Tin House Press
Is your story ready to be written?
A structural diagnosis of your premise before you draft a single chapter — the same checks a story editor runs on conflict, stakes and market viability.
A clinical viability score
Not vibes — a real score across premise strength, conflict architecture and market viability, so you know where you stand before you commit months to a draft.
Exactly what’s weak, and why
Structural gaps named specifically against your actual premise, protagonist and stakes — not generic craft advice.
A coach who already knows your story
No re-explaining your premise. Ask follow-up questions and get scene, structure and character advice tailored to the story you just diagnosed.
The diagnosis is FREE
Your viability score, your structural diagnosis and your first question to the coach all cost nothing. Unlimited coaching comes after that.
No signup required
What a story diagnosis looks at
The diagnosis works on the load-bearing parts of a story — the ones that decide whether a draft holds together, and the ones that are cheap to change now and expensive to change after ninety thousand words.
Premise
Whether the idea contains a story or only a situation. A situation is interesting for a chapter; a premise carries a book.
Protagonist
Whether someone wants something badly enough to act, and whether what they want is capable of changing over the course of the book.
Conflict
Whether the opposition is real and specific, or whether the obstacle is mainly that the character has not decided yet. The second one stalls in the middle every time.
Stakes
What is actually lost if things go badly, and whether a reader would feel that loss. Stakes stated in the abstract are the most common weak point in a promising premise.
Genre fit
Whether the story delivers what readers of that genre came for. Breaking a convention deliberately is a choice; breaking one without noticing is a rejection letter.
Viability
A score pulling those together, so you have something more useful than a feeling about whether the idea is ready to be drafted.
How it works
- Answer seven short questions about your story — premise, protagonist, conflict, stakes, genre and who it is for. A sentence or two each is enough.
- Read your diagnosis. Your viability score, what is already strong, and the structural weak point to address before you draft.
- Ask the coach. It already has your story in front of it, so you never re-explain your premise to get an answer about your own book.
Who this is for
It is for the stage before the writing: you have an idea you like, you have turned it over for weeks, and you cannot tell whether the problem you keep circling is a small one or the kind that collapses a manuscript in the middle. Finding that out now costs an afternoon. Finding it out in chapter nineteen costs a year.
It is also for the writer who has abandoned drafts before and suspects the pattern is structural rather than a discipline problem. It usually is.
If you have already written the book, this is the wrong tool — the Manuscript Assessment Tool reads your actual opening pages instead.
Common questions
Do I need to have written anything?
No. That is the point. You need an idea you can describe in a few sentences, which is exactly what you have at this stage.
Is a person reading my answers?
No. The diagnosis and the coaching are generated by software, and we would rather say so than let you assume there is an editor at the other end. It is what makes the answer arrive in seconds.
How is this different from asking a chatbot about my idea?
It asks you the questions rather than waiting for you to know which questions matter, and it asks the same ones every time against the same standard. General-purpose chat is happy to tell you the idea is wonderful. This is built to find the weak joint.
What if the diagnosis says my idea is weak?
Then you have learned something cheaply, and usually the fix is narrower than it feels — a stake that needs to be made concrete, or an antagonist who needs to want something. A low score on a premise is not a verdict on the writer.
Are you Tin House, the literary magazine?
No. Tin House Press is not affiliated with Tin House (tinhouse.com) or Tin House Workshops, and we do not accept manuscript submissions or queries for publication.
