In baking, everything must be in perfect balance for the recipe to work. The ingredients should be measured and precise, and even a slight miscalculation might throw the dessert off. And even though it’s possible to add unusual spices to a recipe, such as cayenne pepper, this should be undertaken with care. An extra pinch of cayenne may mean the difference between a dessert worthy of winning a baking competition and the one that ends up in the trash. Writing a novel is the same. When creating a story, all its elements -plot, characters, prose, etc.- need to be in...