Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marisol Quill, who...

And that was it. The sentence just stopped, like someone had walked out in the middle of a conversation.

Mari sat up. She was wearing a yellow raincoat and holding a pencil she didn't remember owning. Everything around her was blank white. "Hello?" she called. The word hung in the air with no echo, because there was nothing for it to bounce off.

A blob of ink bounced across the nothing and skidded to a stop. "Finally, a character!" it squeaked. He wore tiny paper glasses and looked extremely proud of them. "Professor Smudge. Story expert. Occasional narrator."

"A character?" said Mari.

"Someone the story is about," said the Professor. "The Author wrote you, wrote half a sentence, and left to get a snack. That was eleven years ago."

"First problem," said the Professor, pacing. "You have no setting. That's the time and place of a story, plus the mood it creates. Right now your setting is Nowhere and your mood is Awkward."

Mari looked at the empty white. "So how do I get one?"

"Describe it. Specific details make a setting real. Don't say 'a town.' Tell me what it smells like."

Mari closed her eyes. "Salt air," she said slowly. "Wet cobblestones. Gulls arguing over fish. A lighthouse on the cliff, and fog rolling in at dusk."

Color poured across the page like spilled paint. Crooked houses leaned together, lanterns glowed gold, and the harbor shimmered teal. A sign creaked: Welcome to Cliffhanger Cove.

"Time: dusk. Place: a foggy fishing town. Mood: mysterious," said Smudge. "Not bad for a first draft."

But nothing moved. The gulls hung frozen in the sky. A fisherman held the same net in the same spot.

"Second problem," sighed the Professor. "There's no conflict. A story needs a problem for the character to face, or it's just a nice painting."

Right on cue, the beam of Last Word Lighthouse flickered, and went dark.

"That," whispered Smudge, "is your inciting incident, the event that sets the plot in motion."

A black cloud rolled in from the sea. Letters slid off the shop signs one by one. BAKERY became B_K_RY, then just a smudge.

"Something is erasing the story!" cried Smudge. "If the lighthouse isn't lit by midnight, Cliffhanger Cove disappears forever." Somewhere, a clock tower began to tick. Mari gripped her pencil. "Then I'll light it."

They hurried toward the cliff path. As they climbed, Smudge gave a quick lesson. "Conflict comes in two flavors. External conflict is a struggle against something outside you, like that storm. Internal conflict is a struggle inside you, like doubt."

Mari kicked a pebble. "I'm not hero material. Heroes are brave. I'm probably just a side character."

Smudge stopped walking. "Interesting. Who else is here?"

Halfway up, the path split in three, and all three looked identical. A gull landed on Mari's shoulder and dropped something shiny into her hand: a tiny golden dot, warm as a coin.

"Ooh, foreshadowing!" said Smudge. "A clue that hints at something later. Authors never put things in a story by accident. Keep it safe."

Mari tucked the dot into her pocket and followed the gull up the middle path.