For writers still struggling to write the fantasy, romantasy, or sci-fi novel you’ve been dreaming about for years:
Is your system of worldbuilding, character development, and plotting 53 open tabs, three notebooks, and lots of internal screaming?
Get organized and write your novelIf you have an amazing story inside you, but it's not quite working and you're not sure why or how to fix it…
Then keep reading.
Because you’re going to look back a few months from now, having finally made progress on your novel and wish that you’d had access to this information years ago.
The question that stings writers the most (and why even our team of published authors cringe to hear it)
If you've ever shared your dream of writing sci-fi, fantasy, or romantasy novels with others, you've probably been asked this dozens of times.
We still get asked this after publishing over 50 books.
It's asked by friends, parents, coworkers, that drunk uncle at the holiday gathering, and well-meaning partners, even people in your writer's group if you're lucky enough to have one.
They mean well, but still, the question can land like a battering ram on the doors of Minas Tirith.
Especially if you're already struggling to put words on the page or to turn the words you have into something you can be proud of.
They ask:
When are you going to finally finish that book?
The “finally” is what really stings because of the unsaid implication: you've been doing this for a while now. We've supported you. Why isn't there anything to show for it?
And that's if they're supportive. The less kind people will declare that writing sci-fi and fantasy is a waste of time, a dumb hobby that you'll never be good enough to make money at (as though money was the only point). Have you considered grinding harder at a side hustle instead?
It makes you want to yell nooooo like Luke Skywalker after he learns Vader is his dad.
It can make you feel like you're not meant to be a writer. Especially if you've been trying so hard to write your novel.
The lack of a finished book, those abandoned drafts, those notes you have no idea what to do with, that chapter that just won't work no matter what you do, the character who is flatter than a paper doll, all make you feel like you should give up, that maybe you lack the natural ability or talent to share the stories that matter so much to you.
But none of that is true. Your brain (and those unsupportive jerks) are lying to you.
Does the thought of finally finishing your story make you want to whoop with excitement and pride?
With all the time spent thinking up scenes, planning your world, staring at a blank page, revising, deleting, internally screaming, and sobbing over your laptop at 2am while you think “why can't I get this right”... shouldn't you finally have a novel you love?
We think you’ve earned it. Because you’ve put in the time. Because you’ve put in the effort.
You deserve to know exactly how to realize your creative potential and to feel how capable you are of exploring the vastness of your worlds and characters.
You deserve to leave writer's block behind. You deserve to wake up each day excited for the time when you get to write and feel like the boring drudgery of the day is a little bit more bearable because of it.
Not just that: You deserve to streamline your hurricane of ideas into a solid foundation for the book you've been struggling to write so you can finally write it and LOVE it. And know that others will too.
But before you can, you need to abandon a few lies that society has told you. Don't worry, they were never going to help you anyway...
The 4 myths you need to stop believing right now if you want to hold your finished book in your hand and think “I did it! Take that, Mr. McGrath, who said I should give up writing in ninth grade.”
Myth #1: Writing is a waste of time when I'm not making money from it/I like doing it but it's not important.
Ah yes, society has been telling you this for so long that it has seeped into your subconscious only to come out and mock you like Gollum telling Smeagol nobody likes him.
Do you know what makes humans different from the other animals on this planet? The reason we clambered to dominance over every other life form (for better or worse. Okay, mostly worse)?
It's not opposable thumbs. Chimps have those. It's not tools. Crows use them. It's not even language. Most animals communicate.
It's stories.
It's the one thing we do that no one else does.
Telling stories is how we teach each other lessons to help us survive, whether it's how to fight a lion or how to weather depression. Stories are how we pass knowledge down through the generations (did you know that some fairy tales are 5,000 years old? Those are fantasy stories! Our oldest literature is.)
It's how we connect with one another.
Stories are everything to humans. The time you spend thinking about one is never a waste. It's what makes you and everyone else human.
But you might be thinking: I still have other, more important responsibilities.
The secret we've learned over years of balancing writing and other responsibilities is this: You don't have to lock yourself in a room alone for hours every day to be a writer.
If you can write 250 words a day, you'll have the completed draft of a 60K novel in 8 months. If you can write 500 words, you'll have it in 4 (though editing will take longer).
Here’s the other thing we’ve learned: It’s okay to do something because you like it. That's reason enough. I doubt many people are telling you that going for a walk in nature is a waste of time or that watching a movie is pointless (and if anyone does, run far away from them).
