From USA Today and Amazon.com bestselling author Larry Brooks
“Fix the writer and the story will follow.”
This site is about getting real with your writing dream.
It seeks to elevate your understanding of the craft, which requires much more of you than to “just write.” Within the prevailing 96 percent rejection rate of submitted manuscripts, much of the failure is explained by writers not fully grasping specific core principles that create criteria to apply across the arc of a story. Instead they rely on instinct, when in fact their instinct may not yet be fully informed or nimble.
The rest is explained by story ideas that just aren’t strong enough. To the surprise of many, there are criteria for that, as well.
Storyfix offers a deep dive into each facet of the storytelling proposition—including how to strengthen your story idea—which you can apply to your writing process, whatever that might be.
To go a bit deeper, READ THIS seminal Storyfix post.
Recent Posts
“Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves” – a working author’s review
You sort of expect the author of a book to talk about it on their website. I’m quite aware of the short rope in doing that. But when someone else steps up to review and/or discuss the book – especially as a video in the “how to” realm – that’s a different thing entirely.
Especially when the author – that would be me, in this case – is happy with what the reviewer has said.
A few weeks ago I was checking out Youtube book reviews, and I happened upon a channel by a fellow named Jeremy Bursey (who goes by the name Zippywings on his channel). At the time he’d done sixteen or so episodes of reviewing and discussing books on the art and craft of writing novels, covering most of the top shelf names in that niche: Stephen King, James Scott Bell, Randy Ingermanson, Jessica Brody, Lisa Cron and others you may have heard of or even read.
The videos are fifteen minutes or so in length.
What got my attention was his point of view. He’s a working author, a writer hungry to learn the craft and, in that context, a big consumer of writing books. His analysis, across the board, is fair and measured, citing pluses and minuses, and most importantly, points out how the working/learning author can find and apply value, regardless of where one resides on the learning curve.
I was pleased to discover that he’d already reviewed ALL THREE of my previous writing books (Story Engineering, Story Physics and Story Fix) in previous episodes (the 3rd, 4th and 5th books he chose to showcase, after launching with Stephen King’s On Writing).
And you’re right: if he didn’t end up being appreciative of the books, I probably wouldn’t be sharing this right now. But this guy got it.
So I wrote him, introduced myself, thanked him for his kind words about my work and for putting this series out there for writers to discover. I offered to send him my latest book – “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves,” published 14 months ago, with no strings. I hoped he’d find value there.
As it turned out, he did. You can see the video below. It’s not a terribly slick production (the intro lasts 41 seconds, FYI), nor is it intended to be, but it is one working novelist with ambitions not unlike most of us, sharing what he’s discovered as germane and useful in the niche of writing craft books.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mcEwTXpuyDw?start=903
So now there are four of his videos on my writing books you can check out.
For his review/discussion Story Engineering, click HERE.
For his review/discussion on Story Physics, click HERE.
For this review/discussion on Story Fix, click HERE.
To check out his Youtube channel page and find all the other episodes in his series (as well as other writing-focused videos he’s produced), click HERE.
By the way…
… speaking of “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves,” the book just won its third national award, this one for the American BookFest Best Book awards (Writing/Publishing caterory). It had previously won that same category in the American Book Fest International Book awards, and in the Writing Category at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Your NaNoWriMo Treasure Chest
Pretty much everything and anything you need to know to empower your NaNoWriMo experience.
Specifically, today I’m linking you to a roster of 32 NaNoWriMo tutorials, one for each day of the Big Month, plus a final word (post 32).
NaNoWriMo is beloved by tens of thousands of writers who want a structured and metered guided experience to the completion of a first draft of your novel. But… that said… this process is no different than any other drafting process, including one that consumes a year or more of your time and sweat. By that I mean… if you don’t know what you’re doing – how a novel is conceived, unspooled and polished – chances are your month’s work will, as a best case scenario, give you something to work with (and on) going forward.
Too often, though (when you don’t really know what the professionals know about how to conceive and render a novel that works), you end up with a pile of 50,000 words that don’t really add up to much. Picture the living room of a hoarder from one of those reality shows… that’s what happens to too many writers during the month of November.
Too many writers don’t know what they don’t know.
Too many writers aren’t even aware that there ARE things to know.
And worst of all, too many writers reject that there are principles and best practices available, even to brand new writers, in the mistaken belief that the only way to get to the other side is to discover all by yourself, making it all up as you go along.
Here’s the 101 on what you need to know to make your NaNoWriMo a true investment (time only; this is totally free information) of your time and passion and dreams.
Click Here for the menu of links. After the initial three other general posts on this topic, the daily tutorials show on this list in reverse order (by day, descending from Day 32).
Feel free to use the comments here to ask anything you need in the way of clarification, or a deeper dive, or simple offer your thoughts.
May your NaNoWriMo take you one giant leap forward toward your writing dream.
If you like what you see and learn here, please share this link to your writer friends and/or social media. Thanks much!
Welcome to the new bright and shiny Storyfix.com!
If you’re reading this via email, then I invite you to CLICK THROUGH to the site and check out the new paint job and some nifty remodeling, including a cool new banner. My thanks go out to the designers and programmers who helped me get this done (which took over three weeks… and we’re still not done. Some of the back-end pages are still under construction, but the basic navigation is up and running).
To reward you for dropping by, here are some of my most popular posts connected to the topic of story structure, including access to the comments.
Enjoy. And… let me know how you like the new look and feel of the site.
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There’s an entire book’s worth of material here, so bookmark this one and dive in.
If you’re a new – or at least a newer – writer, this is basic training that too many either skip, or are never exposed to. Each link takes you to a full tutorial.
Every pro writer with a career leans into understanding these prinicples at the level of instinct, even if they aren’t talking about it. Instinct, however, is nothing other than a principle that has ingrained itself in the writer’s story DNA. Which is a state every writer should strive to achieve.
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Read the Foreword
NewYork Times and #1 Amazon bestselling author Robert Dugoni wrote the Foreword for my lastest craft book, "Great Stories Don't Write Themselves." Click on the icon to give it a read.