Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula Kindle Edition

This is the only writing book I've found that is not a simple formula method. The author has a unique way of deconstructing story structure and it makes the most sense to me, since it accounts for the incredible amount of variation in story-telling. I also appreciated that he used complex works of literature for examples, such as Kafka's Metamorphosis and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I am sick to death of how many books only look at YA movies that explicitly follow the Hero's Journey, such as Star Wars.My only criticism is that although it promises to help you plot without a formula, it doesn't give a very clear idea how to get started on that. Maybe that's inherently impossible. Like his other book, Blueprinting Your Story (title?), it is more useful after you have completed, or at least when you are most of the way through writing the first draft. It genuinely made me see many things in my novel that I hadn't noticed were there and gave me a lot of ideas to pursue thematically, as well as how to tighten the novel up.

A fellow mystery writer and member of Sisters in Crime recommended Stuart Horwitz's book. We were chatting before a SinC meeting. I mentioned I was drafting my second mystery. My obstacle: starting every character in the story at 6 am on his/her day/first appearance in the story. The fellow member of SinC recommended Book Architecture and I always value her advice as a writer, so I ordered a copy. I paused and read it cover to cover. Book Architecture offered some interesting examples..

What a helpful book! Took away ideas that will be used permanently. Thank you!

I have been a fan of Stuart Horwitz since I read Blueprint Your Bestseller. BYB is a book that will change the way you think about writing. It was the first book that provided any meaningful advice on discovering and / or developing the theme of a story. BYB and Book Architecture focus on finding the strongest scenes, building the best narrative order, and uncovering what your “one thing” is.Both books demonstrate techniques for physically taking apart your story and laying it out to see what goes where and what goes...away. I modified the key points and created a digital version of the series grid. So far I really like it.Book Architecture is one of those books that I believe will improve my writing now, but will also continue to improve it in the future. I feel that each story I apply the Book Architecture method to will be stronger and cleaner in the end. This is not a formula. It takes work.I received an advanced reading copy, but halfway through the book, I just bought my own because the actual Kindle version is easier to navigate than the PDF and I really liked the method. Then I pulled Blueprint Your Bestseller to the front of my Kindle carousel for easier access as well.

I've read many books on writing seeking to find the "secret" to making my still-unpublished Middle Grade novel successful. I've plotted structure, used various tables, spreadsheets and diagrams, but none of the systems really resonated for me, for whatever reasons. Then I discovered the web site writelikerowling.com and saw Rowling's now-famous handwritten, sloppy outline of subplots and chapters. While it bore no resemblance to the many structure and plot outlines I'd seen, it made sense to me. Besides, who's going to argue with anything J.K Rowling does? Also mentioned on the site are Stuart Horwitz's books, this one and "Blueprint your Bestseller." Horwitz's concept of a series immediately caught my attention. I immediately bought both books. In this one Horwitz walks you through step-by-step how to plot and structure the series in your book. I found side stories that I'd dropped, some I'd never developed at all and should have, and also identified the series that I had successfully developed from beginning to end. Both his books are terrific, but I found this one really helped me tighten up and polish my story.

Book Architecture is one of the best books on plotting that I've read in a long time. It completely changed the way I thought about the plotting process. I have read dozens of books on writing and plotting out your novel however the methodology set out in this book was one of the only methods I've seen that considers the plot as a whole and helps you pull all your story threads and themes together in a way that helps ensure your novel flows cohesively. It keeps your plot from rambling forward blindly and guides your decisions so that they fit nicely in the context of the rest of your novel. Stuart uses numerous examples from books like Catch 22, The Great Gatsby, and Harry Potter complete with sample outlines to illustrate in a very real and practical way the Book Architecture method. Book Architecture gives a clear and concise methodology with lots of real world examples, outlines, and resources to get your novel written. A must read.

I've read a few "How to plot your novel" books before and none of them made sense to me or worked with my style, but this book has been a revelation. Eschewing the traditional three act, linear plot arc, this book focuses on the meanings and relations in your story and how to turn those into the discrete scenes that will, once assembled in order, become your plot. Whereas the traditional method expects the writer to start with key scenes and then figure out how to connect them, this method focuses on figuring out what needs to happen and letting the key scenes develop from that.If you are writing a story and asking the following questions, "Why isn't this working? What am I missing? Where do I put this? How do I pace this?" then this method may help you find the answers. It certainly did for me.

This is a fantastic book, and I’d like to thank the author for putting it out there. He explains the story development method clearly and in simple terms to be able to put it to use. After having worked with Dramatica Pro (and still not getting anywhere with it after months and months of study) this is a walk in the park. Needless to say, I do not recommend DP at all if you want to get your book started and off the ground.As a side note, it did have me thinking, if this method was used by Heller to build Catch-22 back in the 1940’s, how come this method hasn’t been publicly available until recently? Who passed it on to Heller? Or, maybe it was publicly available and I’m just catching on now.

Interesting theory on plot (or should I say ‘series’?) development which changes the way writers see the essential components of story building. It has helped me see my own writing in the bigger picture, as interconnected series arising from central themes. There were enough captivating examples of well-known stories to illustrate the author’s point. Yes, Book Architecture was surprisingly good. Maybe I’ll read his other book at some point.

When I bought this book, I didn't think I could find anything new on outlining, but I bought it anyway. I wasn't disappointed. Horowitz has a new refreshing approach to plotting and outlining, which he calls 'series'. I'm not sure I would have used that term -- 'narrative threads' would have made more sense to me, but whatever you call them, a writer needs to track them, and a columnar spreadsheet approach is one way of doing it. In Horowitz's world, the plot is the central series that runs through the story, but there are other series (or in my terms story threads) that are woven into the story that need to be identified and tracked. The book is full of examples, the most notable being that used by JK Rowling for Harry Potter. Maybe the book didn't need to be as long and detailed as it is, but Horowitz makes his case strongly and shows how these different series can be brought together and linked to the theme of the story. Horowitz is not the first to use spreadsheets (a columnar approach) to track information by scene. But he goes beyond mere tracking into the realm of story design. Well worth the read.

It makes a lot of sense to me, and I'll try it on my WIP. Horwitz has a very easy and chatty style that makes reading it enjoyable.

Really helpful