Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence QUOTES

2 " Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

4 " You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by ever-escalating fire. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

6 " ...what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

8 " Stories are about people who are uncomfortable. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

10 " each scene in your story, ask yourself, If I cut it out, would anything that happens afterward change? "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

12 " In short, when we read a story, we really do slip into the protagonist’s skin, feeling what she feels, experiencing what she experiences. And what we feel is based, 100 percent, on one thing: her goal, which then defines how she evaluates everything the other characters do. If we don’t know what she wants, we have no idea how, or why, what she does helps her achieve it. As Pinker is quick to point out, without a goal, everything is meaningless.6 It "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

14 " To sum up, when writing in the first person, it helps to keep these things in mind:    • Every word the narrator says must in some way reflect his point of view.    • The narrator never mentions anything that doesn’t affect him in some way.    • The narrator draws a conclusion about everything he mentions.    • The narrator is never neutral; he always has an agenda.    • The narrator can never tell us what anyone else is thinking or feeling. Conveying "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

16 " When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something larger than the sum.… The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

18 " They had mistaken the story for what happens in it. But as we’ve learned, the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

20 " The narrative voice is almost always neutral, meaning that as omniscient narrator, you’re invisible and just reporting the facts. Your characters, on the other hand, are free to express their opinion on whatever they so desire. As long as the reader knows whose head we’re in—that is, who the point-of-view character is—you rarely need a preamble at all. "

― Lisa Cron , Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence