Anatomy Of Story [Paperback]

To date, all of the amazon reviews have praised this book uncritically. This review takes a closer look. Truby presents excellent analyses/anatomies of numerous films and literary works. The book also includes repackaged story-writing techniques; the repackaging, however, seems forced and cumbersome. Many other widely read books, examples listed below, explain these techniques much more lucidly.

On page 5: "My goal is to explain how a great story works, along with the techniques needed to create one.... I'm going to lay out a practical poetics for story-tellers that works whether you're writing a screenplay, a novel, a play, a teleplay, or a short story." Promising. Truby goes on to present engaging analyses of films and literary works: films like "Citizen Kane," "Cinema Paradiso," "Shawshank Redemption," "Hannah and her Sisters," and "Lord of the Rings"; literary works like Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," Emily Bronte's "The Wuthering Heights," Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," James Joyce's "Ulysses," and Mario Puzo's "The Godfather."

However, the techniques Truby presents -- such as starting with a one-sentence premise, developing the story line from the premise, creating contrasting characters, weaving in the inside emotional story -- are also the techniques in Lajos Egri's clasic, THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING; Syd Field's pioneering book, SCREENPLAY; Linda Seger's MAKING A GOOD SCRIPT GREAT; David Trottier's THE SCREENWRITER'S BIBLE; Stanley Williams's THE MORAL PREMISE; Dara Marks's THE INSIDE STORY; and Robert J Ray's THE WEEKEND NOVELIST. Yet, none of these seven well-known contemporary writers of story craft and almost none other are referenced anywhere in Truby's 464-page book.

On the opening page, Truby says: "Terms like 'rising action,' 'climax,' 'progressive complication,' and 'denouement,' terms that go as far back as Aristotle, are so broad and theoretical as to be almost meaningless." And on the next page, "The three-act structure is a mechanical device superimposed on the story and has nothing to do with its internal logic." (On page 287, Truby trashes the three-act structure as "lousy plot with no chance of competing in the real world of professional screenwriting.")

In the above quotes, the phrases "almost meaningless," "nothing to do," "lousy plot" sound strident. And wrong. During drafting, structural guidelines do contribute -- contribute interactively -- form to content. Moreover, the classical three-act structure is invariably the audience's psychological experience of conflict in any dramatic story: beginning, middle, end -- even when plot-design presents the conflict in a different order. Truby, I think, meant to say that citing the three-act structure is not one of his 22 steps touted in the book's subtitle. Granted, simply citing the three-act form wouldn't be helpful. It reminds me of the king's unhelpful advice to the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll's wondrous tale: "Begin at the beginning," the king said, gravely, "go on to the end; then stop." However, none of the craft books listed above just cite the three-act form and then say as Truby imputes: "Got that? Great. Now go and write a professional script"(p 4). They discuss premise, theme, character, characterization, goal, conflict and so on. Truby slipped into the straw-man fallacy here.

From the questions I asked the author at his reading this afternoon in a Berkeley bookstore, I learned that he also markets a writing software, Truby Blockbuster, upgraded to match this book. At home, I looked up the amazon software-reviews of Truby Blockbuster. The software is expensive: three-hundred bucks upfront plus hundreds more for add-ons. One of the four reviewers, Razzi--"the working screenwriter"--notes: "You have to take Truby's ideas with the knowledge that Truby himself was never able to successfully apply them. His sole pro credit is as a tv writer on a series made over a decade ago. But that doesn't stop Truby from pontificating on all the 'mistakes' made by writers far more successful than himself." Well, well, well. A craft teacher can be effective without being a high performer in the art. To be fair to Truby, let's remember that the poineering guru of drama-writing craft in European literature, Aristotle, did not write any drama at all. Craft books on writing can teach only the craft, not the art.

The book's title is apt; the subtitle isn't. It's the brilliantly illuminating examples of craft as anatomies of numerous screenplays, novellas, novels that make this a five-star book, not its subtitle's touted 22-steps.

-- C J Singh

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More details? Please read on.

The book sequences chapters on "techniques of great storytelling in the same order that you construct your story." Nine of the ten chapters end with detailed exercisese book's nine exercises are:

EXERCISE #1: CREATE YOUR PREMISE.
Premise: State your story idea in a single sentence. (Lajos Egri, Syd Field, James Frey and others urged this as step one.)

EXERCISE #2: USE the SEVEN KEY STEPS of STORY STRUCTURE.
Weakness and need; Desire; Opponent; Plan; Battle; Self-Revelation; New Equilibrium. (These are repackaged concepts from Aristotle, concepts that Truby labelled as "almost meaningless.")

EXERCISE #3: CREATE YOUR CHARACTERS.
Create characters from your premise.

EXERCISE #4: OUTLIINE THE MORAL ARGUMENT.
Outline the moral argument or theme inherent in your premise. (Stanley Williams's "THE MORAL PREMISE" explains this better than Truby does.)

EXERCISE #5: CREATE THE STORY WORLD.
Create the story world "as an outgrowth of your hero."

EXERCISE #6: CREATE A WEB OF SYMBOLS.
"We'll figure out a web of symbols that highlight and communicate different aspects of the characters, the story world, and the plot."

EXERCISE #7: CREATE YOUR PLOT.
Create your plot by following the 22 steps of the book's subtitle. "The steps... provide the scaffolding you need" to create an organic story design. Truby presents persuasive analyses of "Casablanca," "Tootsie," and "The Godfather." Nonetheless, Truby's vaunted 22-step exercise will generate the three-act structure!

EXERCISE #8: CREATE THE SCENE WEAVE.
To prepare for writing scenes, first: "Come up with a list of every scene in the story, with all the plotlines and themes woven into a tapestry." Truby presents a useful brief example comparing scene weaves from an early and the final draft of "The Godfather" as well as fuller examples from "L.A. Confidential," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "It's a Wonderful Life."

EXERCISE # 9: SCENE CONSTRUCTION AND SYMPHONIC DIALOGUE
Construct "each scene so that it furthers the development of your hero. We'll write dialogue that doesn't just push the plot but has a symphonic quality, blending many instruments and levels at the same time." The chapter includes instructive brief examples from "The Seven Samurai," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and a detailed example from "Casablanca."

-- C J Singh

I'm French and it's not easy for me to say in english simply this book is very important for the history of narration.

It's not a basic book about the three-act structure. It's not a "how to book" with a little formula and a couple of advice without interest for a real writer.

I'm a screenwriter in my country and I read a lot of books on writing - maybe hundred. Generally, it's always the same recipe again and again:
A story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end; a main character with a goal, then plenty of obstacles in a middle, and a climax at the end, and so on.
OK, and after that?
You are in front of your blank page and...
Nothing!
Just theory!

With this book it's very different. There are many techniques (real techniques, practical techniques) and a real point of view about what the narration should be in general.

What's a story? How to write something clever - not only with "suspens", "mystery", or "action" - but with meaning!
How to develop your theme, your values, your moral, through your story, step by step.
How to write something with your voice, your unique voice, your emotion, your personality, and very important: your own structure!!!

I don't know if John Truby is a "guru" or something.
But I know John Truby is a great "essayist" on writing. John Truby knows his subject very well and you can feel it, page after page.

All serious writers should read this book, a French is telling you.

Good reading

Marc Herpoux

This is easily one of my favorite writing books. Since other reviewers have taken this from a screenwriter's perpsective, I'm going to be different and come at from a novelist's.

So many books focus on fill-in-the-blank forms, checklists, and "hero's journey" archetypes (and its many variations), that you begin to feel like you're just spinning your wheels, piling up unconnected plot points and factoids about characters, but getting nowhere. It seems like you're doing all the right things, but somehow it's just not working.

What makes this book effective is its true emphasis on 'story.' Truby makes a sound case against relying on the 3-act theater paradigm for structure, including questioning its value for novelists - and he makes a good case. Abandoning that constraint opens up far more plotting possiblities to fill 250 to 400 pages. He also uses a variety of examples, from popular films to classic novels. Not being the hugest of movie buffs, I found that helpful.

His character-building gets away from the usual checklists and forms (those never really work for me), with a more organic, story role-based approach that makes you take a hard look at what significance each character has in your story, if the character's role needs revising to better fit that role, or even whether you need that character at all.

The emphasis on story means there's nothing really on page counts or screenplay formats or selling to Hollywood, so there's more grist in here for the novelist. Even if you're an experienced, published novelist, this book will give you a new way of looking at your current project.

I struggled haphazardly with a fiction project for over a year. This book helped me look at it in a new way so that I can finish it rather than abandon it. Now I feel it's getting back on track. "The Anatomy of Story" is a thick book, to be sure, but very readable, and it's a must-read.

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