "Mistakes were made." An investigation.Exhibit A is a sentence diagram: Mistakes sits on the subject side of the line and were made on the verb side.In Active Voice in Fiction and Ghostwriting: Why It Matters
• A chart of the known manuscriptIn the middle is an island called The Manuscript.In I Don't Know What It's About
• A Venn diagram of busy peopleThree circles sit almost exactly on top of each other: people too busy to write a book, in red; people who finished a nine-season series last month, in blue; and people who checked their phone dozens of times today, in green.In You're Not Too Busy to Write a Book. You're Too Comfortable.
• Bad ghostwriter bingoThe squares are red flags: I can't discuss any of my work; brand new, top-of-market price; makes up the process as they go; no sample chapter; sign today, sample later; no statement of work;...In How to spot a bad ghostwriter before you sign the contract
• Co-author splits, by the sliceThe 50/50 pizza: both authors brought the same audience, ideas, writing and launch; caption, rare, but it happens.In Co-author splits: 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 and when each one works
• Cost layers of a ghostwritten bookA stacked bar of the cost layers in a ghostwritten book: the writer's fee, editing and proofreading, publishing, cover and interior design, an optional proposal, marketing and launch, and an audiobook.In The all-in cost of a ghostwritten book, beyond the writer's fee
• Escape room: your stalled ghostwriting projectYou start in room 1, the contract room, where a scroll reads: read the termination clause first.In How to fire a ghostwriter mid-project without losing the manuscript
• Five checks when choosing a ghostwriterFive ordered steps for choosing a ghostwriter: decide what you need, judge past work, use the first consultation, understand the process, and read the contract.In How to Choose Between Ghostwriters: A Decision Framework