GREAT STORIES DON’T WRITE THEMSELVES: Criteria-Driven Strategies for More Effective Fiction
By Larry Brooks
Published by Writers Digest Books
October 2019
Table of Contents
Foreword by Robert Dugoni
Introduction: Survival and Sanity Along the Writing Road
Part 1: It’s All in Your Head
1. The Mission of the Novel and the Novelist
2. Developing a Criteria-Driven Nose for Story
3. What Happens When You Know
4. The Sound of the Writing Conversation
5. Realities, Odds, and Other Inconveniences
6. The Power of Storytelling Context
Part 2: From Idea to Premise: Criteria for Creating the Full Context of Your Story
7. Eight Criteria for Premise
8. The Mission of Your Story Idea
9. The Idea-Fueled Premise
10. Criteria for Concept
11. Context for Idea-Driven Drafting
Part 3: The Parts and Parcel of Story Development
12. The Functional Mission of Story Structure
13. Contextual Application of the Four Quartiles
14. Structure-Enabled Characterization
15. Criteria for the Part 1 Quartile
16. Criteria for the First Plot Point
17. Criteria for the Part 2 Hero’s Response
18. Criteria for the Mid-Quartile Pinch Points
19. Criteria for the Midpoint
20. Criteria for the Part 3 Hero’s Attack
21. Criteria for the Second Plot Point
22. Criteria for the Part 4 Resolution
Part 4: The Sum of the Parts
23. Criteria for Effective Scenes
24. Criteria for Narrative Prose
25. Caveats, Exceptions, Contradictions