Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters

This book is a deconstruction of the major themes and plots behind most western story telling. The author, Victoria Schmidt, is a graduate of film studies, explaining why most of the references and examples are films rather than books. However, storytelling is storytelling, no matter what the medium.



The first two chapters were the most useful from a writer's perspective, outlining and defining the three acts most familiar to western thinkers, planning and development of plot and character. I felt a lot more could have been addressed in these sections.



The third chapter is an extensive catalog of 55 different situations, outlining their use as plot, subplot or incident. How useful this section is, and it's the bulk of the book, is show more questionable. If exploring and understanding the major plots of western culture is what you're looking for, this section is for you. If you're looking for insight into the creative writing process, this is not the right place to look.



The fourth and final chapter, research, skimmed over the very necessary step of getting your facts straight when telling your story. Of course, you don't want your hero riding off into the sunset in a convertible before cars had been invented, but there's more to it than that. The author calls this to attention, and gives some indication of resources to use, but it's a light section and more could be said here.



I would have liked to see more in depth analysis of stories that matched the fifty five scenarios, rather than mentioning four examples at the end of each situation. Of course, doing so would quadruple the size of this book.



All in all, I'll put this book on my shelf and occasionally take it down for reference. I can't recommend this for anyone looking to learn the craft of writing. show less

Story Structure Architect is an interesting book to read even if you aren't a storyteller. Like its name, the book detailed about the basic blocks that constitutes in making a story. This includes novels, novellas, screenplay, video games, choose your own adventures and etc. So technically, if you are looking for a read that detailed on each of these things, you wont get any but if you want to see things more clearly about the structure of a story (either its Final Fantasy 7 or Skyrim or 50 Shades rip-off), then this is quite a handy reference to have.

Set in four parts i.e. Drafting in a Plan, Building the Structure, Adding Stories and Finishing Touches. Surprisingly, it was very organized book without the tendency for the author to show more promote their own work. But even for a non-newbie writer, I don't think I would get a lot from this book except from the first part where it have excellent simplified structure an average person could use like list of conflicts and dramatic 'throughlines' to break those writing blockades.

Its not bad as its really nothing you haven't seen in the market unless you are doing creative writing syllabus that deals with these sort of things. Then, sure its a good book on its own. But if you are a beginner writer, then maybe you should go reading normal fiction than this kind of books so that you could have a framework that you could go on as everything in this book is very relatable to everything you see on films or books. Its not necessary but its a good thing to have if you are having hard time understanding the story structures. show less

Story Structure Architect is an interesting book to read even if you aren't a storyteller. Like its name, the book detailed about the basic blocks that constitutes in making a story. This includes novels, novellas, screenplay, video games, choose your own adventures and etc. So technically, if you are looking for a read that detailed on each of these things, you wont get any but if you want to see things more clearly about the structure of a story (either its Final Fantasy 7 or Skyrim or 50 Shades rip-off), then this is quite a handy reference to have.

Set in four parts i.e. Drafting in a Plan, Building the Structure, Adding Stories and Finishing Touches. Surprisingly, it was very organized book without the tendency for the author to show more promote their own work. But even for a non-newbie writer, I don't think I would get a lot from this book except from the first part where it have excellent simplified structure an average person could use like list of conflicts and dramatic 'throughlines' to break those writing blockades.

Its not bad as its really nothing you haven't seen in the market unless you are doing creative writing syllabus that deals with these sort of things. Then, sure its a good book on its own. But if you are a beginner writer, then maybe you should go reading normal fiction than this kind of books so that you could have a framework that you could go on as everything in this book is very relatable to everything you see on films or books. Its not necessary but its a good thing to have if you are having hard time understanding the story structures. show less

This book covers the nuts and bolts of creating a good plot. I enjoyed learning about the various aspects of genre and dramatic situations.

All the academic *stuff* that you're going to need to write your stories.