What traditional tattooing taught me about story

Bold lines, black shading, and no room to hide a bad idea.

A traditional design has to read across a room, and it has to still read in forty years on skin that has moved and aged and been in the sun. That constraint is not a limitation, it is the whole craft. You cannot rescue a weak composition with detail.

Chapters work the same way. If the shape is wrong, no amount of good sentences will save it.