Evaluate story potential
before you invest
your time
A setup and payoff tool
for screenwriters, directors, and novelists
Identify setups
and expectations
Maximize
the stakes
Discover plot holes
and logic gaps
Confirm payoffs and
resolutions
Understand your audience's perspective
before you have beta readers
What is Loomanka?
Loomanka is a setup and payoff tool for storytellers. It's a desktop web app
you use in a browser, like Mural, Figma, or Lucid.
Loomanka helps storytellers figure out:
- how to pace sections of your story
- where to dial narrative tension up or down
- where your story should end
- when it's time to stop outlining and start writing a real draft
- why readers put your book on their DNF --
Loomanka helps writers and directors understand how their audience will
experience a story.
How does Loomanka help storytellers?
By visualizing setups, payoffs, stakes, and expectations on a Loomanka
board, creators can easily identify gaps, imbalances, plot holes, and
opportunities in their material.
The Loomanka board keeps writers grounded in their story without losing
sight of the audience experience.
What is narrative tension?
Narrative tension is the feeling you get when you want to know what
happens next in a story.
Sometimes tension is big and obvious (think: conflict and resolution),
but more often it's abstract and invisible. It's something audiences
feel without noticing. A thousand micro-setups and payoffs keep us
watching from scene to scene, episode after episode, through
seasons and sequels.
Loomanka helps writers, directors, producers, publishers, and
development executives keep track of this micro-tension woven
throughout a story.
What is the difference between narrative tension and plot?
Narrative tension is experienced by audiences.
Plot is experienced by the characters in a story.
How will Loomanka help me evaluate narrative tension?
After you visually tag setups and payoffs on a Loomanka board, you can
easily find:
- gaps and lagging tension
- setups that are never paid off
- payoffs that are never set up
- beats that don't contribute to tension at all
- how often the stakes are truly raised
- where to place act or chapter breaks
Audiences expect a story to end when the "biggest" conflict is resolved,
and Loomanka's board helps storytellers balance all forms of tension across
storylines and throughout installments as they craft their ideal payoff.
Is Loomanka an AI tool?
Loomanka is not an AI tool.
We're here to teach creatives how to identify and play with narrative
tension so they can evaluate story ideas more effectively, and we can do
that without AI.
We may incorporate optional AI features in the future, but they will remain
transparent and optional.
Your content and story data are not mined for data training or AI use. See
our
Terms of Use for more detail.
Stay grounded in your story
without losing sight of the audience experience
Visualize your story on a Loomanka board to understand
the tension hiding in the subtext.
Write
Capture the beats and setting of your
story on a Loomanka board
Tag
Label the setups and payoffs from the
audience POV
Evaluate
Identify gaps in tension, logic, pacing,
and more
Revise
Rearrange and rewrite story to
dial narrative tension up or down
Export
Take a plain text file of your work and
confidently write the full draft
Made by Katie and Joe. She makes things happen; he makes things work.
