Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writin

Name: Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writin
SKU: 164886
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4.6 | 2,201 ratings

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Last update: 02-02-2025

About this item

Following on the heels of Lisa Cron's breakout first book, Wired for Story, this writing guide reveals how to use cognitive storytelling strategies to build a scene-by-scene blueprint for a riveting story.

It's every novelist's greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page-one rewrite.

The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot). Story coach Lisa Cron has spent her career discovering why these methods don't work and coming up with a powerful alternative, based on the science behind what our brains are wired to crave in every story we read (and it’s not what you think).

In Story Genius,Cron takes you, step by step, through the creation of a novel from the first glimmer of an idea, to a complete, multilayered blueprint - including fully realized scenes - that evolves into a first draft with the authority, richness, and command of a riveting sixth or seventh draft.

David Garfinkel

A breath of fresh air (in a VERY stuffy field)

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2016

This book stands apart from every other book about story I've ever read. And I've read quite a few.

For someone who's primarily "interested" in the art and/or science of story, this book is bound to disappoint.

But, for someone who's *engaged* in the hobby or profession of crafting stories that need to *work*, "Story Genius" is a godsend.

Here's why:

Lisa Cron has nailed down, in deceptively simple language, the very exact steps a writer needs to take to go from interesting prose to a compelling story. While the book is highly readable and doesn't have lots of (any, in my reading) frightening and impressive words, I see the fingerprints of other geniuses on the page: Rupert Sheldrake, Nick Arrizza, Anders Ericcson, and even (and in this context, it's a high compliment), L. Ron Hubbard.

Just fingerprints, though. The vast majority of the work here is all Cron's. She is so lighthearted and playful, you could easily miss the profound value (to the working storyteller) in her book IF YOU WEREN'T ALREADY STARVING FOR IT.

Which I am. Because with all the wonderful books I've read and courses I've taken, a few things have been missing.

Like: After you've identified the "wound" in the protagonist's past that informs the inner part of their journey through the story, what in the world do you do with that information? Most other writers, teachers, and gurus implicitly leave you with the challenge, "Well, that's for you to figure out."

Translation: They don't know, and they don't want you to know that they don't know.

Cron does, and she lays it out explicitly and generously. On the point of the protagonist's "wound" alone, this book is a complete though concise master class.

Another thing I've found missing almost everywhere else: How much of your character's past do you need to tell your reader about -- and how do you determine what that how much is?

I've only seen a partial answer to that question one place else -- in Aaron Sorkin's MasterClass on screenwriting -- and while he gave essentially the same answer, I find Cron's coverage of this topic in this book, much more useful and comprehensive.

"Story Genius" might not be the best book for a beginner for one simple and ironic reason:

Until you've been burned over and over again by the overconfident gurus of this field (and I don't include Sorkin here -- he's great, but again, not as comprehensive on certain key points), you won't be able to appreciate the finesse and extraordinary practical value of what's in this book.

I know if I had read it, say, 30 years ago, I would have shrugged a lot of this stuff off. Might have called it "repetitive" or "incomplete."

These days, I struggle with the real problems that Cron addresses in this book -- both as a working writer myself, and as a coach to other writers.

In that way, I am like an experienced jeweler walking through a flea market of cubic zirconium. I have to make stuff work, rather than read or hear it five times just to understand what it is.

So, I recognize a gem when I see it.

If any of this resonates, you should get this book to ease your own suffering and increase your own productivity -- and satisfaction with the experience -- sooner, rather than later.

Iola

Now I want the paperback

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2016

Story Genius is the latest book from Lisa Cron, author of Wired for Story. In Story Genius, Cron takes the basic concept from Wired for Story (that, as humans, we are wired to read stories and listen to them as a way of learning about the world and understanding how other people think). It takes elements of Debra Dixon’s GMC theory, and adds in a plotting methodology similar to the method Jack Bickham outlines in Scene and Structure.

No, this is not a book for confirmed pantsters … although it might prompt pantsters to question whether they might actually need to cross over to the dark side and become a plotter. Although Cron isn’t a fan of traditional plotting:

Plotters have it backward: the events in the plot must be specifically created to force the protagonist to make a specific really hard internal change. And that means you need to know, specifically, what that internal change will be before you begin creating a plot.

I suspect some novelists (pantsters, perhaps) don’t do this, because I’ve certainly read novels where the end didn’t make sense in the light of the information provided. I also suspect some novelists (definitely plotters) take this overboard, as I’ve also read novels where the external situation was too obviously contrived to bring around the inner change, to the point the external situation didn’t make sense.

To misquote Yoda, there has to be a balance.
Lisa Cron starts by practicing what she preaches: she hooks us with a story. In this case, she refers to those times she/you/I stayed up far too late at night, reading ‘just one more chapter’ until we reached the final page … probably at the same time as the birds woke up to welcome the new day.

(At the risk of sounding judgemental, if you’re an aspiring fiction author and you’ve never said ‘just one more chapter’ or stayed up far too late reading, you either don’t read enough fiction, or you’re lying. I’d prefer you were lying.)

The most useful part of Story Genius for me was the discussion about plot vs. story. I’ve read other books which talk about plot being the all-important element of fiction, with comments like this:

Before there was plot there was story. Story was the narration of events in the sequence that they happened. Plot is story that has a pattern of action and reaction. Plot is more than just a chronicle of events. The listener asks a different question: “Why does this happen?”
Ronald B Tobias,
20 Master Plots and How to Build Them

Instead of the either/or nature of plot and story, Lisa Cron’s view is that plot and story are intertwined:

Story is about the internal struggle. It’s about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses.

(see the GMC connection?). Cron also says:

Here’s the real truth: your novel itself beings “in the middle of the thing” [aka in media res]—the “thing” being the story. What starts on page one is the second half of the story, where the plot kicks in.”

I don’t know about you, but reading that was a lightbulb moment for me, as was this:

The story and the plot are two very different things. The story comes first, and is born of one person, and one person only: the protagonist. Everyone and everything else will be created to serve his or her story.

After explaining her methodology, Cron applies it to a real-life manuscript from volunteer/victim Jennie Nash, novelist, book coach and partner in Author Accelerator (yes, Jennie and Lisa offer Story Genius as an online course as well).

This is alternately fascinating and frustrating: fascinating to see the way a writer works and applies the concepts, and frustrating because she didn’t tell us how the story ends (she hinted, but didn’t answer the big question: does Henry live?).
[...]

I’ve highlighted 59 passages, and that’s in the ebook (which is how I know. Kindle counts them for me). I think I’m going to have to buy the book so I can read it again and highlight with “real” highlighters, and see the sample Scene Card properly—I don’t think it showed up properly in my electronic review copy.

Recommended. You may or may not want to follow the methodology, but I’m sure you’ll learn something.

Thanks to Ten Speed Press and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

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