Story problems are psychology problems.
Frameworks for novelists, screenwriters, and game masters. They tie character, plot, and theme together, so you can find out why a character or scene isn't working and what to change. Built over 15 years of storytelling and communications work, drawing on personality science and narrative psychology.
Also see the Premium Toolkit and the Character Forge.
Characters fall flat when you haven't worked out their values, fears, and defenses. Your plot stalls when your character hasn't been forced to choose between two things they value.
The frameworks below help you work out both, so you know why your character makes each choice.
What These Frameworks Tell You About Your Story
Your character: A healer who can't stop helping people, even when it destroys her.
Her brother died because she couldn't save him
"My worth comes from being needed"
To have value without sacrifice
Being useless when it matters
Codependency, solving everyone's problems
"If I save this person, my failure is redeemed"
The Core Wound Blueprint works out this whole chain from one wound. Her arc is learning she has worth even when nobody needs her. Every scene can push her toward that or away from it.
Your story: A detective who must solve a case that mirrors her own buried trauma.
She's built a career on cold logic. Emotions are for victims. Her thesis: "Distance keeps you safe."
A case arrives that echoes her sister's unsolved disappearance. She can't stay distant.
She thinks she's solved it, and she's wrong. The real killer is someone she trusted.
Everything collapses, and she sees that staying distant blinded her to what was in front of her. To solve the case, she has to let herself feel it.
These are four of the Hurricane Story Model's nine phases. The full model has 23 steps. Each one moves your character toward the truth they've been avoiding or pulls them back from it, which keeps the middle of the story moving.
Your character: A knight who abandoned his post to save a child. Now he's hunted.
Honor + Order: a knight raised on a chain of command and a code. But he also holds Mercy, far across the wheel.
STEWARD: he protects the rules and ranks that keep people safe. The Liberator in him wants to know who those rules really protect.
Guard vs. Liberator. His code told him to hold the line, and his conscience told him to save the child. He chose Mercy over Order.
Order's opposite is Stimulation, the chaos he swore to prevent. By leaving his post, he's become part of that chaos, and his own side is now hunting him.
The Character Values Wheel has 24 archetypes like the Guard, each sitting between two values. The farther apart two of a character's values sit on the wheel, the harder they pull against each other.
Your scene: The mentor gives the hero a cryptic warning before disappearing.
3/5
Warning creates stakes, but no immediate action
4/5
Hero's doubt deepens, mentor's sacrifice foreshadowed
2/5
Thematic argument present but not tested
That's borderline. To raise it, add a choice that tests the theme. Or cut the scene and move what it does into other scenes.
Score every scene in your draft with the Scene Purpose Framework, and you'll see where to start revising. Under 9 means the scene needs work. Under 6 means it should be cut or merged into another.
Your beta reader says: "The pacing drags in the middle. I almost stopped reading."
When a reader says the pacing drags, they've stopped caring what happens next and started noticing time pass.
The stakes stop rising after Act 1, and the protagonist stops making choices. Things happen to them instead of because of them.
Give the protagonist a choice at the midpoint that costs them something, so the rising stakes are partly their own doing.
The Story Diagnosis Framework covers 50 problems like this one, from flat characters to an ending that doesn't land, with the likely causes and fixes for each.
What Writers and Game Masters Say
Loreteller's tools have 25,000+ downloads.
"I used the Character Values Wheel to build my campaign's villain. He's a Warden who values Safety and Tradition above all. My players spent three sessions trying to figure him out. Best villain I've ever run."
Marcus, DM for 8 years
"Beta readers kept saying my protagonist was 'hard to root for.' The Core Wound Blueprint showed me she's a Rescuer with an abandonment wound. Her pushiness isn't a flaw. It's armor. Next feedback: 'I finally get her.'"
Sarah, novelist
"I've read Save the Cat and the Hero's Journey. Understood them intellectually, couldn't apply them. The Hurricane Story Model clicked because it's organized around theme, not plot beats."
James, screenwriter
Three Ways to Use the Frameworks
All three are built from the same research. Start with whichever one fits the way you work.
The Free Library
80+ resources on character psychology, story structure, worldbuilding, and more. Read how each one works and the research behind it, then use the parts that fit your story.
Browse the Free LibraryThe Premium Toolkit
The complete set of 33 in-depth frameworks, including the five behind the examples above, the Faction Design Blueprint, and the Culture Design Blueprint. Pay once, and every framework added later is included too.
See the Premium ToolkitThe Character Forge
An interactive character builder that uses these same frameworks. Pick cards across 10 layers and see where your character's traits support each other and where they clash.
Try the Character ForgeHere's what the Forge does with four card picks:
Approval
Masking
Humor
Cruelty
"The performance is calibrated to what the room wants, and the room's approval is what makes it worth performing."
"Being wanted is what makes life worth living, and cruelty is the fastest way to become unwanted."
Not sure which one you need? Start here.
Where the Frameworks Come From
These frameworks draw on established psychology and narrative theory: