Douglas Smith is a five-time award-winning author described by Library Journal as "one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction."

His work includes the multi-award-winning urban fantasy trilogy, The Dream Rider Saga (The Hollow Boys, The Crystal Key, The Lost Expedition); the urban fantasy novel, The Wolf at the End of the World; the collections Chimerascope, Impossibilia, La Danse des Esprits (translated), and Borderlanz; and the writer's guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction.

His short fiction has appeared in the top markets in the field, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, InterZone, Weird Tales, Baen's Universe, Escape Pod, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year's Best Canadian Fantasy & SF, On Spec, and Cicada.

Brick by Brick: How to Build a Story by Douglas Smith

Most writing craft books, courses, and workshops focus on the tools a writer needs and how to use them: dialog, setting, pacing, plot, openings, exposition, point-of-view. Their aim is to add another tool, or maybe even a set of tools, to your writer's toolbox.

The problem with that approach is the vast gulf in knowledge between having your toolbox filled and applying those tools to create a story. Those craft books are the equivalent of telling a rookie construction worker, "You know how to use the tools. Now go build a house."

In this book, Douglas Smith, a five-time award-winning author described by Library Journal as "one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction," takes a different approach.

In these pages, Doug will show how to design that house so that you can build it. You'll learn how to create a blueprint for your story idea to take you from inspiration to story structure, a structure you can then build, brick by brick.

Or rather, scene by scene.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Doug has written a lot of novels and short stories. In his decades as a freelance writer, he's learned that the important thing about fiction isn't the mastery of the tools, but how to use them to create a story structure. That's why this book has the construction analogy in its title. He's not teaching you how to write like everyone else; he's teaching you how to use an expected structure to be your very best writerly self. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

What is Story Structure?

What a story is about is less important than how you tell it. And you choose how to tell a story by selecting a structure for your tale.

Imagine if Christopher Nolan had told the movie Memento in perfect time sequence instead of interleaved flashbacks. The movie's structure made it brilliant.

In this book, when I refer to story structure, I mean this:

Using scenes as building blocks to construct your story

A scene is simply any clearly delineated section in your story. A scene has a clear opening, a clear ending, and a clear purpose for existing in the story. We'll discuss scenes in much more detail later.

In its simplest form, story structure means coming up with which scenes to include in your story, and then making decisions about each of these scenes, including:

•Time sequence: Will you tell your story in a linear fashion or non-linear (using flashbacks)?
•Point-of-View (POV): Who will be your POV character in each scene? Will you have a single or multiple POVs in your story?
•Scene type: Will the scene be a normal narrative, or will it be something different (such as omniscient exposition, bookends, and more)?

The Key Point I'm Making

My main argument in this book is that stories with more complex structures (multiple POVs, flashbacks, a mix of scene types) deliver a deeper, richer, and more rewarding reading experience.

But they also present more opportunities to fail as a writer, because…

Complex story structures → Greater reward…but greater risk

That risk arises because the more complex your story structure, the more critical it becomes that you implement each structure decision correctly.

This book will explain the correct process for implementing even the most complex story structure.

How I Organized This Book

This book follows the same sequence in which writers create stories, stepping you through the process of going from story idea to a completed story structure:

•Story Inspiration: Getting an idea for a story (the easy part);
•Idea Validation: Determining if your story idea deserves to be written, and if so, if it is ready to be written;
•Idea Development: Fleshing out your idea and universe so you're ready to make character and plot decisions;
•Character Auditions: Choosing your main characters and secondary characters;
•POV Decisions: Deciding which character(s) will tell your story; that is, whose head(s) will readers be in; and,
•Story Structure Decisions: Creating your scene list and making critical decisions about those scenes.

Ready? Let's begin, starting with where writers get their ideas for stories.