Home > Work > Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
1 " We don't turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality. "
― Lisa Cron , Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
2 " Outlining the plot before you develop your protagonist traps you on the surface of your novel—that is, in the external events that happen. "
3 " In fact, often the opposite is true, because we’re much better at teaching something that we’ve learned through experience than we are at teaching things we innately know. When we innately know how to do something, we assume it’s part of the standard operating package we’re all born with. "
4 " As the great Southern writer Flannery O’Connor once noted, “Most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. "
5 " In a nutshell: A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how that person changes internally as a result. "
6 " Because the story, as I’m very fond of saying, is in the specifics. "
7 " The story you’re telling doesn’t start on page one. It started long before you got there. "