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

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Faber & Faber launches John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller—a new Bible not just for screenwriters, but for any writer crafting the perfect story. A version of this hierarchy of knowledge is what we’re taught to this day. We’re told that math and science are essential for our future success, while painting, music, and theater are extracurricular activities. Stories are diversions, something to take our minds off our troubles after a long day. They are something a few creative people write, and even fewer get paid for, while the rest of us enjoy stories in our spare time.

The earliest hunter-gatherer societies understood the tremendous importance of story in their everyday lives. But as societies developed agriculture and technology advanced, a different mindset began to take over. Human lives became dominated by the work required to eat, and later to turn a profit. Once people started living in large enough groups, religions formed to give people ethical guidelines for how to live together. Stories were considered a means to that end. Branching is a system of paths that extend from a few central points by splitting and adding smaller and smaller parts, as shown here: As you watch your story grow before your eyes, I can promise you one thing: you will enjoy the creation. So let's begin.This means engaging all of the senses and creating a fully-realized world that the audience can step into. By doing this, the story becomes more than just a series of events; it becomes a transformative experience that can stay with the audience long after the story has ended. "Withholding, or hiding, information is crucial to the storyteller’s make-believe." A comprehensive guide to writing stories of all kinds, Truby's tome is invaluable to any writer looking to put an idea to paper.”— Booklist Stories that show (the appearance of) simultaneous action imply a comparative explanation for what happens. By seeing a number of elements all at once, the audience grasps the key idea embedded in each element. These stories also put more emphasis on exploring the story world, showing the connections between the various elements there and how everyone fits, or doesn't fit, within the whole.

Causes you to think about your story (novel, or screenplay) in a way that forces you to be objective and ask yourself, does my idea or writing have any of this? These beats are also why people choose to read or watch a particular genre again and again. If these classic plot beats are not present, the story will not be popular. Period. For example, a Love story without the “first dance” beat will have Love story fanatics up in arms.Any character who goes after a desire and is impeded is forced to struggle (otherwise the story is over). And that struggle makes him change. So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller, is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that change did not occur. What was Jaws’ storytelling strategy? A single genre done extremely well. Then, in 1977, Star Wars: A New Hope hit theaters. There was a paradigm shift in popular storytelling strategy. The Anatomy Of Story is concrete and practical without resorting to simplistic ‘Three Act Structure’ screenwriting clichés. It will be an indispensable guide to writing your first great script.” —Larry Wilson, co-writer /co-producer of Beetljuice and co-writer of The Addams Family Most writers don't use the best process for creating a story. They use the easiest one. We could describe it in four words: external, mechanical, piecemeal, generic. Of course, there are lots of variations on this process, but they all work something like this.

Genres are far more than types of stories. They are the all-stars of the story world that have achieved immense popular success over centuries. Writers who want to succeed professionally must write the stories the business wants to buy. Simply put, the storytelling game is won by mastering the structure of genres. In storytelling, each branch usually represents a complete society in detail or a detailed stage of the same society that the hero explores. The branching form is found in more advanced fiction, such as social fantasies like Gulliver's Travels and It's a Wonderful Life or in multiple-hero stories like Nashville, American Graffiti, and Traffic. 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.Mastering one genre used to be enough. No longer. The problem with that strategy is that there are few stories today limited to a single form. Instead, most stories are a combination of two, three, or even four genres. I'm simplifying this theory of story, but not by much. It should be obvious that such an elementary approach has even less practical value than Aristotle. But what's worse is that it promotes a view of story that is mechanical. The idea of an act break comes from the conventions of traditional theater, where we close the curtain to signal the end of an act. We don't need to do that in movies, novels, and short stories or even, for that matter, in many contemporary plays. The hero's journey also serves as a metaphor for the challenges we all face in life, making it a powerful tool for exploring universal themes and human experiences. "Premise is the most important decision you make during the writing process." By the end of Worksheet One, you’ll have stated your premise, brainstormed some strong ideas about what will happen in your story, outlined the basic conflict, and gotten a good idea of who your main character will be.

In a story, you can't show the audience a number of elements all at once, even for a single scene, because you have to tell one thing after another; so, strictly speaking, there are no explosive stories. But you can give the appearance of simultaneity. In film, this is done with the technique of the crosscut.

"Good storytelling doesn’t just tell audiences what happened in a life."

The Anatomy Of Story is concrete and practical without resorting to simplistic ‘Three Act Structure’ screenwriting clichés. It will be an indispensable guide to writing your first great script.” —Larry Wilson, co-writer /co-producer of Beetljuice and co-writer of The Addams Family THE ANATOMY OF STORY This is an extraordinarily useful guide to understanding why and how stories work. Some writers are just naturally able to know what needs to happen in a story. They innately know what beat needs to happen, when it needs to happen, and -- most importantly -- WHY it needs to happen. These writers make the rest of us look bad, and make us feel like we have no idea what we're doing. Serious novels typically depict how a person interacts and changes within an entire society or show the precise mental and emotional processes leading up to his change. The Anatomy Of Story is concrete and practical without resorting to simplistic 'Three Act Structure' screenwriting clichés. It will be an indispensable guide to writing your first great script. Then, the perfect survival manual to help you negotiate the often confusing, contradictory and cutthroat world of professional screenwriting.”— Larry Wilson, co-writer /co-producer of BEETLEJUICE and co-writer of THE ADDAMS FAMILY KEY POINT: Each subsystem of the story consists of a web of elements that help define and differentiate the other elements.