Story Structure Architect Ebook Reader
Not that you’ll see it in the window at Barnes & Noble and other stores, or on the New Releases table just inside the door. Non-fiction reference books just don’t get that kind of positioning, unless your name is Stephen King. But you should find it in the Reference section. If you don’t, ask the bookseller to get it for you who knows, it might have already sold out (because of the small stock orders for books in this category, they often do just that shortly after release).The ebook has also been published, available at all the usual online stores, including Amazon, Nook (Barnes&Noble), Kobo and Apple.This Book Just Might Change Your Writing LifeThat’s actually the intention. The stated goal: to write a paradigm-shifting, career-empowering, cynic-silencing writing book like non-other.
Including my own.Having written three previous books about writing fiction, this book is the fruition of a journey of coaching manuscripts, speaking at writing workshops and generally plumbing the depths of why the percentage of success in fiction writing is so depressingly low, why the apprenticeship takes so long, and why none of those truths end up changing the way we view the craft, study the craft, and then confront the blank page, with or without that enlightenment.This book opens with an exploration of all of that.What you read there may surprise you. It may, in fact, shock you.
Either way, you will recognize, more or less, for better or worse, some of this going on in your own writing journey.The context of writing books and workshops–especially keynote addresses at writing conferences–is particularly treacherous ground, because everything depends on what the presenter actually knows, versus what they believe to be true for them, framed as if it therefore must be true for all writers (which almost all of the time, it isn’t). Therein resides the key to understanding why this craft is so difficult to teach, and especially, to learn.Because those who teach it, and talk about it, rarely touch upon the core truths that you need to understand. As if they are obvious–they are not–or that you already have your head wrapped around it all, which, based on the data regarding newly submitted manuscripts. Is unlikely.If you’re thinking: wait, Larry is one of those authors and presenters so how is he, and this, any different? Fair question. Answer: this book is about the underlying forces and factors that make a story work, no matter what you believe or practice as a process. It’s about gravity.
Not even the most wildly confused or egocentric physics professor on the planet argues the existence, nature and functional veracity of gravity.Bottom line: most of what you hear about writing fiction relates to process. Which can be all over the map, from die-hard pantser to anal-retentive outliner. And yet, the criteria for what renders a story effective, or not, is no different for any one process than any other. The bar resides at the exact same height for all stories, and it is largely out of reach for the new author that doesn’t grasp the facets of the craft required to reach it. (Here’s a wake up call: if you are self-publishing your work, the bar is not lower, thinner or less relevant for you. I’m on the cusp of leaving for Pasadena, where I’ll be presenting three sessions (including an all-day Master Class) at the Writers Digest Novel Writing Conference.
This is my sixth straight year there, and it’s always a first class event hosted by a first class organization.I’ve been banging out Powerpoint decks for the last three days, and I finally have them where I want them.Meanwhile, as I write this, and over the weekend, Amazon.com is completing fulfillment on delivery of pre-orders for my new writing book,. I’ve heard from a few folks who got theirs today mine is coming Wednesday (or so I’m told by Amazon), after I depart for five days (yes, I order a copy of my own books though the publisher does send a box for promotional use). GREAT STORIES DON'T WRITE THEMSELVES: Criteria-Driven Strategies for more Effective FictionForeword by New York Times Bestselling Author Robert Dugoni Published by Writers Digest BooksFrom the editor at Writers Digest Books:'The minute I saw the ' Great Stories.' Proposal in my inbox, I knew it needed to be part of the WD lineup. I grabbed a highlighter and started taking notes for my own writing then and there!
While I always find it interesting to hear about a successful author's writing process, those answers never seemed useful for getting to the heart of the matter, the real question being asked: What makes a story worth writing and reading? But that's exactly what this book does. Internalize it. Your future writer-self will thank you.'
There are two basic categories of rejection: the story idea (premise) isn't as compelling as you think it is, or as it could be. And/or the execution of the story arc has not been optimized.
Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life.
