This book shows you how to take timeless storytelling structures and make them immediate, now, for fiction that's universal in how it speaks to the reader's heart and contemporary in detail and impact. Each chapter includes brief excerpts and descriptions of fiction from many times, many genres - myth and fairy tale, genre and mainstream fiction, film plots of all types, short story and novel. Find 20 fundamental plots that recur through all fiction - with analysis and examples - that outline benefits and warnings, for writers to adapt and elaborate in their own fiction.
The best stories linger in the hearts and minds of readers for decades. These tales gain their power through plots that connect with the audience on both an emotional and intellectual level.
Shirley Jackson's short story " The Lottery " illustrates the point on a larger scale . The title of the story cues us well . This is a story about a lottery . As we read the story we learn that a town holds an annual lottery and has ...
Successful, bestselling fiction has one thing in common: plot structures that are both universal and timeless. Twenty plots recur through all fiction and this book shows writers how to adapt them to create their own unique novel.
My Best Friend's Wedding, P.J. HOGAN PURSUIT AS PLOT— When Julianne's long-time friend says he's getting married, she realizes she loves him and sets out to get him. The Bachelor, GARY SINYOR PURSUIT AS SUBPLOT AND INCIDENT, ...
The Magi is often the master teacher of what the hero wants to master , whether it's martial arts , chess or something else . The Magi in action : Obi - Wan Kenobi ( Alec Guinness ) in Star Wars O Bruce Pandolfini ( Ben Kingsley ) ...
In this comprehensive guide, author Victoria Lynn Schmidt examines cross-cultural archetypes to illustrate how they can make your work more powerful and compelling.
The Anatomy of Story is his long-awaited first book, and it shares all of his secrets for writing a compelling script.
The second part of her story shows her going out into the wider world in a new way, when she takes up her first employment at the great house of Thornfield, as governess to the daughter of the rich and mysterious Mr Rochester.
Building Better Plots
It might be the rivalrous friendship of the nuclear physicists in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, the agony of Shakespeare's Hamlet at being inadequate to protest his father's murder, or Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman ...