Prompt library
Structure a story before drafting it
The want-versus-need gap and the passive-beat check are the two diagnostics that catch most broken drafts before they are written. Keeping the output at structure level means you spend revision effort on architecture, where it is cheap, instead of on finished prose, where it is painful.
Last reviewed July 17, 2026
The prompt
Structure a story from this premise: {{premise}}.
Deliver:
1. Protagonist: what they want, what they actually need, and the flaw that keeps the two apart.
2. Stakes: what is credibly lost if they fail. If the stakes are abstract, make them concrete in one object, person, or deadline.
3. A beat outline: opening image, inciting incident, first threshold, midpoint reversal, low point, climax choice, closing image. One or two sentences per beat.
4. The engine check: for each beat, name what the protagonist does (not what happens to them). Flag any beat where they are passive.
5. Three ways the ending could go, each faithful to the setup, ranked by how much the midpoint reversal earns it.
Do not write prose. Structure only.Run in idaptOpens a new chat with the prompt prefilled. Nothing sends until you press send.
Fill in the variables
| Variable | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| {{premise}} | Your story premise in 1-3 sentences | a cartographer discovers her maps change the places they describe |