It's hard to believe it in a world that tells us that the highest achievement is more money, but doing something because it makes you happy is reason enough.
Myth #2: Everything I write is crap so what’s the point?
We know it feels like you're a flaming dumpster full of smaller flaming trash cans when your writing isn't what you want it to be. But every writer feels like that sometimes. Even the pros, even the bestsellers, and award-winners.
More than that, you must write crap before you write gold.
That's true of every skill and every craft. An artist's first paintings are never good. A blacksmith's first sword shatters.
Like any other skill, writing takes practice. Every single word, even if it's not great, makes you a better writer. Not everything you put on the page has to be mithril.
The good news is that you CAN speed up this looong process by learning ways to strengthen your ideas, improve your craft, and organize your thoughts (half of writing is just turning the chaos of thoughts into something structured).
You'll still need to practice, but your practice will be more targeted to the right skills you need to develop.
Myth #3: Real writers have natural talent. They don't need help with ideas or craft.
Every single author you've ever read or heard of learned from someone else. Every. Single. One.
Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy, had his Norse epics and his friends in the Inklings.
N.K. Jemison, author of the first trilogy to win the Hugo Award for all three books, had the Viable Paradise writing workshop, the BRAWLers writing group, the Altered Fluid critique group, AND Launch Pad.
If you're not sure what to do with your ideas or your book, you're in good company – the company of every other writer in history.
The only part that is "natural" is the desire to tell a story. Everything else is learned. After all, no one is born knowing how to write ABC, much less how to write a 60k word novel.
Myth #4: Using a system or structure to write leads to formulaic or derivative work.
Here's the thing: Story is structure. The difference between a pile of sticky notes or the scenes in your head is not the words themselves. It's the structure that ties them altogether.
Plot structures, character arcs, and worldbuilding systems have existed for ages because they work.
If you break down your favorite stories, whether in books or movies, you'll find that most of them follow a very similar structure. They might even have the same types of characters.
You might not always be consciously aware of the structure of a book, show, or movie while you're enjoying it, but you sure as hell notice when the structure goes wrong.
Have you ever watched or read something that laaaagged in the middle? Where characters changed suddenly and without proper build-up (hello, Game of Thrones season 8)? Where the final pay-off is just meh (hello, Game of Thrones season 8 again)?
These are all problems of structure.
But prompts, worksheets, and structure go a bit further than just providing the skeleton for your story.
Your first, second, third ideas are always going to be the things you've seen before, the culture you're most familiar with, the stories you've read and watched. That's just how the human brain works – what you are exposed to the most often is what you think of first (it makes sense from a survival perspective!).
Prompts and structures get you to dig deeper into your existing ideas to find new approaches, new aspects, and new ways of creating so your ideas become stronger and more original than they would be otherwise.
That’s why studies show that limitations lead to MORE creative and original ideas than the freedom to do anything at all.
FINALLY finish your novel AND love it, even if you've abandoned it three times already.
The Chaos to Clarity bundle is 5 guides and workbooks that teach you how to:
📖 Build a solid foundation of worldbuilding, character development, and plot that makes readers wonder how you crafted something so complex and unique.
📖 Go beyond flat, clichéd worlds to build a believable and captivating setting that feels real and logical in the way all its elements fit together.
📖 Write what you enjoy reading without being jerked out of the story to think, "What the hell was I thinking here?!"
📖 Organize the inherently chaotic creative process so you can write with more clarity and produce cleaner first drafts.
📖 Develop binge-worthy character arcs that keep readers turning the page long after they should have gone to sleep.
📖 Find solutions for the feeling of "what the hell do I do with this scene" with tons of easy-to-understand explanations for everything you've been struggling with from magic systems to culture to character motivations.
📖 Use surprisingly simple methods based on psychology that make your characters into multidimensional people as real as anyone you know.
📖 Know exactly what happens in your story and discover places where it lags or misses important character beats.
📖 Describe your world without writing an entire essay about it. Instead, drop lush details into your story to make your world feel alive.
📖 Finally feel confident when you sit down to write so you can finish your book and hold it in your hands like you've always dreamed.
All of this is possible, even if you've struggled to write a first draft or are on draft 5 of a book that just isn't working.
But it does depend on taking a step-by-step approach to your ideas, either upfront if you're a planner or piecemeal and during revisions if you're a pantser (both work!).
