The story won’t go anywhere and you will quickly lose your readers. We all know that a story needs problems to make the plot interesting, but for Watt, we can’t simply rely on a pile-up of unrelated problems. Watt explains story structure – mostly the hero’s journey – in terms of dilemma. There is also the heroine’s journey, kishōtenketsu, Freytag’s Pyramid, and rags-to-riches story structures. The hero’s journey is a classic Western example of story structure written about extensively by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Structure is how you organize those events. Plot and structure are two different craft elements. Story structure is a craft element, or a term writers use to talk about a specific element of story.
But here we have a craft book that builds both the protagonist and the antagonist at an early stage in story development, to give you a wealth of information from which to create your novel and fill your blank page. So many craft books on plot and story structure put their focus squarely on the hero to develop the story, and the antagonist is dredged up when conflict is needed, resulting in holes in your plot or antagonists that aren’t that interesting to read. Many terms in the book are borrowed from Joseph Campbell’s the hero’s journey, but what is most intriguing about The 90-Day Novel is a reliance on the freewrite.įrom Day One, you write unconsciously from the POV of the protagonist and the antagonist, equally, every day. Through Watt’s formula of deep questioning and freewriting, we learn to develop story structure that keeps the reader reading. And I’m standing there with no idea what she wants me to write. The teacher has asked me to come up to the board. The question alone brings to my mind an image of a blank whiteboard from back in my school days. It’s a combination that has put this book on the top-five list for many writers and why I’d like to share it with you today. Think of the book kind of like NaNoWriMo prep months plus the month of November. But, Watt goes deeper into the framework with questions and writing exercises that guide you through the process: prep, outline, and drafting.
Many have already learned these lessons from writing during November. Essentially you are writing a messy first draft through your unconscious with guidance from Watt. Write without editing, going back, or scratching out. The way we get to story structure in The 90-Day Novel is the same as it is in NaNoWriMo. Writers who have enjoyed National Novel Writing Month. I think this book, too, will cater to writers at O.C. And because the third edition has a section for the memoir writer. Now, I am recommending this book because it teaches story structure, which I haven’t written about too much. area who wrote The 90-Day Novel from a series of letters he sent to his students. Alan Watt is a novelist, screenplay writer, and workshop host in the L.A.
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