New Writing Book… Now in Bookstores!

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 Life

That’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. In fact, the success-mediocrity-failure data is even more depressing in that realm.)

This book is all about the criteria for storytelling, both at a macro-level (the story idea, the premise, character and dramatic arcs), and the micro-level (the nuanced contextual flow of story structure, the different functions of different parts of the story, what makes a scene work, and conversely for all of it, what causes the wheels to come off).

There are approximately 70 different criteria culled out from the myriad parts, parcels, essences and contexts of a story that works, each of them introduced, framed, exemplified and rooted in the fiction writing reality, including graphics for visual learners. Once you have these internalized–at which point they tend to become instinctual, which is precisely why consistently successful authors are better than the rest of us–in effect you have over 70 different checklists that can be applied to your novel… at any point in the process, from the opening flash-fire of a story idea, through the outlining and/or drafting process, on through the revision and polish stage of development.

All of it is process and genre neutral.

Here’s the scary, irrefutable bottom-line truth about writing…

… and about writers. It frames the entire explanation for success versus failure and the sad percentages that underscore those outcomes. It applies to new writers especially, but to working writers as well: too often you don’t know what you don’t know. And yet it is the sum of what you know, compromised by what you don’t know, that dictates the state of your craft, as well as the direction and momentum of your growth as a writer.

And thus, the trajectory of your writing career.

The new book is focused on that. On shortening the gap between what you know and what you don’t know. And putting a framework around all of it in a way that allows you to access these truths as a tool chest for your storytelling, perhaps in a way that is more empowering than you’ve ever experienced before.

This is the stuff you wish you’ve have known earlier in your writing journey.  The stuff you wish had been made clearer, and framed more clearly, instead of what, for most writers, ends up being half true, half the time, for half the writers who hear it.

Bestselling author Robert Dugoni wrote the Foreword for the book.

His bestselling novel, My Sister’s Grave, serves as the recurring real-life model that displays how all of these principles work together within the arc of a story to become a sum in excess of their parts. Because always, while these principles do indeed define the sum, it is the writer’s deft and nuanced touches, the keen instinct applied to a given moment, that elevates that sum to something more.

This knowledge is what may get you published, as well as explain why that isn’t happening. Somewhere between the state of what you know about those 70-plus criteria, and the state of the instinct with which you apply them, resides your key to making your writing dream come true.

Look to the right of this post (click HERE to go to the Home page), under the shot of the cover, to read the blurb from the Editor at Writers Digest Books, who acquired and worked with the manuscript. You’ve probably never seen an editor blurb their own book before, but when you read what she says, you’ll understand.

Here are three previews– think of these at appetizers–that I hope will send you to the bookstore, online or otherwise, to pick up this book.

The very first reader review can be read HERE.

You can read the entire Introduction chapter, including a few Track Changes comments from the editors, HERE: 00A_Introduction 

And you can inspect the full Table of Contents HERE: TOC

Go to the Amazon page for Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves HERE, and the BN.com page HERE.

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