Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo | How to Write a Novel & Writing Advice

#246. Story Mapping: How to Map Your Novel With Sticky Notes (With Danyel Nicole)

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May 5, 2026

Danyel Nicole, story mapping coach and founder of Map Your Story Studios, shows how mapping with sticky notes turned her stuck draft into clarity. She describes her color-coded hallway map, the $25 starter kit of supplies, and the three essential sticky notes every story needs. Learn how a visual map reveals pacing, repeated choices, and where your story truly needs work.

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INSIGHT

Stuckness Is Usually A Visibility Problem

Being stuck in a draft is usually a visibility problem, not a story problem.
Danyel Nicole found mapping her story onto butcher paper made the whole plot visible and restored momentum within an hour.

ANECDOTE

How A Hallway Wall Fixed A Tangled Five Day Timeline

Danyel got up from her desk, taped butcher paper on the wall, and used sticky notes to map a five-day timeline.
Within an hour she located timeline muddiness and gaps that reading her document hadn't revealed.

ADVICE

Set Up A Five Row Color Coded Grid

Build a horizontal act spread with vertical color-coded rows so you can read goals, scenes, conflicts, decisions, and character arcs at a glance.
Use five colors (pink, orange, yellow, green, blue) and place each sticky in its grid square for instant pattern recognition.

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What if getting stuck on your novel has nothing to do with your story and everything to do with HOW you're seeing it? Story mapping coach Danyel Nicole found that out firsthand.

When Danyel's first draft started to feel off, she got up from her desk one night, grabbed butcher paper and sticky notes, and mapped out her entire story on the wall in her hallway. Within an hour, she could finally see what was working—and what wasn't.

This discovery changed everything about her novel-writing process. And now she helps other writers do the same.

Danyel is a Notes to Novel graduate and founder of Map Your Story Studios, where she helps fiction writers get their stories off the page and onto the wall so they can see the big picture, break through draft paralysis, and write with real momentum.

In this episode, she's breaking down exactly how story mapping works, why it gets writers unstuck, and how you can start today with less than $25 worth of supplies.

What You'll Learn:

[03:00] What story mapping is, and why getting stuck on your novel is almost always a visibility problem, not a story problem.

[06:29] What Danyel's wall literally looks like: the color-coded sticky note system she uses to map every act, scene, conflict, and character arc at a glance.

[00:09:24] Exactly what to buy at Target (for $25 or less) to start mapping your story today—plus digital tool options if you'd rather work on a screen.

[14:45] What Danyel found on her wall that saved her from writing a whole section of her draft that would have fallen completely flat.

[17:18] The three sticky notes that give any writer, at any stage, a solid story foundation to start mapping their novel today.

Whether you're staring at a blank page with no idea where to start, three chapters in and losing the throughline, or three hundred pages deep into a draft that keeps going in circles, story mapping meets you exactly where you are.

🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:

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