How To Find Your Story

Jeff Gerke wrote this amazing book, How To Find Your Story. My crit partner and I both bought it (it's an ebook, so you just download it right to your computer from this website) and we've been planning out our WIPs using the worksheet tool that he provides. This book is for writers who essentially are "character-first novelists," that is, you just get a character stuck in your head and you decide to write a story about him or her.

In contrast is the plot-first novelist, where the twists and turns are already apparent usually before the characters who will live through them are. (Jeff also wrote a book for these type writers called Character Creation for the Plot-First Novelist, available at the above website in a bundle with How to Find Your Story.)

So we just got off the phone with each other, talking about our characters and what pitfalls and adventures we have in store for them, using terminology that we both knew (like escalating arms race, moment of truth, character knot, etc.). I just can't say enough about the book. I feel like now (after reading the book and especially after bouncing ideas off my crit partner), I have a DIRECTION!!! And knowing that is the harder part of the journey of writing a book, to me. My characters aren't swimming around anymore, but heading somewhere, and that's exciting!

Now I just have to find the time to actually write this good stuff. :)

Bibliotherapy for a Writer

Bibliotherapy is one of my favorite ways to structure therapy, especially for children. Frequently I use it with adults. So what it is? As the name might imply, it's using books in a therapeutic way to either 1) bring home a message or moral, 2) bring insight into the reasons BEHIND the symptomology, or 3) bring encouragement that other people, going through the same things my client is, have been there and made it through.

So, I'm taking my own advice and have now at my disposal, about 6 different books that should help me with the writing craft. I'm currently reading three at the same time: How To Find Your Story by Jeff Gerke, Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer by Renni Browne and Dave King, and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell in the Write Great Fiction series.

Already I have my black moment (which is pretty knockout!) and I'm only on page 14 of How to Find Your Story! That's what I call having a good resource!

Will review the books on here when I'm done. Stay tuned.