The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller

Even when a character is wrong, he is wrong more eloquently than in real life.

3. Send the hero on a circular journey through generally the same area.

Withholding, or hiding, information is crucial to the storyteller’s make-believe. It forces the audience to figure out who the character is and what he is doing and so draws the audience into the story. When the audience no longer has to figure out the story, it ceases being an audience, and the story stops.

Meandering Story

Serious novels typically depict how a person interacts and changes within an entire

KEY POINT: Your hero’s true desire is what he wants in this story, not what he wants in life.

Most important, you will construct your story from the inside out. That means two things: (1) making the story personal and unique to you and (2) finding and developing what is original within your story idea. With each chapter, your story will grow and become more detailed, with each part connected to every other part.

No individual element in your story, including the hero, will work unless you first create it and define it in relation to all the other elements.

Leader to Visionary