The writing guides and workbooks you're about to see have been the secret weapon of over 16,000 aspiring and published sci-fi and fantasy authors over the last six years.
The writer's block-busting Essential Fantasy & Sci-fi Writer's Bundle
5 bestselling writing tools as instant downloads, including:
⭐ The Pando Tree Method to Turn Ideas into Story in PDF format
⭐ The Essential Worldbuilding Blueprint and Workbook in PDF + digital worksheets in the format of your choice
⭐ The Essential Character Building Blueprint and Workbook in PDF + digital worksheets in the format of your choice
⭐ Free bonus: The 10-Minute Crash Course on Story Structure in PDF format
⭐ Free bonus: The Book Compass Novel Tracker in spreadsheet format
Who the hell are we to tell you anything about writing?
Good question! After all, we could be four corgis in a trench coat for all you know.
Scribe Forge is a group of USA Today bestselling indie authors in sci-fi, fantasy, and romance with 50+ published books between us.
When we're not geeking out over the latest episode of X-Men '97, we're nerding out over everything sci-fi, fantasy, and romantasy writing.
Seriously, collectively, we've spent over 25 years learning EVERYTHING we possibly could about it.
We've streamlined all that knowledge into guides and workbooks that are simple, to-the-point, and less overwhelming than our 25 years of trying every character questionnaire out there.
This way, you can write your stories sooner, with more confidence and less stress than we went through.
Meet the team
Eva Delaney, Founder and Head of Product Development
Eva is a USA Today best-selling author of over 20 books in space opera, paranormal romance/urban fantasy, and romantic comedy.
Candice Lee MacAulay, Creative Consultant
Candice is a creative consultant and writer coach. She's a USA Today best-selling novelist with 30+ books published under multiple pen names and genres, including romance, urban fantasy, and non-fiction.
Andrew Cesario, Consulting Editor
Andrew is an editor and proofer for sci-fi, fantasy, and game books. He also has over five years of publishing experience as an indie author under a pen name. As a lifelong, avid player of tabletop and video game RPGs, he possesses a deep love and understanding of fictional worlds, the characters that inhabit them, and the stories that make them come to life.
Check out what writers just like you have to say about Scribe Forge.
Chaos to Clarity: The Essential Fantasy & Sci-fi Writer's Bundle is a streamlined bridge between the chaos of your ideas and the structure of a finished book.
Write an epic novel with unforgettable characters and immersive worlds that readers will return to again and again.
You’ll do it with help from 5 writing workbooks and guides about worldbuilding, character development, story structure, and idea wrangling.
Available in PDF, Word, Scrivener, OneNote, and print formats.
The Essential Worldbuilding Blueprint and Workbook
Create a living, breathing world that readers will get lost in as they uncover all its secrets.
🌍 Create with confidence. Stop hoping your world will come together like a puzzle without a reference photo. Learn about worldbuilding methods, pick the best one for you, and develop a plan with our overviews and checklist.
⭐ Give your world a wondrous twist. Play with planets, moons, suns, and stars to build a world that isn't just a copy of Earth (fantasy writers, you can do this, too). We even have cheat sheets that give you all the research you need!
🧭 Craft cinematic settings no matter where your novel takes you. Avoid your characters talking in a white void with the Locations: Geography and Climate worksheet.
👽 Write fictional species as memorable as Hobbits or Xenomorphs (because a human with pointed ears is overdone). Use the Fictional Beings worksheet to populate your setting with realistic non-humans.
🌲 Create immersive settings. A world without background details is as dull as a techbro. Use the natural ecosystem to to make your world richer (even on a spaceship). You'll learn how with a surprisingly simple method.
🔮 Inspire wonder or horror in your readers. Use the Magic worksheet to create a magic system so cool, they'll wish it were real, or one so disturbing, they won't be able to look away.
👻 Weave magic into the familiar. The supernatural should never be tacked on. Learn how to build a thrilling urban fantasy/paranormal romance world that makes magic a natural part of the city.
🧪 Add greater realism to your setting. People strive to understand and control their world. Science is one way they do it (even in fantasy!). Mix science and magic, make up scientific theories, or explore its role in your world.
🚀 Build an authentic world and have fun doing it. Technology plays a larger role in worldbuilding than you might think! Use a simple method to build cool gadgets or terrifying ones (even in fantasy!).
