Book Review: Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain ...

Books on the craft of writing generally fall into two categories: how to write well and how to tell a story well. Most deal with writing words: grammar, style guides, literary devices, structure, plotting, characterization, arcs, pacing, and such fol-de-rol. Far fewer teach you how to tell a good story.

Lisa Cron's Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence not only offers insights to storytelling, but she explains exactly why each element is important, based on the latest cognitive neuroscience research. Once you understand the why of doing anything, it's much easier to remember to implement the factor. Otherwise, you'd just be writing by formula, following a sterile checklist of items to be sure to include. A lack of understanding the why to do something inevitably shows up in the writing, either leading to readers' confusion or boredom.

To reinforce the lessons she offers, Cron presents excellent examples from the film and television industries in which she has extensive experience. And, to be honest, each chapter does end with a checklist containing reminders of the research that forms the basis of each item, but I strongly recommend NOT skipping to these and omitting to learn the lessons of the text.

People who want to be writers, especially budding novelists, frequently seek shortcuts or long-suspected secrets of writing tales that ignite readers' imaginations and desires for more stories by that author. A practiced professional,? Cron told me she spent two years combing contemporary neuroscience research, teasing out the proven processes that lead to these results. It's all in the story, folks, and genetically based because humans have needed stories in order to survive. Listening to, paying attention and remembering stories is hard-wired into our brains.

All the pertinent psychological research is presented in an engaging, even breezy, informal style of writing with references to the studies at the back of the book for us end note and psych geeks. The book is structured with plenty of quotations from well-known published authors you'll recognize at the beginning of each chapter.

Source: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-wired-for-story-the/

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