Methodology
Narrative Ecology™: A Different Way of Reading Your Manuscript
The Problem with Conventional Editing
Most editorial feedback treats your manuscript like a checklist.
Is the dialogue sharp? Are the stakes high enough? Does the pacing drag? Is the protagonist compelling? Each question gets answered in isolation, each problem flagged and handed back to you as a task. Fix this. Tighten that. Add tension here.
The trouble is, stories don’t work that way. They’re not checklists. They’re living systems, and isolated fixes to isolated symptoms rarely solve the underlying problem. You’ve probably felt this: you revise the scene your beta readers flagged, and something else goes wrong. You tighten the pacing and the characters feel rushed. You deepen the conflict and suddenly the theme feels muddled. You fix the symptom and the system compensates somewhere else.
This is what happens when you treat a living thing like a machine.
What Narrative Ecology™ Is
Narrative Ecology™ is the methodology I bring to every manuscript I touch.
It's the study of how story elements function as an interconnected living system—where each element influences the others, where change in one area creates ripple effects throughout the whole, and where the health of the visible story depends entirely on what's happening beneath the surface.
This isn’t a metaphor I borrowed from a craft book. It’s a framework built from 25 years of professional horticulture, where understanding living systems—how they respond to pressure, compete for resources, adapt to disturbance, and either thrive or collapse depending on root health—is the actual work. A gardener doesn’t diagnose a struggling plant by examining one yellowing leaf. She looks at the whole organism in its environment: the soil, the root system, the water flow, the light, the competition around it.
I read manuscripts the same way.
When something isn’t working on your page, I don’t start with the page. I start with the system. Where is energy pooling or stalling? What’s competing for resources? Is the foundation strong enough to support what’s growing above it? What needs to change at the root level before the visible story can thrive?
This is a fundamentally different question than “is your dialogue good?” It’s the question that leads to revision that actually works.
How It Works in Practice
The Story Tree Framework™ is the diagnostic tool I use to map your manuscript’s ecosystem. It organizes your story’s foundational elements across three interdependent layers—Roots, Trunk, and Canopy—and analyzes how energy and pressure move between them.
Roots are your story’s foundation: the elements that are largely invisible to readers but determine everything the story can become. Strong roots don’t guarantee a great story, but weak roots make a great story impossible.
Trunk is your story’s structural core: the system that transports energy from the foundation up into the reader-facing layer. A strong trunk means readers feel momentum. A compromised trunk means your roots and canopy can’t communicate, no matter how strong either is individually.
Canopy is what readers experience directly on the page: the prose, the characters, the voice, the moment-to-moment story. A lush canopy is what draws readers in. But canopy health depends entirely on what’s happening below it. When something feels flat or lifeless on the surface, I always look down before I look up.
What you receive from an ecological assessment isn’t a task list. It’s a map of what your story is doing, why it’s doing it, and what needs to shift at the system level so the whole manuscript can come into balance.
Authors who work with this framework don’t just fix one book. They learn how to think about all of their books.
Who This Is For
Narrative Ecology™ is especially valuable for authors who:
- Are stuck in revision, rewriting the same scenes without improvement
- Have received conflicting feedback and don’t know what to trust
- Are building complex worlds, large casts, or interconnected series
- Want to understand why their story isn’t working, not just receive another task list
- Are ready to think about their craft at a systems level
If you’re looking for a quick proofread or a line polish, those services have a home here too. Please browse the full range of evaluation and editing options to find the right fit for where your manuscript is right now.
Ready to see what your story ecosystem looks like?