👩⚖️ Feel proud of your complex fictional society. Go beyond the generic Medieval or space empire setting. Use the Social Structures worksheet to build a detailed civilization that's so real you'll feel like you've been there.
💖 Make readers part of your world. Have you ever wanted to join a fictional group? Have you ever quoted one's creed ("Winter is coming." "Rock and stone.")? Learn a simple way to build a culture that inspires fandom with the Values and Ethics worksheet.
🕌 Create convincing conflicts. A world without belief systems is a world without feuds. Use the Religion, Mythology, and Philosophy worksheet to craft beliefs that make your world more realistic and drive the plot.
📖 Add depth to your world without losing your mind. You don't need endless lists of historical events to make your world three-dimensional. Use the History worksheet to develop your world's backstory in record time.
After you build the essentials of your world, flesh it out with worksheets to help you:
🏠 Show off your world's culture, beliefs, hierarchy, and more. You've heard of show, don't tell. Learn how to show your world's unspoken elements through Art, Fashion, and Architecture.
🎲 Get playful and add another layer of detail to your world. No world is all soldiers and priests. Delve into the ways people in your world celebrate and have fun with the Games, Sports, and Holidays worksheets.
Learn each topic in 10-20 minutes on your lunch break and complete each worksheet in a few hours.
The Essential Character Creation Blueprint and Workbook
While character ideas are easy, making a character multidimensional enough to carry an entire story or series is as tricky as The Water Temple in Ocarina of Time.
These 15 chapters and worksheets help you create unforgettable characters that will keep readers turning the pages until 3am.
😎 Craft characters that spawn fans like dandelions in May. You could spend years creating different characters before you figure this out. Instead, learn what makes a compelling character and where to start in just 20 minutes.
🧠 Write authentic POVs that feel as real as reading the character's journal. No more casts that sound exactly the same. It starts with understanding your character's experience of their body, senses, and mind.
💁♂️ Make writing your draft as smooth as cold brew. Writing becomes easier when you know HOW a character acts. Use the Traits and Flaws worksheet to turn your character's personality into a template for their behavior that helps you write your story.
🔃 Create memorable characters who readers love like a warm blanket on a winter's day. You don't need to fill out endless questionnaires. You just need one simple trick you'll apply with the Contradictions worksheet.
👩👩👧 Share your world without boring your readers. Weave worldbuilding into your characters to show your fictional society without info dumps. You'll learn how with the Social Values and Expectations worksheet.
💖 Make readers (and yourself) squee, cry, and laugh. A story without strong feelings is quickly abandoned. Add emotional depth to your novel with the Relationships worksheets.
❌ Create character-driven conflicts that keep readers turning the pages. Make every struggle deeply personal to your characters so your readers feel for them with the section on character ethics.
🤔 Make every character entertaining. When all characters think the same, your book becomes dull as organizing your downloads folder. Write unique POVs for every character with the Perspectives About the World worksheets.
📘 Craft holistic characters. Avoid writing a character who feels like a random jumble of traits. Combine their skills and knowledge with their personality and background to make them feel as real as your best friend.
👻 Plan a character arc so powerful that you'll avoid writer's block. The step-by-step Lies, Truths, and Ghosts worksheets will show you how to give any character an arc that will drive your entire book.
🍨 Write grounded, believable characters—even if they're giant magical pill bugs. Make any character relatable by digging into their wants and needs.
🏠 Add unexpected sources of conflict and realism. Show off your worldbuilding and give your character struggles you hadn't considered by building their normal life.
🖖 Discover what you've been getting wrong about your character's appearance. When done well, physical descriptions are more than a boring list of traits. Learn the true role of appearance and gestures in character creation.
🤩 Hook readers with your very first line. People are skeptical when they pick up a new book. Turn that doubt into "holy shit, I must read this" with your character's defining introductory moment. We'll walk you through it.
The Pando Tree Method to Turn Ideas into Story
Do you begin a project with a bunch of vaguely related ideas that you struggle to wade through like a hobbit through a snowbank?
Learn how to organize your thoughts into a manageable structure that provides you with crystal-clear guidance to develop your world, characters, and plot.
Here’s how:
⭐ Discover a surprisingly simple method for combining dozens of brilliant but unrelated ideas to create a unique story while avoiding all the dead ends that only waste your time.
⭐ Learn how to integrate varied elements into one clear structure without all the plot bunnies taking over and running wild.
