It is easy to lose control of a large manuscript, especially fiction. Too many characters, subplots, locations, etc can become so unwieldy that the author despairs over completing it. Blueprint Your Bestseller offers the Book Architecture Method as a tool to help you.
FINDING THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR MANUSCRIPT
Blueprint Your Bestseller is all about finding the story structure in a draft. It is geared toward fiction but is also applicable to nonfiction. Mr. Horwitz uses Hans Christian Anderson’s short story, The Ugly Duckling, to illustrate his points. For nonfiction work, he notes how he used the method to work with this book.
Mr. Horwitz calls his revision scheme the Book Architecture Method. He depicts the method as a pyramid where you start with a manuscript and begin your work on it by ascending the pyramid (the steps in the Book Architecture Method) to its summit (where you find your theme), and then descend through steps of organization to your completed work.
The method is presented as twenty-two “Action Steps” that are summarized in an appendix. Following these steps takes you through a process where you identify the scenes in your work, then the series (subplots, beats, acts, etc) and finally, the theme (the method allows only one). This is the pyramid ascent. The descent is the evaluating and organizing of this material and the structures revealed, resulting in a solid manuscript.
A SIMPLER CONSTRUCT FOR STORY
Though he prefers to use his own terms, Mr. Horwitz does present the basics of story structure in his method. He simplifies them into constructs that authors not into storytelling theory should find workable. I like that he starts with the scene as the basic unit of storytelling. This makes a baseline connection to other works on writing theory and editing such as The Story Grid. Hence, his definition of “scene” is useful:
“A scene is where something happens, and because something happens, something changes in a way that propels the narrative.”
Just taking this definition to heart and writing by it, will lend momentum to your storytelling.
He also introduces the concept of “series:”
“A series is the repetition of a narrative element (such as a person, an object, a phrase, or a place) in such a way that it undergoes a clear evolution.”
He goes deeper into describing series which includes the subplots and threads we normally consider in a fiction. Mr. Horwitz doesn’t like the term, “plot,” however and doesn’t use it, feeling that it is too vague a term. “Series,” works for him to identify and describe constructs that make up the narrative, winding through the scenes.
With the concept of series established, Mr. Horwitz takes us through a process to discover our story (or nonfiction) theme. He stresses there can be only one overall theme and that every scene and series must support it. He provides a process for discovering what the theme of our story is, as opposed to what we thought it was when we started writing. I very much liked this process and was pleased to use it to find the theme in my own writing.
SIMPLE BUT PRECISE
I think the greatest value of this book is the simplified, but precise, story constructs Mr. Horwitz describes and how to use them to visualize and modify a story.
On the other hand, this simpler view may not be detailed enough to provide the tools needed for a deep story analysis, if that’s what you need. His idea of “key scenes,” for example, doesn’t work for me. I prefer to think of key scenes as they are described by Aristotle’s Incline (re: The Weekend Novelist by Robert Ray).
GOOD FOR PANTSERS AND OUTLINERS
Blueprint Your Bestseller describes the Book Architecture Method of story development that is a clever and understandable way to find the structure in a manuscript. With that structure found, revision can be accomplished. Also, the process for finding your story’s theme, as you’ve written it, is worth the cost of the book.
This perspective on story structure should be especially helpful to seat-of-the-pants fiction writers, enabling them to see the structure they’ve subliminally put into their writing. It can also be useful to the writer who plans and outlines, providing a means to check for solid substructures (series) and adherence to theme.
I found Blueprint Your Bestseller to compliment Shawn Coyne’s, The Story Grid, with the former helping to digest the latter. But even by itself, it is a tool for seeing a story (or nonfiction writing) as a constructed whole. Such vision is indispensable for authors, whether they are pantsers or not, for the sake of revision and understanding the literary work they’ve created.
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Top reviews from other countries
Keith
Very good practical writing advice.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2019