Review: Story Engineering

Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 core competencies of successful writing, by Larry Brooks.

There are almost limitless possibilites when you're designing a home. Thousands of different ways it could end up. You could make it eco-friendly and build the whole thing out of bamboo. You can make it open and airy, and "invite the outside in," as Better Homes and Gardens says. You could build it on water. Or you could build it at the top of a tall tower, as a nice place to keep wayward princesses.

But however you do it, there are some basic structural elements that EVERY house must have. As I was singing with my 1-year-old this morning: "Build a house with a floor, with a floor, with a floor. Build a house with a wall, with a wall, with a wall. Build a house with a roof, with a roof, with a rooooooooof..." Of course, the house didn't turn out too well in the song, but the fact remains: you can be endlessly creative in your designing, but any house still has to have some kind of roof, walls, and a floor. As well as a place to sleep, a place to prepare food, and somewhere to, shall we say, shed the unwanted food....

Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks, is a little like this. It's a book on how to plan and build a story or screenplay - explaining all the work a writer should do before beginning to write, in order to have a winning story at the end. As opposed to flying by the seat of your pants (pantsing, Brooks calls it) in the hopes that if you just start writing it will all work out in the end.

When I first started reading this book, to be honest I wondered if it might kill the creativity, making storytelling clinical and formulaic. Like he was saying, "You want to build a house? Here's a photo of one. Do that." But as I got a little further in, and Brooks began giving guidance on the six core competencies, I began to see that they weren't formulaic at all.

What this book does is explains what a wall needs to be. And a roof. And a floor. And then the author says, "Once you've got that, feel free to go crazy! But just make sure it's got those elements." After all, a house without walls would be a little impractical (where would you hang photos?...).

I would recommend this book to any aspiring writer. It really is helpful and freeing. It's enjoyable to read (if sometimes a little repetitive, but I could understand why). You're not guaranteed to have a bestseller if you master these six competencies of storytelling, but it's highly likely you'll have a flop if you don't.