Free bonus: 10-Minute Story Structure Crash Course
Get this right and readers won't want to put down your book until the last page.
💻 Write a story readers won't be able to put down with story beats for the beginning, middle, and end of your novel.
🤗 Keep your plot exciting, even in "slow" chapters, with scene turning points.
⚔ Create a meaningful story by balancing these two types of conflict.
Free bonus: The Book Compass Tracker
Organize your novel with a comprehensive and fully customizable system to help you structure your story in a way that will delight your readers.
Everything you're going to learn about character arcs and story structure will make your story better than ever before. But it can be hard to remember and keep track of SO MANY moving parts (it's like a steampunk robot in here).
The Book Compass helps you track every scene, every character development, and every plot twist so you remember what to include and where.
(It also works for pantsers! After you write a chapter, add it to the tracker and keep on pantsing. Once your draft is done, you'll have a record of every plot point and character change to make editing easier.)
Here's how it keeps your story on track:
📖 Hit all the right story beats at the right time for a book that’s binge-worthy.
📖 Record the arcs for every main character all in one place to make sure their development is consistent and logical.
📖 Know exactly what happens in every scene so you don’t end up with a dozen gigantic plot holes.
📖 Use it right away with no learning curve or time wasted figuring out how to work a new program. If you've ever made a spreadsheet, you can use the tracker (and without the mind-boggling equations!)
With the Essential Fantasy & Sci-fi Writer's Bundle, you'll write with more confidence and clarity than ever before, knowing that your story will be the best it can be.
And before long, you'll finish the book that's been living in your mind for years.
Still not sure if this is right for you?
Here are 6 ways to know you’re ready to use The Essential Fantasy & Sci-fi Writer's Bundle to write and finish the epic novel you've always dreamed of:
1. You're new to fiction writing and have an idea you know will make an epic book. You want to make sure you nail it from the start with the most practical, step-by-step strategies for sci-fi/fantasy writing.
2. You've been trying to write your draft for months or even years but keep getting stuck or overwhelmed until you feel so discouraged, you lock your book away and try to forget it. But you keep coming back to it over and over. You KNOW you have to tell this story.
3. You already finished a first draft (whoop whoop!), but revision is kicking your ass as you find plot holes, flat characters, and gaps in worldbuilding. You could use some extra help to make your story the best it can possibly be.
4. You've finished many drafts and maybe even published some books (double whoop whoop!), but you want to learn new strategies to strengthen your world, characters, and plot. You don't have time to spend researching everything out there and want to gain actionable insights that you can apply right now.
5. You have no problem investing a few hours a week into writing (planning, dreaming, and revision all count) because you know every minute spent on your story is a meaningful step toward holding your finished novel in your hands.
6. You’re excited to try The Essential Fantasy & Sci-fi Writer's Bundle to turn the hurricane of ideas in your head and all those mad scientist sticky notes into a plan for a binge-worthy book. You look forward to waking up each day excited for the time when you get to sit down and work on your story.
If you caught yourself nodding your head to at least 3 of the 6 points above, you're ready to write the epic book you know is inside you.
Buy NowImagine three months from now…
… you sit down at your laptop and open your manuscript.
You've combined your random ideas into a coherent whole. You've built your fictional world (or at least the parts you need at this moment if you're a pantster), and it’s so immersive you feel like you've visited it. Your characters are as real as any person you've met.
You put your fingers to the keyboard, and you know what happens in this scene because your characters take over and drive the story for you.
You feel confident as you write because you have mental clarity around your ideas, world, characters, and story.
You know if you hit a roadblock, you'll find a way to knock it down like throwing a red shell at Dry Bowser.
Imagine 12 months from now…
… when you write “the end” on the last page of your draft, sit back and think, “I finally did it. I told my story.”
Bridge the gap between the chaos of your thoughts and the orderly world of a written story.
Get 5 bestselling writing tools as instant downloads, including:
⭐ The Pando Tree Method to Turn Ideas into Story
⭐ The Essential Worldbuilding Blueprint and Workbook in PDF + digital worksheets in the format of your choice
⭐ The Essential Character Building Blueprint and Workbook in PDF + digital worksheets in the format of your choice
⭐ Free bonus: The 10-Minute Crash Course on Story Structure
⭐ Free bonus: The Book Compass Novel Tracker
Only $49.99!