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A review by kcrosswriting
Dynamic Story Creation in Plain English: Drake's Brutal Writing Advice by Maxwell Alexander Drake
5.0
As an author, this book rang my gong on several levels.
First of all, the conversational tone was a good thing for it. At first I wasn't sure, but I ended up liking it. Drake does himself a favor by putting a pretty clear statement at the beginning that everything is just his opinion. I appreciated that, actually.
But the meat of it is that I felt Drake really understands the part of story structure that isn't always spoken about. (He calls it the invisible layer). I went into this book looking for help on improving my own story flow and structure, and have been frustrated for a little while that I'm missing a few little pieces in my own work that I couldn't quite figure out.
Through applying what he discuss in this book (and I also really enjoy KM Weiland), then I instantly realized what I've been missing. I've been frustrated over this dilemma for awhile, so now that I'm restructuring with Drake's analysis in mind, I'm pretty excited to be writing again.
The other thing it has going for it is the number of books that he analyzes to prove his point. He uses A New Hope throughout the whole book for consistency, but then brings in other examples. That helped a lot. I'm trying to analyze movies/stories/books now and can see that he's right. It all fits and applies.
I'd definitely recommend this for a writer at any level. But I think new writers in particular can REALLY benefit from this. I wish I'd had a lot of this information two years ago :)
First of all, the conversational tone was a good thing for it. At first I wasn't sure, but I ended up liking it. Drake does himself a favor by putting a pretty clear statement at the beginning that everything is just his opinion. I appreciated that, actually.
But the meat of it is that I felt Drake really understands the part of story structure that isn't always spoken about. (He calls it the invisible layer). I went into this book looking for help on improving my own story flow and structure, and have been frustrated for a little while that I'm missing a few little pieces in my own work that I couldn't quite figure out.
Through applying what he discuss in this book (and I also really enjoy KM Weiland), then I instantly realized what I've been missing. I've been frustrated over this dilemma for awhile, so now that I'm restructuring with Drake's analysis in mind, I'm pretty excited to be writing again.
The other thing it has going for it is the number of books that he analyzes to prove his point. He uses A New Hope throughout the whole book for consistency, but then brings in other examples. That helped a lot. I'm trying to analyze movies/stories/books now and can see that he's right. It all fits and applies.
I'd definitely recommend this for a writer at any level. But I think new writers in particular can REALLY benefit from this. I wish I'd had a lot of this information two years ago :)