read: Great Stories Don't Write Themselves (4 stars)

Great Stories Don't Write Themselves by Larry Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An effective (for me) tutorial on some aspects of story that had been eluding me. Most of the focus is on understanding the criteria involved in the macro aspects of story: premise and concept, along with the related concepts of character, setting and plot.
Then he uses those criteria to present and break down story structure in way shows why even an organic writer eventually succumbs to structure in order to succeed (as a opposed to a outliner who struggles with the structure up front).
It's all nicely down-to-Earth and friendly and something that can be referred to again and again. There are no real surprises here. It's all been said before. But the author presents it in a way where several light bulbs finally illuminated for me.

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