The Messy Muse by Jaye Wells

The Messy Muse by Jaye Wells

Why Promises Get Broken

Promises and Payoffs in Fiction Series

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Jaye Wells
Aug 06, 2025
∙ Paid
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Making Promises is easy. We know we have to hook the reader, agents and editors so we drop all these compelling breadcrumbs. The problem comes in later when those breadcrumbs lead to dead ends.

But first I want to talk about how this happens.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, no author sets out wanting to disappoint readers. We aren’t breaking promises on purpose.

There are two big reasons why promises get broken:

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