Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
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Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
we know from personal experience that when something genuinely horrid is going on, it’s always with us no matter how much we pretend it isn’t. It not only filters everything we see, it tells us what to look for.
Lisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
Because here’s the thing: that subjective lens through which your protagonist sees the world is a constant. It sounds obvious, but what does that mean, exactly? I ask because it’s something writers often lose sight of. Their protagonist will be faced with something utterly life-altering, and then, in the midst of it all, spend hours doing errands,
... See moreLisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
Here’s an interesting thing to mull over: When we look at someone else—like, say, the hoarder in the apartment upstairs who hasn’t thrown out a single magazine or newspaper since 1988 (and she subscribes to them all, having never gotten the hang of this newfangled Interweb thing)—we think, I can’t believe she does that, how irrational. But, and thi
... See moreLisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
What stokes a story’s momentum isn’t simply what happens; it’s what it costs the protagonist internally to make the decisions that drive the external action. Decisions that, on the surface, might appear objectively irrational, but are completely logical to your protagonist, because they’re based on his subjective beliefs.
Lisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
You Must Stay in Your Protagonist’s Subjective Mind-Set
Lisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
There was nothing in the passage that mentioned how Marilyn actually felt, and yet everything in the passage conveyed it.
Lisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
A mistake we make both in literature and in life is the tacit assumption that all emotions are defined by—and limited to—the catchwords we’ve come up with for them. Emotions are far more fluid and calibrated, and can’t really be extrapolated in words (or, perhaps, it’s just that we don’t yet have the language for it).
Lisa Cron • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
The secret is this: the emotion emanates from how the character makes sense of what’s happening, rather than mentioning the nearest big emotion that sums it up. Your goal isn’t to tell us how they feel, so we know it intellectually; it’s to put us in their skin as they struggle, which then evokes the same emotion in us. That feeling will be subtle,
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