If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction.Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel. There are a thousand different methods. The best one for you is the one that works for you.In this article, I’d like to share with you what works for me. I’ve published six novels and won about a dozen awards for my writing. I teach the craft of writing fiction at writing conferences all the time. One of my most popular lectures is this one: How to write a novel using what I call the “Snowflake Method.”This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets over a thousand page views per day. Over the years, this page has been viewed more than six million times.
So you can guess that a lot of people find it useful. But you may not, and that’s fine by me.
Look it over, decide what might work for you, and ignore the rest! If it makes you dizzy, I won’t be insulted. Different writers are different.
If my methods get you rolling, I’ll be happy. I’ll make the best case I can for my way of organizing things, but you are the final judge of what works best for you. Have fun and. Write your novel! The Importance of DesignGood fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed.
You can do the design work before or after you write your novel. I’ve done it both ways and I strongly believe that doing it first is quicker and leads to a better result.
Design is hard work, so it’s important to find a guiding principle early on. This article will give you a powerful metaphor to guide your design.Our fundamental question is this: How do you design a novel?For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I write novels the same way I write software, using the “snowflake metaphor”. OK, what’s the snowflake metaphor? Before you go further, take a look at.At the top of the page, you’ll see a cute pattern known as a snowflake fractal. Don’t tell anyone, but this is an important mathematical object that’s been widely studied. For our purposes, it’s just a cool sketch of a snowflake.
If you scroll down that same web page a little, you’ll see a box with a large triangle in it and arrows underneath. If you press the right-arrow button repeatedly, you’ll see the steps used to create the snowflake.
It doesn’t look much like a snowflake at first, but after a few steps, it starts looking more and more like one, until it’s done.The first few steps look like this:I claim that that’s how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. Part of this is creative work, and I can’t teach you how to do that. Not here, anyway. But part of the work is just managing your creativity — getting it organized into a well-structured novel. That’s what I’d like to teach you here.If you’re like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing.
You may do some research. You daydream about how the story’s going to work. You brainstorm. You start hearing the voices of different characters.
You think about what the book’s about — the Deep Theme. This is an essential part of every book which I call “composting”. It’s an informal process and every writer does it differently. I’m going to assume that you know how to compost your story ideas and that you have already got a novel well-composted in your mind and that you’re ready to sit down and start writing that novel.
The Ten Steps of DesignBut before you start writing, you need to get organized. You need to put all those wonderful ideas down on paper in a form you can use. Because your memory is fallible, and your creativity has probably left a lot of holes in your story — holes you need to fill in before you start writing your novel. You need a design document.
And you need to produce it using a process that doesn’t kill your desire to actually write the story. Here is my ten-step process for writing a design document. I use this process for writing my novels, and I hope it will help you. Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: “A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul.” (This is the summary for my first novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal.
It’s the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!Some hints on what makes a good sentence:. Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words. No character names, please!
Better to say “a handicapped trapeze artist” than “Jane Doe”. Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story?
Now tell me what he or she wants to win. Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.Step 2) Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the snowflake.
I like to structure a story as “three disasters plus an ending”. Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don’t know if this is the ideal structure, it’s just my personal taste.If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up.
Story Structure Architect Ebook Readers
It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonist’s attempts to “fix things”. Things just get worse and worse.You can also use this paragraph in your proposal. Ideally, your paragraph will have about five sentences. One sentence to give me the backdrop and story setup. Then one sentence each for your three disasters. Then one more sentence to tell the ending. Don’t confuse this paragraph with the back-cover copy for your book.
This paragraph summarizes the whole story. Your back-cover copy should summarize only about the first quarter of the story.Step 3) The above gives you a high-level view of your novel. Now you need something similar for the storylines of each of your characters. Characters are the most important part of any novel, and the time you invest in designing them up front will pay off ten-fold when you start writing. About The AuthorRandy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly.
Story Structure Architect Ebook Reader Review
Translations of This ArticleThis article is immensely popular and has been translated into several languages:. German:. German:.
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