Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) Paperback – August 9, 2016

Bought this book in Sept 2024, didn't actually start using it until the following February, and I'm kicking myself for not starting it sooner. I wish I had found this book BEFORE I wrote a dozen novels with blood, sweat, and tears. It would have saved me a lot of bald spots, too. Holy bananas! This book has TRANSFORMED the way I write!This book helped me restructure the first book in my series in a few DAYS, I finished writing it by the end of March, and I've relaunched my series under my new pen name. I just finished setting the entire series up on a rapid release schedule right now, so I'm back to plotting using Cron's book.I've plotted two novels this week (a stand-alone and the first of my new series), and I'm working on the 3rd novel. Once the series is plotted, I'll write them all for another rapid release.I am not pulling out my hair. I am not agonizing over the plots. I am not going through a slump, questioning my choice or my sanity in being a writer. I am having the freakin' time of my life all because Lisa Cron made a repeatable process that helps me discover the heart of my stories starting at the heart of my characters. The stories practically write themselves once I'm done using her method! Booyah!I cannot recommend her book enough. And to get some extra insight, I also recommend her other book "Wired for Story," which dives deeper into why we humans gravitate toward reading stories and how to engineer your stories to appeal to this.Extra tip: Using Theodora Taylor's "7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone" will help ensure you weave binge-worthy elements into your stories. Get that book, too! You're welcome!

So, here's a very short, perhaps uninteresting story. I bought this book in reaction to a small tantrum I had one night after finishing a book on writing by a popular writer, throwing up my hands to the Great Spirit Story Teller Goddess,...PA-LEASE, I NEED INSPIRATION, OUT OF THE DAMN BOX THINKING, SOMETHING TO JOLT THIS THICK HEAD OF MINE OUT OF THE SAME OLD RECIPE FOR WRITING! I searched Amazon, found this and purchased it but didn't read it till yesterday. It's been four years. In the mean time I slogged ahead, wrote the story that had been jostling around my head for twenty years, stopped, took six months off, read a lot of fiction, came back to it last winter and am having an exceptional experience. Why, because I'm finding out in Lisa's book, that I've figured out some of the things she talks about. Ends up, the first book became the back story to the present one, my main character is deeply entangled it and with another, creating a novel way of dealing with it. The main point is that, this book for aspiring writers, will free you from the old rehashed formula and yet guide you in writing the same kinds of stories that you can't put down late at night. This is sooooooo good! Page after page, you feel a heavy weight lighten off your shoulders, actually, yes, become excited again, more confident and stopping to think things through as it relates to your writing. It's a bible that unleashes the best story teller in you!

It is said that the teacher appears when the student is ready. For me, most of my greatest teachers have arrived in the form of books. And this —-Story Genius — is the book that I’ve been waiting for years to finally arrive! !I must begin with a confession, though. I wasn’t interested in writing a novel. My intention was aimed more towards Memoir. However, words that were often tossed at my favorite writer, like the proverbial red tomatoes, haunted me. Ken Wilber is my favorite philosopher of all time and I noticed that he was often charged with writing too “academically.” I interpreted said descriptions as meaning that he was too dry, too mechanical, too architectural, too verbose. As if he was writing only for those living within the halls of academia.I feared the same accusations, so I first sought to spice up my writing style by reading the classics (The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar WIlde. Daniel Martin, by John Fowles. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, etc.). I also purchased many books on how to create character arcs, using the Hero’s Journey as a road map. I also read many books on the best ways to outline, etc..Was that all I needed? To simply add chilies to the spaghetti?I was, in other words, trying to understand what makes a reader call the work of a certain author, a “Masterpiece.”I realized that I was focusing on method and strategy. I focused on adding to my balance in my vocabulary bank account. I read Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, and wanted to write just like him! I was convinced that it was his prose and combination of words that made his memoir a Masterpiece! I didn’t know that the key was located much deeper than that.I kept struggling! I’ve started my memoir more times than I care to share. It’s embarrassing.Then, Story Genius appeared in my Amazon feed. Cron had me at the introduction. Have you ever experienced the gratitude born from sensing that someone truly wants to help you? When a person cares enough not to waste your time or lure you covertly towards the end, and only after many potatoes does she give you the meat?No. Cron puts the meat on your plate right at the intro and OMG! This book changed everything! This is EXACTLY what I wanted to know! Now, what I need to do is crystal clear! Cran got me UNSTUCK with this book!Here is just one Golden Nugget: “It’s not what the world throws at them; it’s the meaning they read into those events that your story is actually about.”What I got out of this Powerful book is that the mixture that sets the solid foundation for a masterpiece, is not in beautiful prose, structure, or other surface technicalities, but in what is happening within the nucleus of the heart.. At the depths of the human psyche. What it all means to the experiencer. How the ever-changing currents of life are affecting the lead protagonist. How they are changing her. How he reacts to them and hence, is transformed by them.I loved that this book is so readable. Cron’s explanations are so simple, so down to earth, that you feel as if a good friend is whispering this valuable advice into your ear. I loved this book so much that I would put it in my backpack and take it with me to work. I would read it during down-times and lunch breaks!I HIGHLY recommend it!