With all the business of being an author, it’s sometimes difficult to take time to focus on the craft. I’m not talking about writing, we all know that’s difficult, or reading, we try our best to work that in, or even marketing, because every breath we breathe is supposed to be marketing… I wanted to get back to the basics, so I used one of the free resources I posted about in my blog post Free Writing Resources for 2025.
I’ve watched this Mary Robinette Kowal lecture several times, dissected it, and taken notes, but this time it struck me. “This is why you always bog down… at the two-third/three-quarter mark, because you’re changing mode.”
I’m sure this is not related, but I find this is when I’m especially susceptible to shiny new projects, but that’s probably nothing.
So, what is the MICE Quotient? It is a view of narrative structure and it stands for Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event.
Milieu is an aspect of the story that revolves around the setting.
Inquiry addresses the central question of the story.
Character refers to the internal transformation of the main character in the story.
Event addresses external conflict.
Since I write a lot of flash fiction and talk about the ways it has improved my writing overall, I was really excited to see something in the Brandon Sanderson lecture series that addressed my primary form of storytelling. I was especially happy to see this after the feedback I talked about in I Competed In A Writing Contest and… blog post. Because the formula for story length in this lecture addressed the issue I was struggling to diagnose, more on that in another post.
While I’ve tried the snowflake method, the three act structure, and other forms of outlining, the MICE quotient has made my pantser heart so happy and here is why.
If I’m working on flash fiction, I can look at my word count and how many MICE threads I have and determine if the story I’m trying to tell will work or not. This is especially helpful for the writing challenges and competitions I enter.
For my novels and series, where a bit more structure is required because of the length of the projects I’m working on, I can keep track of the different threads in the project. What needs to end in the current book and what will be addressed later in the series.
If you haven’t already, definitely check out the lecture. Repeating the exercise can be done in about fifteen minutes. While you can practice with the prompt provided in the video, it may be difficult to reuse the prompt, but you can swap it out for others, the primary thing is sticking to the story length at the beginning of the exercise.
If you are planning to apply this to a novel or novella, pay close attention to the breakdown of the Wizard of Oz structure because it shows how the MICE Quotient can be applied in longer form.
I would love to hear if you have been using this method and how you apply it to your writing process.
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Chandra Arthur 
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