Very late in Larry Brooks' "Story Engineering", he reveals that he is a former minor league pitcher, which makes the copious amount of sports analogies make some sense. What it doesn't do is make them any easier to slog through.
The idea behind "Story Engineering" - that there are Six "Core Competencies" that any writer must master in order to write publishable stories - is vastly interesting, pretty important, and isn't really taught in creative writing classes. I want to get that out of the way first - I like this book, for the most part, but I am going to be critical of it, because it wasn't as good as it should have been.
The presentation is muddle and obscured by constant harping on how important these principles are, and how lost you will be if you try to change them. He drives these points home with his beloved analogies and metaphors, comparing writing to everything from golf to surgery to sex. Yup, he gave new meaning to "narrative thrust".
His biggest crime seems to be one of padding. There's a Preface, that gives a vague overview of the subject of the book. Then, there's Chapter 1, which does pretty much the same thing. Chapter 2 re-hashes the exact same information, but in a slightly different way. It's not until Chapter 3 that he finally names any of the Competencies. For a book that implores writers to hook readers early in their story, this is a pretty poor example.
Which actually leads me to his second biggest crime: missed opportunity. One of the Competencies is "Story Structure". He lays out the idea that there are Story Milestones that happen at roughly the same point in every successful story (more on both the terms "roughly" and "successful" later). The First Plot Point divides the first two parts of your story (analogous to the first and second acts of a screenplay), and happens at roughly the 25% mark of your story. The Second Plot Point divides the third and fourth parts (analogous to the second and third acts of a screenplay), and occurs right around the 75% mark. In what I'm sure was a complete and utter coincidence, the chapter focusing on the Second Plot Point starts 75% of the way through "Story Engineering" (yay Kindle!). This made me think, "why not lay out the entire book to line up with your Competencies"?
Ok, that's not exactly feasible, since the book is not just about the structure of stories, but also Character, Theme, Concept, Scene Execution, and Writing Voice (the other 5 Core Competencies). That said, why not make this book as tight as the method you're promoting? Why ramble about concepts when you tell us to avoid doing the exact same thing? Why bring up a topic, tell us you're going to explain it, then change course and talk about something else for pages before actually explaining the concept? Why the constant sales pitch to convince us to use the techniques we're trying to learn about (presumably so that we can use them)?
The answer is his third biggest crime: he can't get out of his own way. He loves his Six Core Competencies. He loves his own writing style. He detests "organic" writing (writing with no planning/outlining, just letting the story go where it goes). It is the constant reminders of all of this that get irritating after a while, because on many of his points, I already agree. I get his point about "organic" writing - if you have no plan, the first draft tends to be a rambling mess that goes nowhere. Then, you edit it down into a more coherent story. If you write a full-length novel, this can be incredibly tedious, not to mention time-consuming. Instead, if you plan ahead and know your story milestones, you can bang out a draft that is far closer to being done than if you just wing it.
This makes sense to me. I'm sure other writers won't agree - many believe that outlining robs a story of its spontaneity. My response would be that after the first draft, how spontaneous is the story? If you can write a first draft that is perfect, then yeah, totally spontaneous. After that point? You have the story on paper, and are just tweaking/rewriting it. Not much spontaneity left at that point, so why not plan it out a bit beforehand? You don't have to go crazy like Brooks and lay out every single scene in your novel. You can just sketch out the four parts, and the associated Milestones, then you are free to ad lib as much as you want.
It's like jazz - there are base melodies/progressions/phrases, but as long as you stay within those, you're free to improvise. (Ok, that's my one analogy for this review.)
Brooks does introduce a great tool that can be used by any writer - the beat sheet. Basically, it's a stripped-down outline. I could see "organic" writers using it, as it is essentially a bare-bones first draft. Brooks sort of makes this observation; he discusses the ability to make changes to the beat sheet as far easier than a 400-page manuscript, comparing them to the maneuverability of a speed boat and a cargo freighter, respectively.
Of course, by this point in the book (the last few chapters), his offer of an olive branch to the "organic" writers feels meager and back-handed, especially given the fact that he's still telling them that their approach is stupid and useless. Why not mention that your Six Core Competencies are best utilized when the writer is a planner, but they can help "organic" writers be more efficient and successful? Then, leave out all the cheap shots at "organic" writers, all of the commentary on how you won't get published if you don't follow these principles, and then wrap up with "If you write 'organically', here's how you can apply these principles, but maintain your writing styles."
Instead, it's, "Fine, you still want to write organically? It won't work, but *sigh* try this." Very condescending. Not to mention the fact that some of this comes in Chapter 49 of 50, and still assumes that the reader is clinging to "organic" writing. How did no editor call this guy up and say, "Um, if they're still reading by your second-to-last chapter, they're probably on board. You can probably drop the adversarial stuff now"?
On top of all this is his idea of "successful". He seems to vacillate on what that means. Is it commercial success, or just critical success? He brings up Dan Browns fun but hollow The Da Vinci Code as a shining success story, so you're left feeling it's about commercial success. Then, he admits that while The Da Vinci Code was incredibly lucrative, that doesn't mean the writing was particularly good. Then he goes back to saying that he's not analyzing the quality of the writing, just the structure, and adherence to the Six Core Competencies, but it did sell a lot! Later, he rips into "literature", claiming its champions (snooty folks at places like Oxford...pah!) allow long stretches of character development that doesn't advance the plot, and this is boring, and Moby Dick sucked, and...wait... He's ripping on "literature", both classic and well-respected modern works. All of which got published, and a lot of press. Throughout the book, he's railed on about how failure to adhere to these principles will GUARANTEE rejection. So, how did this "literature" get published?
He is definitely a genre fiction author, and I sense a fierce desire to protect his own. That's fine, and I agree that considering "genre fiction" as a lesser form of literature is a little ridiculous, but it's ok to acknowledge that there are different benchmarks for success. If your goal is to teach us how to write books like Dan Brown or James Patterson, that's fine, but be up front about it, don't patter on about writing, then rip on half the literary world 80% of the way through your book.
And then there's the rules that aren't rules. There are so many contradictions in his statements that he could quite legitimately call this The Bible of Writing. The First Plot point should be right at the 25% mark of your story...unless it's a little earlier or a little later. That's up to you. But in successful writing it is ALWAYS at the 25% mark, except in this example, where it isn't.
He lays out rules, claims they are the only way to do things, then backs off and claims they're just guidelines. Then he gets worried that he's getting too soft and says that they must be followed.
At any rate, his fourth and final (to me) biggest crime is just the grammatical/factual errors. Using plurals when he should be using the singular - "Competencies" in almost all of the Part Titles; "criteria" instead of "criterion", which is a biggie to me, since he's supposed to be convincing us he knows what he's talking about - is the clearest example. He misrepresents the words of Elmore Leonard, too, which makes you wonder about other things he said.
All in all, I think the book is valuable. The concepts in it, when boiled down and distilled, are important, and I think they will help make me a better writer. The rest of the book...actually may help make me a better writer, too, if only to know what to avoid doing. I would recommend it to anyone who is just starting out in writing, or is struggling with it.
